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Local community analysis

For the local community, the role of the dark sites is highly important not only to preserve their individual memory, but also to make sure that a communal memory will be shaped for the sake of the future generations

Local community analysis

Heritage Preservation

Local community analysis

Wanting to understand how the citizens of Sarajevo view the dark sites and what they expect of them, we conducted several interviews with locals.

Our basic sampling criterion was to cover all the diverse ethnicities that co-exist today in Sarajevo.

In analyzing the data, four major areas were identified:

- Heritage preservation

- Conflict issues

- Interpretation (narrative)

- Management and commercialization

The majority of the citizens of Sarajevo seem to be in favor of the preservation of the War Related Sites of the area and consider these sites as a part of their heritage.

Of course there were also some non-Muslims that refused to see these sites as common heritage or even denied to talk over this subject.

The interviews were based on questions such as:

  • Should the dark sites be preserved or not?

  • Do they promote reconciliation or further conflict?

  • Do you think that the dark sites in Sarajevo are over commercialized?

Policy-Makers Analysis

Management & commercialization

Conflict issues

Interpretation

The citizens’ fear on how tour guides promote the Bosnian dark sites is derived by the luck of a common governmental management

Respondents consider that the state treats as heritage only the religious monuments of the country, implying the political objectives behind that policy.

They wish that, both authorities and tourist agents, promote other aspects of the rich cultural heritage of Bosnia & Herzegovina as well.

Even those strongly in favor of the dark sites preservation admitted that these places provoke further conflict due to the political system of the country and the aggressive propaganda of the nationalistic parties

Policy-Makers Analysis

Interviewee sample

  • Three major areas are of a particular significance for the analysis of the collected information:

- Heritage conservation

- Interpretation (narrative)

- Management

  • The respondents are referred to as “policy-makers” because they shape the relevant heritage preservation, tourism and museum management policies in Canton Sarajevo.

  • The interviews were conducted in two periods: May 2013 (amounting in total to a week) and July 2013 (two weeks) in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Inferential statistics

religious background did not affect:

  • the rate of the overall experience of the visit
  • whether the Tunnel of Hope is a commercialized attraction or not
  • benefits gained (such as importance of human rights and peace)
  • the tendency to recommend the dark sites to others.

So, although motivations and perception may have varied between the two groups, overall visitation experience did not.

Demographic characteristics

Inferential Statistics

Experience and benefits gained

Non-muslims

Muslims

more

less

  • knew enough information about War Acts in the city:

  • information given was sufficient:

  • War Related Sites in Sarajevo are part of the local History:

less

more

Visitor allocation by gender

more

less

Demographic characteristics

Inferential statistics

Tourism analysis

As the War Related Sites in Sarajevo are strongly associated with the Muslim Community of Bosnia, we checked the hypothesis that ethnicity/religion would affect the respondents’ motivations and experience evaluation of their visit

Motivations for visiting:

Non-muslims

Muslims

“educational-historical interest”

“personal connection to death/tragedy sites”

“remembrance”

"guilt"

Visitor allocation by age-groups

Demographic characteristics

Experience and benefits gained

Visitor allocation by level of education

Level of agreement whether the “Tunnel of Hope” is a commercialized touristic site

Demographic characteristics

Experience and benefits gained

  • Record the point of view of tourists visiting the dark sites in the area.
  • Who these people were, in terms of origin, age and educational background.
  • Motivation for visiting the war related sites in Bosnia.
  • Benefits gained from their visit
  • Examine if they had a positive or negative experience during their visit

Visitor allocation by nationality

Rate of the overall experience visiting War connected Sites in Sarajevo

Demographic characteristics

Experience and benefits gained

Reasons for traveling to Sarajevo

Level of agreement whether visitors would recommend visiting War Connected sites

Motivations for visiting

Experience and benefits gained

Comparative chart of the significance level of possible motivations for visiting dark sites in Sarajevo

Level of agreement whether War Connected Sites in Sarajevo are part of local History

Dark tourism in Sarajevo

Dark tours offered in Sarajevo by tourist agencies

Dark sites associated with the 1992-95 war:

• The Library – Old Town Hall: This Austro-Hungarian building of 1894, had served as a Library since 1948. During the Sarajevo siege shells and troops destroyed 90% of the library's wealth and almost the entire of the building

Library - July 2013

Library - February 1996

Experience and benefits gained

Dark tourism in Sarajevo

The Sarajevo Roses: a series of bombshell marks in the streets of the city, filled with red resin by artists after the war

Level of agreement whether information given was sufficient

Level of knowledge acquired visiting War Connected Sites

  • There has been a steadily increasing trend of incoming tourism in the Canton Sarajevo area since 2002.

