Society of the Non-existent

"It is better that your child is born deformed than in a mixed marriage. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but imagine what it means for a child and his physical and psychological development when he is subject to everyday pressure on the street, in the neighborhood and at school just because he doesn't belong to any nation, which means that he does not belong to these crazy times." This is what Ivana, a Croat married to a Serb and the mother of two children, told us bitterly in Zenica. She then added how her little son recently came home from school and, visibly upset, asked: "Mom, am I a Serb, a Croat or a Ljiljan (Muslim)?"

According to incomplete figures, at the beginning of the war there were about six thousand couples in Zenica in so-called mixed marriages; the largest number were intellectuals or professionals, but there were also members of other social groups to a lesser extent.

Their peaceful family lives became dramas with the onset of the war. Humanitarian organizations were closed off to them and around 10,000 of their children, while the political roll call and anathemization of these people began. "Caritas", "Merhamet" and "Dobrotvor" simply will not hear about the children and members of mixed marriages. This was the basic reason for the establishment of the first and only Association of Mixed Marriages in Bosnia-Herzegovina to date during the time of greatest hunger in Zenica, when a kilogram of flour reached a price of 30 DEM. This organization was formed as a humanitarian organization and registered as an association of citizens, which means that it does not have the right to engage in political activities. There were 4500 families at the beginning, but since 800 families have left the city there are now 3700. Probably out of consideration for the international public, the foundation of this association met with neither blessing nor the opposition of the domestic political structure; it was allowed to exist and work and is exclusively concerned with the survival of its members. They do not receive any aid from domestic institutions and receive their most regular and most abundant aid from the German humanitarian organization "Hulfe fur kinder", France's "Ekvilibry" and an Islamic organization that wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. According to the Association's president Sonja Kesko and vice-president Antonija Himbic, "All of our activity revolves around the gathering and distribution of humanitarian aid. We have done as much as we could to save our members from hunger in the most difficult of conditions."

They are silent about the pressures that they are subject to and do not even attempt to inform the domestic or international public about this. The condemnations of mixed marriages that come from Zenica's imam and some passionate nationalist newspapers, as well as the harassment that they encounter at work and in everyday life, make life very difficult. "We are simply nobody's people. We belong neither here nor in exile. We feel as if we are without roots and without ground under our feet", add Sonja and Antonija.

But, even such people obviously bother some people in Zenica. With who knows whose approval, Sejto Cehovic and Fatima Damjanovic began gathering signatures on a petition opposing the Association's work. 470 signatures were gathered and then their activity stopped. This was probably the first sign of warning that their activity was undesirable. The presence of fear at the Association is confirmed by the fact that there are almost no men among its leaders, especially prominent people whose voice would be better heard and respected in this environment. The time of pressures on mixed marriages is obviously still present and Zenica's Association of Mixed Marriages can mark its only success in the fact that it exists and that it is occasionally able to give its members some flour, powdered milk or stale crackers.

But life continues in even such brutal conditions. It is comforting to hear that, despite all of the media, political and religious pressures, mixed marriages still occur in Zenica. However, unlike Tuzla, where the percentage of mixed marriages is now higher than the 25 percent before the war, that percentage in Zenica has fallen significantly, just as in Sarajevo, but remains more than negligible.

Unfortunately, politics has even reached the most intimate human right - the freedom of choice of one's life partner. Those who enter mixed marriages despite all of this are aware of longlasting risk, while an association such as that in Zenica is powerless to change anything for the better.