AEGEE-Tuzla – The AEGEEan – AEGEE's online magazine – AEGEE-Europe ../../.. AEGEE's Online Magazine Mon, 01 Dec 2014 04:11:57 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.7 ../../../wp-content/uploads/cropped-The-AEGEEan_logo-FBprofile-32x32.png AEGEE-Tuzla – The AEGEEan – AEGEE's online magazine – AEGEE-Europe ../../.. 32 32 Summer University Kragujevac, Belgrade, Tuzla, Sarajevo 2014 ../../../2014/12/03/summer-university-kragujevac-belgrade-tuzla-sarajevo-2014/ Wed, 03 Dec 2014 15:11:41 +0000 ../../../?p=24996 It’s not easy to write a summary about these two weeks. It was such a perfect holiday that I really do not know where to start. It started in Kragujevac with Milos, Tomo, Dragan, Vanja, Ivana, Danica, Nikolija, Milos, Andela, Snezana and a lot of other organizers and friends. After the four days in Kragujevac, we went to Belgrade. A… Read more →

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It’s not easy to write a summary about these two weeks. It was such a perfect holiday that I really do not know where to start.

It started in Kragujevac with Milos, Tomo, Dragan, Vanja, Ivana, Danica, Nikolija, Milos, Andela, Snezana and a lot of other organizers and friends. After the four days in Kragujevac, we went to Belgrade. A participant arrived at the hostel, Elisa Chieregato. She was late because of her exams. So everybody was in the common room of the hostel, except Elisa. I found her in a room where she was sitting on a bed, and I asked „Why don’t you come out and drink with us?”, and she said „Of course I will, but it is so strange. You look like a family, I mean, only four days passed and it seems you have known each other for years”.

I can remeber the lighter, and when we refilled it, instead of buying a new one for the half price, and the Christmas lights all over Bosnia. Then we sang a„Geburtstags” song to Sophie Consuela in Sarajevo and the police came and said „It’s not allowed to sing in the street”.  We had the best parties ever in Belgrade, on the boat and in Klub Studenata Tehnike. At the same time a taxidriver got lost with the spanish participants and they tried to give him  directions in Italian. I can remember our first treasure hunting in Kragujevac, the long walks until we finally found the memory park. After three hot days we went to Jezero lakes where we could enjoy the first thunderstorm, but everybody swam to the other side of the lake anyways.  I remember Daniel and his selfies and „bothies”as well as many group pictures everywhere. Everyone loved the serbian-bosnian „5 minutes” , which is minimum half an hour. I can remember the five-hour-long bus ride from the mountains to Sarajevo, and it was one of the best parties on the bus because we did not want to exclude any nationalites, so we had to drink rakia, wine, jägermeister, beer…while listening to  90’s music. We arrived to Sarajevo with the loud music, and met the organizers from Sarajevo. We went to a kafana every night, we broke glasses, sung about the bridge in Sarajevo and tried every single kind of rakia…I could write pages and pages full with memories.

I do not think we could have had it much better, the whole SU was so perfect thanks to the organizers. They did not just organize but they did everything from their whole heart. They were with us, ate a lot of ajvar with us, they drank a lot of rakia with us, they showed us what a kafana is, how to dance „kolo” in the middle of the night in the rain, how to love every single lonely jackey (dog), how to really relax while smoking sisha, how to make a houseparty in Sarajevo, how to visit Mostar under umbrellas, how to sing a traditional bosnian song about love and how to say volim te, hvala, ziveji.

For me, before this summer, Serbia and Bosnia were just two countries, but I met a lot of people, whom I really love. I know it is almost impossible to get the whole group together again, but some of us will meet again somewhere in this lovely Europe. Thank you guys. Thanks to Milos for making  the whole, solving all of our problems we had and for walking under the umbrella in Mostar hand in hand, thanks to Tomo for organizing everything and for the dance we had in Belgrade, thanks to Ivana for cooking hungarian meals on the European Night together. Thanks to Vanja for crazy nights in Sarajevo,thanks to Thomas for being the soul of the group, thanks to Elisa and Roxi for the long converstions we had. Thanks to Jakub for spending a lot  of time together in the bathroom and on the dancefloor. And thanks to everybody for everything. This was the best Summer University ever.

 

Written by Zsófia Anna Tóth, AEGEE-Budapest

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Tuzla Into The Problematique ../../../2014/02/27/tuzla-into-the-problematique/ Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:11:21 +0000 ../../../?p=21738 Protests… they came out of the blue. Tuzla has always been a multiethnic city, where Bosniaks, Croatians and Serbs live, hang out, work and contribute to society together in both good and bad times. The war has ravaged everything behind, sowing hunger, misery and war profiteers nationwide. And the war profiteers could have hardly waited to exploit the suffering people.… Read more →

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Protests… they came out of the blue. Tuzla has always been a multiethnic city, where Bosniaks, Croatians and Serbs live, hang out, work and contribute to society together in both good and bad times.

The war has ravaged everything behind, sowing hunger, misery and war profiteers nationwide. And the war profiteers could have hardly waited to exploit the suffering people. Knowing that those people would do everything for a crust of bread to feed their families, they would’ve paid them minimum wage of salary. At the end, despair has reached its peak and workers haven’t received their salaries at all. Thousands of families have been left without their basic income, with an empty stomach, and without a coin in their pockets. Also, the children of those workers have been left without books and basic school supplies, without money to pay their college. Even the education has become a privilege of „the rich“. Those people have been living from dawn until dusk, for twenty years, barely making ends meet, while telling their children: „Dad would buy it son, but we don’t have enough money“. You can find those people at every corner of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not just in Tuzla. Rage, anger, despair, dissatisfaction and envy have been emerging in those children.

