On April 5, 1992, the radicals of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) of the psychiatrist, armed to the teeth with the remains of the former Yugoslav army, began the siege over Sarajevo. It did not end until February 29, 1996. It was the most prolonged fence to a city in the history of modern war, 1,425 days. “Bombardé them until they are on the verge of madness,” ordered General Serbobosnio Ratko Mladic, by encouraging one of the first artillery attacks against the city, at the beginning of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
There were years of massive and indiscriminate destruction, ethnic cleaning and hate, mortars, grenades and bursts of snipers, those that baptized even an avenue in which they sowed the terror of civilians. Sarajevo thus became a martyr city, the symbol of the destruction of war, not of his, but of the world, especially in Europe, because Sarajevo was close, white, western, because they burned their shops, their schools, their parks or its libraries, so similar. 350,000 people trapped for almost four years, 10,000 dead (1,600 children), 50,000 wounded (15,000 mutilated), killed in the markets and queues of the PAN, in schools and parks with snow dolls, in the crowded basements where they tried to protect themselves.
Say Sarajevo is to say horror and fear and hunger and survival and mutilation and death. Well, that, just that, is what the president of the Community of Madrid, the popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso, did when in the capital of Spain last Sunday. “Many of the tourists who yesterday had to run through the streets of Madrid giving an image of a Sarajevo at war probably today at the airport have met the kilometer and even some will have lost their planes due to the disastrous management that the government also does at the airport,” he complained in Esradio.
The social networks were immediate, mostly censoring the incomprehensible similarity. One of the authorized voices, by knowledge of the land, who joined the debate was that of, writer, academic and war reporter for more than 20 years. One of your reference books, Comanche territoryit is fair in Bosnia, full of places “where instinct says that you stop the car and give a half.” “I see that Díaz Ayuso @idiazayuso has very little idea of what Sarajevo was. The Spanish language is very well provided with adequate terms, so it should be more careful with the hyperboles. More than anything, out of respect for the Sarajevos and Gazas of real,” wrote the Cartagena author in X.
Also connoisseur of Sarajevo and even more blunt than Pérez-Reverte was Gervasio Sánchez. The photographer and independent journalist, specialized in armed conflicts, resorted to the same social network to replicate Ayuso, in a concise and clarifying way. “Honestly, I think they don’t look at anything and for this I will send you a chain of photographs taken during that fence,” he wrote. The force was in his images, which he himself took in Sarajevo (The fence It is called one of his most applauded books), a chain of messages in which there are bloodied, dead or dying civilians, urgently transferred, common graves, shattered cars and even a baby. His name was Nalena, he died at 82 days of life after a mortar fell into his crib.
Sanchez barely gave an example of his work in those years but with those buttons X turned on. Is that what was seen in the protests in Madrid? Is one situation comparable and the other? The proportive demonstrations, against the siege of Israel, which already killed more than 65,000 people, as confirmed by the Central Government delegation in Madrid. “Except for specific moments, the protest was peaceful,” says Francisco Martín.
In conversation with El HuffPostthe Cordoba reporter is tremendously concerned, initially, for the “instrumentalization” of matters of all kinds by the political class, in general. “We are at a historical moment in which most of our politicians – the Spaniards have – he has no idea or analytical abilities and automatically say anything that occurs to them, at a given time, without knowing or where their advisors are.” In that context, it appears, as in this case, the president of the Community of Madrid, “trying to compare the incomparable.” “What surprised me is why I did not compare it with Gaza, which is in the front line of the information,” he says.
A man in the cemetery of the Lions of Sarajevo cries the death of a relative, in 1992.
He claims a serious debate on the media so that politicians do not determine the agenda and even laments that the “laughible” comments of the president of the PP of Madrid generate so many comments, starting with their own, reflects. But the situation burned in his fingers. “Obviously, there is no relationship between specific incidents and a siege that lasted more than a thousand days, in a city blocked in the heart of the backyard of Maastricht Europe, at times also when there was talk of the United Europe,” he values.
“Obviously, there is no relationship between specific incidents and a fence that lasted more than a thousand days, in a city blocked in the heart of the backyard of Europe”
The great powers, remembers who immortalized as nobody, “they were already up to bitumen for cynicism and total hypocrisy by not preventing what was happening in the Balkans in those years. In 94 the tragedy of Ruanda was also occurring and they did nothing, and right now in Gaza we are also seeing what the Europeans do, in general,” denounces. At 66, with more than 40 covering armed conflicts -some 25 -acknowledges that what he sees in each conflict is “overcome” with the next, so his hope is little in which the international community changes. In the strip it was already in 1982. There was no Hamas. Much what your eyes have seen.
“You find people who behave with very little political professionalism, with very little respect for the victims, and who end up falling into the temptation to find a silly head
“How do you clarify all this with people who do not know half of half, who has never reflected on a conflict?” He asks, returning to the example of Ayuso but extrapolating him to wars today. “You are people who, in some way, behave, from my point of view, with very little political professionalism, with very little respect for the victims, and who in the end end up falling into the temptation to find a silly headline that ends up turning around,” he adds. In her opinion, the popular “has impacted very negatively” this controversy, and even the leader of her party, “has gone into collision” in part with her.
Gervasio Sánchez, in the exhibition “Life activists”, at the International Center for Photography and Cinema, on December 21, 2023 in Madrid.
But this informant, as always in his career, has criticism for all, such as the president of the Government, “he remembers that we cannot now go to Eurovision, when in May of this year we went, although we had 18 months of war and it was also a good time to present a boycott to the competition, with almost 50,000 dead that there were already then.” “Now it turns out that within its political and media agenda Eurovision appears as an important issue. Another clear case of political instrumentalization of the issues,” he hurts. And maintaining relations with Israel, remember, “unacceptable”.
Not only does it happen in Spain, because he also criticizes that he “incomparable” is denounced the attitude about Israel of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, when there was not the same standard with his predecessor, Joe Biden. “He did exactly the same,” he insists.
“Most European citizens, including the Spaniards, live looking at the navel. If their daily life and well -being are not altered, they are not automatically activated”
Sánchez explains that every time he has gone to an armed conflict, he has tried that his images or his radio chronicles or his texts “serve to improve the perception of what war is between citizens”, but at this point in his career, “years ago” that is no longer in what “believes.” “I have concluded that most European citizens, including the Spaniards, live looking at the navel. If their daily life and well -being are not altered, they are not automatically activated. If there is no party behind, it is not activated either,” he says, recalling in 2003 the massive protests for the Iraq war, which are now not reproduced by Gaza or Ukraine.
In that context, the work of journalists “has failed” for doing “follow -up” of political struggles, without “foreground” the challenge of improving the perception of citizens of the world in which they live, but the agenda of others. It has passed now, again, and they will be repeated. “I see hope,” he concludes.
