Blog: A shocking but rewarding week in Bosnia

It has been 30 years since the Srebrenica Genocide, in which more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed during the Bosnian War. To mark this anniversary, Islamic Relief has launched a campaign to share survivors’ stories and look at how we have supported families in the years since.

Editorial Communications Coordinator Matthew Gibbs was part of a team that visited Bosnia and Herzegovina earlier this year. In this blog he shares his experience of meeting and interviewing survivors of the conflict.

The first thing you should know about Bosnia and Herzegovina is how beautiful a country it is.

It is not the brutalist Soviet-esque landscape I was ignorantly expecting, but a gorgeously forested country, with scenic valleys and spectacular sunsets.

The second thing you should know about Bosnia is that the Bosnian War is everywhere. It is soaked into everything. It’s unavoidable.

In a week in which I heard more shocking things than I could count, perhaps the moment that shocked me the most was, when driving along the Drina – the valley and river that separates Bosnia and Serbia – I commented to our Bosnian colleague how beautiful it was.

He replied, “oh yes, very beautiful. Of course, that is where hundreds of bodies were dumped during the war.”

So, yes, the war is everywhere.

And it never stopped being shocking, and the closer we got the city of Srebrenica and the site where the massacres took place, the more I felt it.

I did my best to prepare for the week. Perhaps naively, I watched documentaries and read books about a conflict I previously didn’t know much about.

But nothing really prepares you for seeing someone’s face as they describe how their father, their uncles, their brothers were forcibly taken away and murdered. Like a shadow crossing the sun, their faces would drop, and the mood would turn solemn.

We heard details of concentration camps, of torture and of how people’s lives have never been the same since. Some details were so brutal and appalling that we were not able to include them in the articles and videos we produced.

The scale of the conflict and the brutality of the crimes committed remain horrifying even 30 years later.

Seeing humanitarian work firsthand

This was my first time travelling to the field with Islamic Relief, and my first time seeing the results of humanitarian work up close.

Witnessing firsthand the genuine relationships formed between our colleagues and the communities they support in Bosnia was heartwarming. There is real warmth and meaning in everything our colleagues do through Islamic Relief’s programmes and projects.

And that was reflected by every person we visited. Everywhere we went and every house we visited, we were greeted with cake and coffee. Throughout my week in Bosnia, I learned that it is downright rude to say no when someone invites you into their home and offers you food.

Seeing the generosity and kindness of the Bosnian people only made hearing about their experiences during the war and the events of the genocide, that little bit worse.

It is vital to remember

My week in Bosnia was so rewarding that it turned this campaign into a passion project for me.

So many of the experiences — visiting the memorial centre at Potocari, the genocide museum in Sarajevo, meeting survivors — have stayed with me and will stay with me for a long time.

I hope that our campaign on the SrebrenicaGenocide does justice to the survivors who so bravely shared their stories with us, and also sufficiently spotlights the amazing work our colleagues do in Bosnia.

When you look around the world and see some of the events taking place — Israel’s horrific destruction of Gaza and the crippling famine in Sudan to name just 2 — remembering the events of Srebrenica feels ever more important.

We owe it to those cruelly and senselessly murdered in the Srebrenica Genocide, and the survivors that are struggling to piece their lives back together in the wake of these horrors, to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again.

To learn more about the Srebrenica Genocide, the events of the Bosnian War and how Islamic Relief have stood by the side of vulnerable Bosnians for 30 years, please read the full collection of stories here.