Title: Morire per Sarajevo
Photographer(s): Danilo Krstanović, Milomir Kovačević
Writer(s): Piero del Giudice
Designer(s): Milena Zagaria
Publisher(s): Edizioni E, Trieste, Italy
Year: 1994
Print run:
Language(s): Italian
Pages: 112
Size: 22 x 29 cm
Binding: Softcover
Edition:
Print: Litografia Ricci, Trieste, Italy
Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: Bosnia-Herzegovina,1991
ISBN: 9788885326118
In the spring of 1992, the first clashes also occurred in Bosnia Herzegovina. This led to opposition from the citizens of Sarajevo, who decided to take action. On 5 April 1992, in response to the ongoing war events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 100,000 people of all nationalities took part in a peace rally in Sarajevo. The aim was to make the coalition of the three main nationalist parties (Democratic Action Party, Croat Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serb Democratic Party) realize that Sarajevo and Bosnia could live together in harmony. This approach was hindered by the political forces that were guided by an ethnocentric view, i.e. a state with only one ethnic group, therefore impossible to realise as Bosnia did not have a main one. On that day, the demonstrators also protested to continue calling themselves the 'most Yugoslav republic of all', but it was all in vain.
Serb snipers in the iconic Holiday Inn hotel under the control of the Serbian Democratic Party in the heart of Sarajevo opened fire on the crowd, killing six people and wounding many others, including two women, Suada Dilberović and Olga Sučić, who were in the front row of the demonstration on the Vrbanja bridge at the time. The bridge on which they were killed was later renamed in their honour. Six Serbian snipers were arrested, but were later exchanged as prisoners of war when the Serbs threatened to kill the commander of the Bosnian police academy captured the previous day. The event was the beginning of the longest siege ever, 44 months that dramatically marked the history of Bosnia.