Canada Remembers Genocide

From the Globe and Mail:

"Toronto Bosnians to fill coffee cups to mark Srebrenica genocide"

Bosnian coffee will be poured into thousands of small porcelain cups placed together on the ground at Dundas Square Saturday. They will remain full, however, because the people whom they are meant for won’t be there to drink them. The Toronto Bosnian community will commemorate the Srebrenica genocide with a travelling monument – 3,500 cups donated by families worldwide – that pays homage to missing loved ones and haunting memories.  Toronto will be the ninth city to host the interactive Što Te Nema, meaning both “Why are you not here?” and “Where have you been?,” marking the 19th anniversary of Europe’s worst massacre since the Second World War. “[Coffee] characterizes Bosnian culture more than anything else,” says Aida Sehovic, the New York-based artist behind the event. “And it’s specifically the way we drink coffee. … it’s almost always shared.”

Ms. Sehovic, a Bosnian refugee, remembers vividly her 2004 trip home. It was the year that bodies from mass graves were first identified and buried. She recalls an account from a man her age who as a teen survived execution because he tripped and was covered by dead bodies. That same trip she met a woman who’d lost all her male family members. “But I realized her story is multiplied by thousands,” Ms. Sehovic says. Years later, she would honour their pain with her project. Haris Celic, the 22-year-old organizer of Toronto’s event, saw the monument in Istanbul and was so impressed by the outcome that he felt compelled to bring it home. “I think that people don’t know about [the war]. … They don’t really know any details of what happened and how it happened.” The hardest part for him, he said, is the denial by some that a genocide took place. The war’s impact is ever-present in Mr. Celic’s life. “You look at the community and there’s a huge age gap between generations … there are not many people like me in their early 20s,” he says. “There’s a missing age group.”

He says survivors will be at Saturday’s event. But not all local Bosnians will be attending. Many, like Leila Handanovic, have returned home to remember with family and community. There, she watches memorial services, wears a white Srebrenica flower and mourns all the victims of the nearly four-year war. “We are remembering because it is impossible to forget. Especially today,” Ms. Handanovic said. July 11, 1995, was the beginning of the most severe massacre of many. More than 7,000 Bosnian men and boys were killed by Serbian forces in the Srebrenica “safe zone” over a matter of days, according to the The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. It’s estimated that 100,000 people from both sides were killed in the war, and 2.2 million Bosnians were displaced, according to the tribunal. Što Te Nema takes place at Dundas Square from 12 to 6 p.m. Mr. Celic expects there will be 4,000 cups by day’s end.

^ The whole world needs to remember what happened in Srebrenica because the whole world let those that were murdered, wounded or deported there down. It was supposed to be a UN safe haven and yet the UN and the world did nothing to stop the Serbs from massacring innocent people. I think we need more of these kinds of memorials (the kind that show a certain object representing the people that died - like 6 million paper clips for the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust) since most people can't imagine what a large number of dead really means. They should be brought around the world so we can remember how we participated and failed in this act when we did nothing and vow not to let it happen again (and to keep that promise this time.) ^

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/toronto-bosnian-community-to-fill-coffee-cups-to-mark-srebrenica-genocide/article19577422/