A feature of revolutionary times is when people’s movements
decide to take matters into their own hands and throw up new forms of
democracy. That’s what we are witnessing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where people of
all ages – from teenagers to the very old – are engaging in an experiment in self-government.
The first people’s uprising of 2014 began in Tuzla , north-east Bosnia , an impoverished industrial
city of 200,000 on February 4. The town has an unemployment rate of 55%, the
highest in the country, while youth unemployment runs at 63%.
As the city administration handed in its resignation, a
revolutionary organisational body called the “plenum” made its appearance. The
idea of plenums quickly spread around the country,
as one website explained:
“All over Bosnia, protesters are organising ‘plenums’,
places where people can gather and try to formulate their demands. The
participants are defining their rules, moderating the plenums by themselves,
and, after summing up, sending their demands to cantonal assembles.”
In doing so they are shattering the clichéd image of a
former Yugoslavia
entirely riven by ethnic and religious conflicts. And the plenums revive a
hidden but powerful aspect of former Yugoslavia ’s history, hitherto buried under nationalist
propaganda and image-making. As Mate
Kapović writes:
“The most impressive and symbolic picture of the first few
days of the rebellion was the one depicting a burning government building in
Tuzla, the city where it all began, with the graffiti ‘death to nationalism’
written on it. Since nationalism has long been a favourite refuge of the
country’s political elites, who used it to justify their political and economic
oppression, this was indeed a powerful message.”
The legacy of the Dayton Agreement, imposed by Nato and Bosnia ’s
presidents in December 1995, were, as the campaigning movement Bosanski Kongres
says, “enormous labyrinths of government bureaucracy, with parliaments, prime ministers
and presidents for each and every entity, canton and district”. Consequently,
an impoverished population of under four million people was burdened by
taxation to support a bloated bureaucracy.
Following the February 4 street protests, this dysfunctional
state has gone into meltdown. Prime ministers in the cantons of Bosnia and Herzegovina
handed in their resignations, but not before sending out security forces to
brutally beat up demonstrators.
Given the historic former ties with neighbouring Croatia and Serbia ,
corrupt political elites throughout former Yugoslavia
are terrified that the “Bosnia
revolution” could spread. Solidarity
demonstrations were held in Serbia, for example.
The Balkan spring was heralded three years ago, at the
height of the Arab spring and global occupy movements by Facebook protests. What
has made Bosnia
special– then and now - is that, as Kapović notes, “it was the first time that
openly anti-capitalist messages were displayed in any of the post-Yugoslav
countries”.
Until now, the image projected by the media about
Bosnia-Herzogovina has been dominated by cruel ethnic and religious conflicts
which have undoubtedly shaped its history. It was in Srebrenica that
some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were murdered by Serb forces in July 1995, despite
being under UN protection.
It was the assassination of
Habsburg scion Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo
Plenums, like people’s
assemblies, offer democratic forms of decision-making, ownership and control in
place of top-down, capitalist state bureaucracy. Thus the people of this small
but crucial state can be a real inspiration everywhere.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
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