We all recently welcomed the action of two fathers who exposed their sons who caused material damage to the mosque in Surmanci near Capljina. Last year, the public also had words of praise for the father who apologized for his son’s shameful behavior at the cemetery in Rastani near Mostar.
The question is how, why, and because of whom did we end up in a situation where children who did not remember the war do such things? Why are the actions of these fathers a surprise to us and how far are we from real coexistence and mutual respect?
Three truths of war, fear of the other, and the different, divided education systems – all this has influenced that even today we have desecrations and attacks on other people’s lives and property. Almost thirty years after the war.
In theory, we learned the lesson, practice is going well for us until someone “of ours” warns us that we will be endangered and that someone with a different name is a threat to us. The one who remembered the horrors of war, says political scientist Husein Orucevic, like the fathers from the Surmanci story, does not allow hatred.
“Those parents reacted according to their memories, according to deep experience, respect for themselves, not for the people or for religion, but according to their experience, their trauma, the horror they experienced and they don’t want it to happen again, out of love for their children – so that it doesn’t happen to their children,” points out Orucevic.
Where have we gone as a society? Intellectual Slavo Kukic believes that everything changed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when nationalist forces, justifying themselves by protecting ethnic collectivities, destroyed the beauty of coexistence. They live, he says, both in academic communities and in the media.
“Suppose that a cesarean section takes place in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), that the ethno-nationalist propagators of hatred disappear, and that we have media that promotes the beauty of common life, I am sure that it would not take even a year for this generation to experience what my generation experienced in a very strong intensity,” assesses Kukic.
However, there are many examples of togetherness that are unfairly under-emphasized. We chose the Mostar Rock School. They do not care about names, origin, language, skin, or eye color. They only care about music as a universal language.
“These young people are very open and not under the influence that, unfortunately, they will encounter later in life that they have to be members of some teams to get a job or they have to watch their opinion in certain circles, which are usually some political opinions. We don’t talk about those things here. It doesn’t matter to us where anyone is from and from which address,” points out Orhan Maslo, project manager of Rock School Mostar.
All our interlocutors believe that very little is needed for coexistence in this country. First of all, facing our own fears and understanding that all our differences are actually wealth. And the minimum will to not do to others what you don’t want others to do to you. And that would be a peaceful BiH – as academician Kukic would say.