The situation culminated on that fatal date of February 6th 2014. The crowd occupied the building of Tuzla Canton government shouting „Thieves, thieves!“. Even before that people gathered in front of that building, being hungry, thirsty and frozen, holding banners in their hands. But, it looked like the building was deaf to those people, while the prime minister and many other ministers were sneering, watching them through the window, reclining in a comfortable chair in their warm offices.

If you ask us, the real protests began a day before, on February 5th 2014. We still remember the panic in the streets, which then gripped all. People were talking about fire on the street, boys in blood, blocked traffic and police being everywhere. That morning we had a chance to see the same group of people protesting in front of that „deaf building“ as every Wednesday. We couldn’t even imagine that on the same afternoon everything would turn into a general chaos, streets filled with people and youth, who joined the dissatisfied workers, ready to rumble the police, who appeared out of nowhere. From far away you could also see an old granny sitting on a pedestrian crossing. She died a day after, when cops took her away from that place by force. She sacrificed the last day of her life for a better tomorrow, for a hope that even the youth in this country can expect better days. No man could look at these events indifferently. So the next day, Tuzla became a warfare between cops and soldiers armed with batons and tear gas and dissatisfied crowds of workers, pensioner, thousands of unemployed people and students.

The crowd started throwing stones at the building, setting  car tires on fire and throwing Molotov cocktails shouting „Thieves, get out!“. The army cruelly bated and dispersed those people with tear gas – those same people, thanks to whom they have salaries. That day the prime minister Čaušević ordered to police and army not to slacken – „to hit the scum from all sides“. And they listened to him. On the same day, they started chasing students, searching student’s dorms, invading colleges and the nearby shopping mall „Omega“, not hesitating to detain them, using batons and tear gases. The main roads at the entrance of the city, northern and southern highway, were completely blocked. Some citizens were asking themselves if all that chaos was actually necessary, if people exaggerated a little bit, why is there so much violence and why this couldn’t be just a peaceful protest. The answer is simple:  because there was no effect. The warfare occurred on the streets, conflicts between police and many students became aggressive and windows at a few colleges were broken, while the youth was trying to escape from the soulless police. In the evening, the situation calmed down a little bit, but street wars between police and youth continued.

News about events in Tuzla circulated the country, as well as the whole region, and it was said on journal that classes in schools won’t be held the next day, neither the activities on colleges, for the student’s security, as many of them were hurt, while getting back home that day. And then fake news appeared on the Internet, saying that protesters were just plain thieves, who robbed a few shops, apartments and a shopping mall that night. They wanted to make the public think that only that kind of people take part in protests. And who wanted to create such an opinion, we’ll let you to think about that. Besides that they couldn’t prevent the next day’s event which was agreed on by thousands people from all over the B&H on social networks and in secret calls.

And so the revolution has begun. Many people are calling it the „Bosnian spring“. It started in Tuzla, a city of pride we would rather say, than a city of shame, but of course not everybody thinks the same. Some people think that this is just an act of vandalism of voracious youth, hooligans and idlers, who wanted others to feel their misery and poverty; while some are completely supporting them, considering that nothing would be done with civilized protests, nobody from our government would agree to negotiate and the silence would be kept, as well as passivity of citizens. However, it was a matter of time until the day would come when the youth will wake up from their tucked reality, when the thousands of unemployed people with a degree in their hands will go on the streets, about thousands of pensioners with a retirement so low that it is a shame for a country in Europe, and about thousands of unpaid workers. Revolution from Tuzla is now spreading in other cities, now that they have realized that everything is possible and all it takes is just joined forces.

The goals

“He who sows hunger, reaps anger.” (graffiti on Sarajevo government building)

From the start protesters have been keen on changing the position in which they were put. Nevertheless as the protests escalated, the straightforward demands were needed more than ever. Solutions to the country’s long-lasting problems seem to have been defined. On February 7th, they created six major goals for the citizens and demands for a (yet to be established) government:

1) Maintaining public order and peace in cooperation with citizens.

2) The establishment of a technical government, composed of expert, non-political, uncompromised members.

3) Solving all questions related to the privatization of the firms Dita, Polihem, Poliolhem, Gumara and Konjuh.

4) Equal pay for government representatives and workers in the public and private sectors.

5) Eliminating additional payments to government representatives, in addition to their income (as a result of their participation in commissions, committees and other bodies, as well as other irrational and unjustified forms of compensation beyond those that all employees have a right to).

6) Eliminating salaries for ministers and eventually other state employees after the termination of their mandates.

However, the most monumental achievements of all would be to unify the cantons (10 at the moment) of the Federation, which would undoubtedly speed up our country’s bureaucracy. This declaration was followed by the fundamentally equal ones in other cantons that took part in the protests.

 The aftermath

After the protests many people asked themselves what we have achieved and whether we have achieved anything? The government of Tuzla Canton has resigned, many prime ministers across the country have submitted their resignations. Many demands that the demonstrators asked for have been met and the rest are going to be fulfilled one by one. The protesters in all the cities asked for the release of those who were detained during the protest and indeed one by one they were set free. So the answer to the question of what we have achieved, is that we have achieved a lot, and that in the future we will achieve much more, because unlike any other protest these demands have been complied with. The government’s crown is removed. Until now people were afraid of their government and now, finally, after many years this government  is afraid of its people.

We have witnessed many protests in this country – peaceful and non-violent  protests.We all witnessed how these protests ended. The government never met a single request. In these three days we can say that we have achieved a lot more than in the past 20 years. We are proud of this nation. Now all there is to do is to be patient and stand up for ourselves, stay strong. A revolution has happened to this country. People have raised their voice and the government had no choice but to listen to the people and meet their demands.

Written by Adisa Zahirović, Amina Jahić & Zerina Suljagić, AEGEE-Tuzla

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