Sarajewo presented itself to the world as the quintessence of western values: tolerance, freedom, democracy, culture, open society, etc. In short: everything that is under attack, is everything that is at stake, and everybody can identify with it, at least the -the entire civilized world+ . Like Salman Rushdie who declared himself to be an imaginary citizen of this (for him) unknown city.
By now we know that real politics does not give a shit for any kind of value, however high and universal they may be. The real motive behind the actions of the international actors in the Bosnian theatre is to contain the conflict within a limited space, while at the same time making sure that none of the powers lose their face.
The DFUS comes at a time that Sarajewo is disappearing. For ordinary people watching TV it has turned into one of those eternal unsolvable problem spots on the world map. All the real events have happened, the rest is repetition, so basically boring. The negotiators, generals and presidents make their obligatary moves in a game that has ended in a stalemate more than half a year ago. And they make no secret of their wish to pull back their troops and other political investments, leaving Sarajewo and Bosnia-Hercegowina as a whole to itself. Only the people who cannot leave cannot afford this cynicism.
I can more or less imagine the mixture of despair, rage and denied dignity behind this declaration. And, yes, also the power of the man who knows that he has tried everything and only makes this statement to leave a testimony of his struggle. For history. What he gains is that he will not be an unknown citizen of the imaginary universal civilization that really only exists in declarations (from the -Dƒclaration des Droits de l+homme et du citoyen+ of the French revolution to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948).
He knows that the world has given up even the suggestion that it will try to save Sarajewo. And he senses that the values that he is fighting for are losing ground in Sarajewo itself. Yes, that his Sarajewo is becoming imaginary itself. At the time that the BiH minister of Culture sends a letter to DJ Mimo Sahinpasic ordering him to stop playing -agressor music+ by Djordje Balasevic. At a time that Dzemaludin Latic, a comentator and member of the ruling Party for Democratic Action writes that -mixed marriages, a symbol of misunderstood mutual life, are mostly ruined marriages in which big conflicts exists and children are frustrated by their origin+. At a time that spiritual leader Mustafa Ceric says : -We Bosnians - that is, Muslims - have accepted Islam as the blueprint of our existence.+ At a time also that the police is everywhere, that party membership is reqired of applicants to state jobs. At a time that the Party of Democratic Action seems to be recreating a totalitarian one-party state (see article of Roger Cohen in the International Herald Tribune of 11-10-+94).
Sarajewo is fighting the siege of Serbs who want to destroy it.
Sarajewo is fighting the -International Community+, who are betraying its
own univsersally declared values.
And Sarajewo is fighting its own rulers who threaten to destroy the
civilization they are unable defend.
If it would only serve to save our freedom to express our solidarity and to
retain our power to imagine that the fight for a life worth living will never
stop, I am happy to put my signature.
ZAGREB 23-10-94 Jo van der Spek
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