Two days ago we went to a DNA identification center in Sanski Most, the biggest center in the region for exhuming mass graves, reconstructing skeletons, and matching the found bodies with a DNA database of families searching for loved ones. There were about 10 newly pieced together skeletons lying on the floor of the warehouse of bodies when we walked in and a family was coming to visit the center, to see the newly exhumed people for the first time.
Talking to the manager of the DNA project was scientific, we talked about budgets, the pioneering technology that allows for DNA matching, and it all seemed fairly logical, a scientific lecture. But then the family agreed to speak with us and this man, who has been living in Austria since the war, walked up and down the line of bodies pointing out his little brother, his cousin, his neighbors. One of the DNA workers came over to show the bullet hole in the skull of his eight-year old neighbor.
Most of the meetings that we attend paint a bleak picture of the future of Bosnia, they talk about the economic decline, the 43% unemployment, the still segregated schools 15 years after the end of the war, but those situations have a little bit of hope. That's why we study this country, to figure out how to rise above the hardship and to make the seemingly inevitably bleak future, not quite so tragic, but the DNA center was a whole other animal. The DNA center for me was a warehouse full of hopelessness. These people put in a huge amount of man hours, money, and energy to identify each body, but they can never bring that person back. Some families may get an ounce of closure, but then there are the racks and racks of skeletons in the store room who can't be identified because families refuse to donate blood samples for matching. They want to hold on to the believe, still almost two decades later, that their loved one somehow escaped, somehow avoided these horrors and will show up again, one day, alive.
After stopping at the DNA center we had lunch at an NGO in Kozarec who brought us into town to show us the memorial at the town's center that she helped to construct. It was so incredible, definitely the memorial full of the most hope of any we have seen so far. The women talked about how much pain came from the war and from the cleansing, so when we remember these people, she said, when we honor their lives, we must do so with light and with hope.
I'm running out of time, leaving for Mostar in about 15 minutes, so I will continue and post photos later.
No comments:
Post a Comment