PRESENT PERFECT

FILIPPO BIANCHI


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There are no citizens in Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to the Constitution there are only the members of the so-called three constituent nations : Bosnians, Serbs and Croats. Ratified by the Peace Agreements of 1995, this principle on the one hand has allowed the end of the war, but on the other hand makes it difficult to get rid of the past and resolve the deep underlying reasons at the origin of the conflict. The recent past affects daily life, relationships, thoughts, and politics. Men and women are in constant dialogue with the present and the places around them, facing their own memory day by day. The ever-present marks of the conflict feed the memories of a past that has blown out the utopia of a Yugoslav nation in one of the bloodiest ethnic clashes of the postwar era. More than sixteen years after the cease-fire, Bosnia-Herzegovina is still a land torn by ethnic and religious divisions, by invisible gaps among people and places. In front of the remains of one of the victims, finally identified, Dragana, an anthropologist at the International Commission on Missing Persons, says : The remains of this body came from three different mass graves, far apart one from another and with no geographical link with the victim . A perfect similarity with the broken Bosnian political and social fabric. What does it mean to be Bosnian? The answer is more difficult today than in the past.

 


Country : Bosnie-Herzégovine

Number of photos : 50