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Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura

@Rrrrnessa

11 Jul

On this day in 1995, following Ratko Mladic's entry to Srebrenica, Serb forces proceeded to murder en masse 8,372 Bosniak-Muslims. Elderly, women, and even children were not spared. An industrialised & systematic plan to exterminate the Muslim population of Bosnia.

I remember.

As they split the women from the men, they did not spare all the women from the same tragedy that befell the men. Many women in Bosnia are still missing. Many of them were victims of a systematic genocidal rape campaign.

I remember them too.

Srebrenica was the final act of a 4 year long campaign of genocide. For 4 years, Serb forces looted and pillaged Bosniak villages and towns. For 4 years they seized cities and shelled them to oblivion. For 4 years they tortured Bosniaks in concentration camps.

I remember.

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Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura

@Rrrrnessa

7 Jul

Every year, without fail, an uncle sends me this long message thanking me for my work. Every year I try to get him to share his story of surviving genocide and this year he has allowed me to do so as long as I don't say his name. This is how he survived the Bosnian genocide:

He was only 19 years old when the war broke out and his life changed forever. He lived in a small village near Visegrad. His village was burned, looted, and destroyed. His mother killed and his father taken away. His father's remains have yet to be found.

As fighting continued and Serb forces expanded both their cruelty and ethnic cleansing, he ran where he could. When Srebrenica was declared a safe area, he found himself trekking miles to get there. He had absolutely nothing. He walked with torn clothes and was dying of hunger.

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Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura

@Rrrrnessa

7 Jul

It's Srebrenica Memorial Week and Genocide denialism is already in full force. Attacks on Bosnian genocide survivors are the norm as is the glorification of Ratko Mladic. It's disgusting and unsurprising. Year in and year out, I don't know how they don't get exhausted by it.

I don't know how anyone can look at the tears of the mothers who've lost so much, at the tears of the children who have had their precious childhoods stolen from them in the name of hatred and still go on to celebrate Mladic and deny the Bosnian Genocide. It's soulless.

Every year we have to deal with those who wish we had died alongside our families, deny the reality of our experiences. To them, the mass graves, the bones of our dead, the thousands missing, the concentration camps, the shelling, the rapes, the murders...it's all made up.

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Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura

@Rrrrnessa

1 Mar

At some point, there needs to be an understanding that calling all modern/recent genocides or atrocities a CIA conspiracy is beyond just unhinged and is actually rooted in chauvinistic and often orientalist perceptions of foreign countries.

I just saw a thread in which not only was the Bosnian genocide denied but also Rwandan, and with that, of course, the genocide in Myanmar too alongside the denial of any mistreatment of Uighurs. Of course this basically says that nothing bad ever happens to people outside of USA.

And I’m not quite sure why Americans on the left in particular have such a strong need to deny genocide and atrocities committed by anyone who isn’t the USA. Is it naivety? Do you all truly believe that only the US is capable of evil? How do you justify denying all genocides?

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Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura

@Rrrrnessa

7 Jan

The point of talking about the Bosnian genocide or the Holocaust is so that other people, particularly in the (often privileged and safe) West, will come to understand that the things that happened to Jews or Bosniak-Muslims can happen anywhere.

But these acts of violence, rise of the far right, that leads to genocide does not occur in a vacuum. It does not happen suddenly and it does not only happen to certain countries and certain people.

The violence we are seeing in America is not exported from the Balkans or exYugoslavia. It is its very own brand of violence that stems from its own history that is very much rooted in violence and the fact that has continually been ignored in hopes it will go away.

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Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura

@Rrrrnessa

3 Jan

https://twitter.com/paulsaxton/status/1345704892577493008

Thanks. What is your evidence that a few weeks/months of missing school will have horrific consequences on children? What is your evidence that in 15 years time, kids that missed a couple months of school socialisation (they still have online learning) will not be fine?

https://twitter.com/paulsaxton/status/1345704892577493008

Anyway, I did not have drive or motivation when I started school after the war or even when I moved to the US. It was just school. I came. I showed up. I learned. I did my homework. The same way millions of kids do each day. It’s about the fact that kids still learn and persevere

The frustrating argument about “well what about all these other issues” is that all the other issues they mention (familial issues, poverty, lack of social safety nets) will continue to exist and kids will still be impacted them even if in school during covid. But they wont die.

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