11 July marked the 31st anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica in 1995 when 8, 372 Bosnian men and boys were murdered in cold blood by Serbian soldiers. All but one of the victims was Muslim. Many Bosnians were forced to flee from their homeland as the war raged there between 1992 and 1995.
Some of those came to Tyneside and, as one of them once commented, the Bosnian community was well looked after there and fared better than other Bosnian communities across the country.
Now a new exhibition in the Discovery Museum in Newcastle is celebrating the success of the Bosnian community in Tyneside and the great mutual respect between Bosnians and Geordies.
The person behind the exhibition is Smajo Beso and I was able to ask him a few questions about the exhibition and his life on Tyneside having come here from Bosnia as a boy.
The exhibition was officially opened on 10 July, the day before the terrible genocide anniversary.
The exhibition
The exhibition includes information about what happened at Srebrenica and at other times during the war in Bosnia.
There is also a personal element as visitors are told some of the story of Smajo Beso and his family.
There was also mention of the time when miners from Tuzla in what was then Yugoslavia supported striking miners in North East England and how that support was reciprocated ten years later with Workers Aid for Bosnia supporting people in Bosnia during the war.
The event
Meanwhile, Smajo himself talked of the importance of understanding the stories of individuals. Behind the shocking statistics of the number of people killed are real people.
The Bosnian story is part of the story of North East. Each family story is individual, but they are part of the wider story of Bosnians in the North East.
He also gave us a little of his personal story and the stories behind some of the artefacts at the exhibition, including family photos.
Smajo told us of how the photos were saved in Smajo’s school bag as his family escaped from the war in Bosnia in the 1990s.
They include photos of Smajo’s family which were smuggled out.
Smajo also mentioned that there are artefacts at the exhibition about people who supported the Bosnians and the Bosnian community in Newcastle and the North East.
The research is linking into schools’ work about the lessons we have to learn from what happened in Bosnia.
We also heard from Gordon Bacon who did humanitarian work in Bosnia; from Mia Sulic Subramani, a Bosnian whose family came to Newcastle and who now teaches at Benfield School in the city; and from Erin Parker, whose father Tony organised Geordie Aid for Bosnia in the 1990s as part of the Workers Aid for Bosnia.
Mia lost her father in the war, when he was shot and killed in a camp in Bosnia. In the war in Bosnia, many of those killed were buried and then dug and reburied again by Serbian soldiers many times over, to try and hide the evidence of what they had done.
Mia told us that it took 14 years to find her father’s remains.
Appropriately, we finished with moving testimony from students of St Cuthbert’s Catholic High School in west Newcastle, about the ways that they have been taught about the human impact of genocide and its devastating effects on people.
Solidarity between people
There were a number of key themes to this exhibition and event. There was remembrance of what happened at Srebrenica 31 years ago and an emphasis on how behind the statistics were individual lives and individual tragedies.
But perhaps most of all, the theme was remembering the lessons we must learn from what happened in Bosnia and indeed from the great welcome Bosnian people found on Tyneside. As mentioned by both Erin and Mia, the solidarity between the people in the North East and Bosnia is important to remember. We need that solidarity now, with the rise of the divisive far-right and all the hatred they bring.
As Smajo told me, the Bosnia he grew up in as a young boy was not a place of ancient hatreds just waiting to explode in deadly flames. Rather, it was a place where people celebrated each other’s religious holidays and lived in harmony. That is until the men of hate gained power and stirred people up against each other.
If it could happen in Bosnia, it could happen anywhere. Including here.
In conversation with Smajo Beso
- Where were you born and what was life like there?
2. How old were you when you moved to Tyneside?
3. Why did you move from Bosnia?
4. What were your first impressions of Tyneside?
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