Would-be Guardians of Memory: An Association of Camp Inmates of the 1992–95 Bosnian War under Ethnographic Scrutiny

Abstract

In the fall of 2010 a public debate arose on Bosnian war victims’ spokespersons. 1 It was sparked by what some remember as the ‘Angelina case’. Hollywood actress and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Ambassador Angelina Jolie was about to shoot her first movie on the Bosnian war. The press caught wind of the fact that it would be a wartime love story between a Bosnian Muslim woman detained in a rape camp and one of the Serb camp guards. Soon enough, the spokesperson of an association of women victims of wartime rape, Bakira Hase?cić, expressed her outrage with the idea that Angelina Jolie might portray ‘a victim in a rape camp falling in love with her rapist. That’s not only impossible,’ she said, ‘but the idea is insulting’ (Meikle, 2010). She subsequently tried and succeeded in having the film permit withdrawn. In some of the independent Sarajevo media, this move stirred up strong criticism against Bakira Hase?cić. A journalist from Sarajevo weekly Dani harshly criticized the association leader on three main grounds: first, according to her, Bakira Hase?cić had turned her activism as a victim into a professional ‘business’; second, she was exploiting the victims for her own interest and for political manipulation; and third, she was claiming an exclusive right over the interpretation of the victims’ memories of war rape. 2 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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