Bosnian cultural symbols important, activist tells students

The Bosnian people will lose their distinctive cultural heritage if efforts are not made to rebuild national monuments destroyed during the region’s 1990s conflict, a leading figure in the country’s rebuilding effort said last night in the George Sherman Union.

Amra Hadzuhamedovic, head of the Commission to Protect National Monuments in Bosnia, said many Bosnian refugees returning from exile after the war have been met by an unfamiliar landscape devoid of the landmarks and monuments that once marked Bosnia’s unique cultural and religious heritage, she said.

‘A homeland has its landmarks which may be features of high visibility and public significance,’ she said. ‘These visible signs serve to enhance a people and a sense of identity and belonging.’

In terms of long-term damage, the most devastating acts committed during the war, according to Dr. Hadzuhamedovic, were the ‘intentional and systematic destruction of monuments by the aggressors.’

Hadzuhamedovic, also a professor of architecture at the University of Sarajevo, said the destruction of the country’s monuments amount to destruction of the peoples’ national memory in that war-torn region.

‘Cultural memory,’ as she called it, manifests itself in the form of national monuments, shrines, mosques and statues, according to Hadzuhamedovic. The importance of these monuments lies in preservation of the heritage of the Bosnian people after the war.

‘Whenever cultural memory enters into oblivion, a group of people disappears,’ she said.

She said commanders of the opposing Croatian army said after the war, they were intentionally destroying the Bosnian peoples’ cultural symbols.

Hadzuhamedovic said her main concern is that with time, all memory of mosques and temples will be eradicated from the minds of the Bosnian people.

‘Without these monuments Bosnia will become a nation with no sense of itself and its heritage,’ she said. ‘This we must not lose. It would be [tantamount] to losing ourselves.’

Hadzuhamedovic, who said she is personally supervising the rebuilding effort in the Bosnian town of Stolac, mentioned the limited support the rebuilding effort has received from the international community.

‘The Bosnian community feels entirely without the support of Western world,’ she said.

She said the only support the effort has received thus far has been from Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, the country’s support comes with severe architectural stipulations that exclude the eclectic nature that is unique to Bosnian mosques, she said. She said Saudi Arabia threatened to withdraw support of the project if these stipulations were not met.

Several students said they were ashamed of the lack of Western support for the rebuilding effort.

‘Not enough was done to stop the war so a role should be played in reconstruction,’ said Yasin Demirbas, a third year student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Graduate student Dana Ahmed said Western help would have been nice to see from the beginning.

‘It would be a good thing if the Western world did something, but it’s really late,’ she said. ‘Bosnia used to be in bigger need. Giving aid in reconstruction is the least we could do.’

Ahmet Yukleyen the vice president of the Society for Middle Eastern Studies said Hadzuhamedovic’s speech was important because it puts a human dimension on the war so many heard about from so far away.

‘War has both an obvious and secretive way of destroying elements of humanity,’ he said.