| FOB
Briefs
Vol. 10, No. 1, December,
2003
Looking
Back
FOB
Marked 10th Anniversary of the Wars in the Balkans
 |
 |
L to R: Mirza Kusljugic, Stephen Walker,
Edita Tahiri, John Shattuck,
International Institute Director Westy Egmont, FOB Director
Glenn Ruga, and Global Citizens Circle Managing Director
Theo Dunfey. |
|
In early April
2002, FOB organized a series of speakers, exhibits, concerts,
and videos to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the siege
of Sarajevo (which began on April 6, 1992) and the wars in
the former Yugoslavia. The program, “From Requiem to
Renewal: A Decade of Balkan Conflict,” was sponsored
by Friends of Bosnia, the International Institute of Boston,
Boston College, the Global Citizens Circle, and Physicians
for Human Rights. It included a number of events over several
days, which are briefly described below:
Sonatas of War & Peace
Music composed by Vuk Kulenovic. Kulenovic was born in Sarajevo
and studied in Belgrade and Ljubljana. A former professor
at the Belgrade Faculty of Music, he is currently a professor
of composition at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
Requiem or Renewal — A Decade
of Balkan Conflict
A panel discussion with three experts on the former Yugoslavia:
Mirza Kusljugic, Bosnian Ambassador to the United Nations
and former Dean of Electrical Engineering Faculty at the University
of Tuzla; John Shattuck, former Assistant Secretary of State
for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and currently CEO of
the Kennedy Library Foundation; and Edita Tahiri, negotiator
for Kosovo at Rambouillet, former Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Kosovo, and former member of Presidency, LDK.
Writing the Siege of Sarajevo: Poetry
and Prose on the Bosnian War and Its Aftermath
Readings by writers Muharem Bazdulj,
Sarajevo, author of One Like a Song; Christopher
Merrill, director, International Writing Program, The University
of Iowa, author of Only the Nails Remain; Dubravka
Ugresic, Amsterdam, author of The Culture of Lies;
and Fahrudin Zilkic.
War Crimes, Forensic Science, &
International Justice
A discussion featuring Samantha Power, executive director
of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy
School of Government, Harvard University, and author of Problem
from Hell; Susannah Sirkin, deputy director, Physicians for
Human Rights; and Anne-Marie Slaughter, then professor of
International, Foreign and Comparative Law at
Harvard Law School.
Film Festival
The festival featured showings of the films Bosna!; Calling
the Ghosts: A Story of Rape, Women & War; Postcards from
Peja; Pretty Village, Pretty Flame; Before the Rain; and Shot
Through the Heart.
Exhibits
Paintings by Deryk Houston from Echoes from the Square,
a book by Elizabeth Wellburn about Vedran Smailovic, the Cellist
of Sarajevo.
Sarajevo War Posters: Posters made by artists and designers
in Sarajevo during the first two years of the siege.
Selections from two documentary photography exhibits produced
by Friends of Bosnia: “Zones of Separation: The Struggle
for a Multi-ethnic Bosnia” and “Reconstructing
Kosovo.”
Emir
Nuhanovic
In August 2002,
FOB hosted Bosnian conductor and clarinetist Emir Nuhanovic
at Sabur Restaurant in Somerville in a fundraiser for FOB’s
reconstruction work in Bosnia. Nuhanovic is the principal
clarinetist of the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra. He was
in Boston at the invitation of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra,
with whom he played three free public concerts. Nuhanovic
won the April 6th Prize for his achievement in the organization
of music life in Sarajevo during the 1992–95 war.
|