  • Yearly increase rates vary between 7.2 and 20.9%

Dark tourism in Sarajevo

Conclusions

Dark tourism in Sarajevo

Markale Market: the main open air marketplace in central Sarajevo where a grenade killed 68 people in 1994

Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina: one of the two permanent thematic exhibitions of the museum is named “Besieged Sarajevo” and narrates how the citizens survived during the horrific times of the war and how they defended their city. The museum treasures various objects that were produced and used during the time of the siege

'Dark Tourism', means visiting sites or buildings where death, disasters or atrocities took place; “as the act of travel to sites associated with death, suffering and the seemingly macabre”

Dark tourism in Sarajevo

The Tunnel of Hope: the tunnel that connected the besieged Sarajevo with Bosnian free territories during the siege

Trebević: Mountain Trebević, known from the 1984 Winter Olympics, was used as a military base as it offered a clear view of the city

Post War Bosnia and Herzegovina

  • The urgency to preserve the 1992-95 sites shows that the Bosnian complex heritage care system, with the decentralized institutions is a good option.
  • Interpretation and narrative though shouldn't be left in the hand of site managers and tour agents, but should be state driven.
  • As Dark Tourism is currently the main tourism motivation in Sarajevo, it should be used not only for its economic benefits but also as a promotion of social balance and bringing communities together.
  • Collective memory and identity can be preserved better within a museum environment than in the hands of media and politicians, and the effort of the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be empowered.

Post War Bosnia and Herzegovina

Dark tourism in Sarajevo

Sniper Alley: the main wide commercial road of the newer part of Sarajevo, offering enough space to snipers to locate their targets

Cemetery Kovači: the cemetery of civilians killed during the siege, where also the tomb of the first Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegović is located

The Latest War of 1992-95

New heritage

  • Recognized as an independent country in 1992

  • 1992-95 war left behind around 97.000 casualties

  • Ethnic cleansing, constant shelling and destruction of the towns and villages, the Srebrenica genocide, the siege of Sarajevo, humanitarian crises and the conflict among all ethnic groups fighting each other, are the most used phrases depicting the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina

  • The Dayton Agreement, signed in December 1995, brought peace in the country

  • Along with the destruction of heritage that the war has brought, the reverse process of creating the new heritage took place

  • The reconstruction and managing of these new sites is particularly delicate to the extent that they produce a statement about the conflict itself

The siege of Sarajevo

Legal framework

  • From 2 May 1992 Sarajevo was under the siege

  • The Serbian – Yugoslav army forces surrounded the city and blocked all connections

  • Sarajevo was under the constant shelling and sniper fire
  • The whole heritage system in Bosnia and Herzegovina is characterised with overlapping of competences and responsibilities

  • Heritage-related matters are disseminated in a variety of laws

  • In this situation heritage is in the centre of disagreements on the base of ethnic preferences, not only among state institutions, but also at the lower administrative level

Legal framework

The siege of Sarajevo

  • The siege of Sarajevo lasted almost four years (precisely 3 years, 10 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days)

  • The human toll of the siege was enormous with 11,541 persons having lost their lives, among whom more than 1,500 children

  • Around 56,000 persons were injured

Legal framework

The siege of Sarajevo

Destruction of the cultural heritage in the 1992-95 war in numbers

Destruction of the cultural heritage in the 1992-95 war

Almost 20 years ago, the Dayton Agreement brought peace to Bosnia and Herzegovina, but it pointed strongly to the direction of partition creating doubts about its future as a united country.

  • 100,000 refugees were estimated to have fled Sarajevo

  • Some 60 percent of the residential buildings in the city were destroyed

  • The official end of the Sarajevo siege was on 29 February 1996

  • More than one thousand of Bosnia's mosques, hundreds of Catholic churches and a number of Orthodox monasteries and churches as well as libraries, archives and museums were destroyed

  • The largest single incident of book burning in modern history', destroyed the majority of estimated 1.5 million volumes in Bosnia's National Library in Sarajevo

  • “A cultural catastrophe in the heart of Europe”

  • “The word ethnic cleansing is now in fashion, but it goes hand in hand with another kind of cleansing - cultural cleansing”

The Sarajevo Siege Dark Heritage: Protection, Interpretation, and Tourism issues

Marija Kamber

Theofanis Karafotias

Theodora Tsitoura

Thank you for your attention

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