From 6 to 10 June 2022, in Blagaj near Mostar, we organised a meeting of war veterans and peace activists, envisaged as a combination of working and reflecting in a more relaxed atmosphere. The meeting had actually been planned two years ago, but the situation with the pandemic made us postpone it until better conditions could be had. The idea of the meeting was, in essence, to look back at our peace work with war veterans over the past years and to devise a framework for the continuation of our work in the future.
Also, given that in the past period, we had attended more than twenty commemorations and visited dozens of sites of atrocities across the region, we were also in need of some rest and rehabilitation in order to preserve our own mental capacities and recharge our energies for continuing to work on peacebuilding. We picked up where we left off right away, because on the last day we went to Vitez to attend the commemoration for the children killed there.
The meeting was attended by nineteen war veterans from BiH, Croatia and Serbia, as well as the CNA training team consisting of Nenad Vukosavljević, Radomir Radević and Amer Delić. We also had a special guest, our years-long associate and friend Luan Imeri from the Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution in Skopje, North Macedonia.
Working Session, Relaxation Session
The workday was organised into morning workshops, starting with an overview of our activities since 2019, including our attendance at official commemorations, our visit to Mostar where we were jointly hosted by veterans of HVO and ARBiH, as well as the implementation of activities devoted to Marking Unmarked Sites of Suffering that were supported by individual veterans.
Looking back at the processes we experienced, we analysed points of resistance and the difficulties we faced, as well as how we could overcome them. We came to the conclusion that these experiences made us stronger and that they would be useful in planning future activities in local communities where we will try to remain present. In later workshops, we started planning concrete actions and agreed on the next steps that need to be taken by the participants and with the support of CNA.
The afternoons were reserved for field trips and we visited nearby Stolac, where we were introduced to the rich cultural and historical heritage of this city on the Bregava river, as well as the Hutovo Blato nature reserve where we learned about the flora and fauna of this unique ecosystem.
We spent the evenings socialising informally, relaxing by the Buna river, enjoying the cool breeze there that made the humid nights easier to bear.
All of us enjoyed this combination of working and relaxing. We forged a commitment to continue our work together, with special motivation to further strengthen engagement, given the bad political situation in the region, as well as in Europe and the world in general.
Visit to Vitez
From Blagaj, our group arrived in Vitez on the day marking the anniversary of when eight children were killed there. On 10 June 1993, these children were killed by a shell fired from the positions of the Army of RBiH. Their families organised the commemoration we joined, and our whole group was hosted by Ivan Garić who lost his brother and sister that day and was seriously wounded himself.
For more about our attending the commemoration go to LINK
While we were in Vitez, we also visited the grave of Hamdija Karić, a member of our group who died last year. With his son, we went to the graveyard in Sivrino selo, laid flowers and remembered our friend.
The photo gallery is available HERE