“Wherever I was I had a nice time, I can’t say, but it’s not mine, I’m stepping on foreign land, I’m in a stranger’s house, I’m…I have a daughter in Tuzla, she has an apartment. She earns her keep. But no matter, I mean I have to…how to say this doctor, because it’s the truth. That’s how the Serbs feel here. Come on, they say, ruin the flowerbeds, they throw them from the terrace, they say she’s a refugee. Where did you get it, where did you find it, where did you steal the money. But I take my grandson to my daughter’s workplace. Not even forty days passed since she started working, I took my grandson to work for her to nurse him and I brought him back home. And she works for a woman, she sews for a paycheck. A tiny [paycheck]. So she fought, worked, worked…and that, that hurts that I’m not on my own [property/land]. And I want to stay here, thank God I do…my kids say mom, while you can live there, you can. When you can’t, we’ll visit every month, we’ll find someone to take care of it, but it’s ours. We’ll never sell it. Not the land, let it be overgrown with forest, mom, it’s ours“
Survivor describes the pain associated with expulsion. even though she can’t return home, her family is dedicated to keep the place
Actor: Srebrenica survivor
Item type: Quote from group interview
Date: feb, 2023
DoJ Researcher: Siri Driessen
DoJ Research project: Back with a mission
Language: English
Original language: Bosnian
Context
Whereas much research in veteran care is characterised by a focus on the individual veteran and is conducted from a clinical perspective, in this study we use an interdisciplinary and relational perspective in which the encounters between veterans, their families and the local Bosnian population take centre stage. The knowledge gained from this will then be used to inform developments in national and international veteran care.
‘Back with a mission. Reconsidering return trips from a relational perspective’ iis an interdisciplinary research project that studies whether and how return trips to mission areas help war veterans, their partners and Bosnian citizens to give meaning to their war experiences.
In early 2021, the Dutch Ministry of Defence announced that it would organise return trips to Srebrenica for Dutchbat III veterans (stationed in Srebrenica during the genocide of July 1995) as a gesture of recognition and care. This project empirically analyses the encounters between Bosnian genocide survivors and veterans. It critically reflects on the possibilities and limitations of these encounters as a means of restoring relations between these different groups. In addition, a comparison is made with return trips to other areas of former UN missions, such as Lebanon.
The project builds on insights gained in an earlier pilot study (2019-2021) on return trips by veterans (which resulted in a report and recommendations for the itinerary of the trips). ‘Back with a mission’ is linked to the Dialogics of Justice research project at the University of Humanistic Studies and is a collaboration with Leiden University Medical Centre.
