The 'townlet' of Andricgrad may help to move Visegrad and Republika Srpska closer towards a wartime goal of union with Serbia. However, the city also reveals dormant tensions within the community, sending a reminder that the past is still not forgotten.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the protests and plenums have been the best thing people have witnessed since the end of armed hostilities in 1995. What’s next? Can democracy be restored?
After almost twenty years of stagnant purgatory under the Dayton constitution, it is Bosnians themselves who are building democracy, from the ground up.
The poet Goran Simic and the historian Srdja Pavlovic discuss the protests in Bosnia and what they mean for the future of the country.
The current wave of protests in Bosnia may represent the birth of true activist citizenship. These movements discover new forms of collective organisation and explore the most fundamental questions for any society, namely social justice and equality for all. What happens in Bosnia will not stay in
In the Bosnian protests of the last months, the global scenario of police brutality has been re-enacted, with local specifics. And the violence of the police is itself a symptom of the failure of the current Bosnian political order.
The process of integration into the European Union, which has been stagnant for a decade now, has exposed the sad reality of a total lack of political will on the part of Europe. Let’s be more specific. In Italian. In French.
Bosnian citizens' protest against corruption and misgovernance also reveals the deep flaws of the country's ethno-nationalist system. But where is Europe?
Bosnia’s political elites across the ethnic spectrum have lost their legitimacy, and can only function within the current political chaos, with its prevailing democratic deficit.
This is a revolt, not yet another NGO or academic report assessing BiH’s progress on its ‘Road to Europe’ or to NATO, nor a bland press statement from the Office of the High Representative, the supreme agency of foreign intervention in BiH.
The lack of substantive democracy has been bringing citizens onto the streets throughout the European Union, the Middle East, and even United States for many years now.
Demonstrations have spread rapidly across Bosnia, with citizens organizing popular assemblies to voice their frustration with the country’s institutional paralysis. Through the adamantly non-ethnic nature of the demonstrations, the protesters are taking aim at the entire political elite. Valerie H
