Global Voices Online

Serbia: Reflections of a Bosnian Refugee

Friday, November 14th, 2008 @ 02:15 UTC

by Veronica Khokhlova

Countries:: Bosnia Herzegovina, Denmark, Serbia
Topics:: Freedom of Speech, Cyber-Activism, Diaspora, Ethnicity, History, Human Rights, Law, Protest, War & Conflict, International Relations, Politics

27-year-old Amila Jašarević fled Bosnia & Herzegovina in 1993 and has since been living in Denmark. On her blog, Amila Bosnae, she describes her first visit to Serbia: “Although our hosts from the different Serbian NGOs did whatever they could to make us comfortable, there was nothing they could do about the radical graffiti and posters all over Belgrade. Or the daily nationalist rallies in support of Radovan Karadžić. Or simply the fact that I was always very aware that I was a Bosnian in Serbia.” (Link via Belgraded.com)

3 comments

Amila Jasarevic

Thank you for the pingback! :)

# 2008-11-14 at 22:05 pm

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Interesting that you chose to dwell on such things. Such grafiti litters all cities in this world. Perhaps you didn’t want to feel comfortable. Perhaps, you cannot not think of all those “Yugoslavs” that are no longer welcome in the Former Yugoslavia, except Serbia and, for some reason, that makes you dwell on the City’s grafiti. How does Denmark’s grafiti make you feel?

# 2008-11-15 at 8:42 am

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Amila Jasarevic

On the odd occasion that I do see extreme right-wing graffiti in Denmark, it makes me feel uncomfortable, of course. Same goes for that kind of comments on the Internet and other media. But I don’t have a history with Danes trying to kill me as I do with some Serbs, so your comparison is odd.

What Yugoslavs are you talking about who are only welcome in Serbia?

# 2008-11-15 at 21:38 pm

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