The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

At a few places in Croatia, several clergymen and police were able to
take successful action. By soothing persuasion and conversations with
excited people, they were able over the long-term to prevent the outbreak
of violence in their areas of influence. The weapons were piled in
front of the altars.
The nationalistic warmongers did not like such actions; indeed, they had
several of these courageous people murdered – in some cases together
with their families. The murders were even staged, and used with the
persuasiveness of television images to split the population by nationality.
The uniformized media disseminated hate propaganda; the symbols of
the partisans, which stood for unity and solidarity, were replaced by nationalistic
symbols which additionally reinforced fear and panic.
The only major demonstrations against the war took place in April 1992
in Sarajevo. Up until then, the people had watched the war rage in Slovenia
and then in Croatia. They couldn’t believe that it would come to
their city as well, where so many nationalities live together in peace.
However, once the city had been surrounded by the Serbian paramilitary
units and the Yugoslav People’s Army, and was being shelled from the
surrounding mountains, several hundred thousand people spontaneously
took to the streets. They occupied the parliament and proclaimed
a citizens’ parliament that was to preserve peace. Thousands of people
who had come from other places to take part were prevented by roadblocks
from entering Sarajevo. When eight snipers fired at the demon -
stration from a building, the demonstrators ran away in panic; several
people were killed. The TV programme JUTEL, which up until that time
had reported in a non-nationalistic manner and had provided objective
information for the citizens, was then closed down forever in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, too – as it had been a year earlier in other parts of the country,
after the nationalists had won the elections.
Peace organizations which arose during the war
In spite of years of siege, hunger, death and deprivation, peace organizations
arose during the war with international support, several of which
are mentioned below:
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