WOMEN RECOLLECTING MEMORIES: GENDER DIMENSION

With the inception of the wars in former Yugoslavia, women victims of war rapes became incarnated symbols and national metaphors: Raped Bosnian woman (Croat woman, Albanian woman, Serb woman…) symbolized the “raped” Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo… At the same time, the media started presenting images of sexy young women in military uniforms. Women were constructed as symbols on whose bodies all nationalisms of the region inscribed their state-funding projects and their “thousand years old dreams”. Individual women and feminist groups that did not conform to state orchestrated nationalism were declared traitors and un-feminine.

Women were the victims of ethnic conflicts, but women also played an active role in resisting to war and nationalisms. Immediately after the wars stopped, women’s suffering and sexual war violence upon them disappeared from public memory. Although peace is valued today, women’s resistance to armed conflicts and nationalisms has been erased from collective memory.

Women’s project of reconstructing memories starts from the premise that dealing with the past and memories strongly influences the processes of transitional justice, facing the past, reconciliation, seeking the truth and, inasmuch, creating conditions for stability, democratic development and lasting peace in the region. This cannot be achieved without active participation of women. If for no other reasons, then because women and women’s groups are the bearers of memories about continuous peace building activities.

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Dinka Koričić
 
A beautiful spring day
I walk…I examine a picture of a city in Sestina, bathed by the sun. 
I am going on a camp visit.
What kind of gift will I give the people whom I am visiting today?
Talk.
Today I wish to give the gift of a story to people who know how to tell wonderful stories.
The war estranged them from beautiful things, but remain in memories.
I ponder.  Pictures are words.
Words are pictures.
They are dying.
Pictures are a moment of love with the world around us. 
A moment cast into eternity forever.
I sense time passing. Moments.
I come through the hallway to Pika’s door, a woman from the support group, which during one occasion said that with Daniel’s birth a new life began for her in that torrid war, destruction, exile and the death of her eighteen-year old daughter.
I knock. Pika opens the door as her neighbour is sitting on the bed, holding little Daniel in her arms.
I sit.
We begin our conversation.
Pika’s husband had lost his job and is looking for another through the newspapers. They are talking about Vukovar. Yesterday they watched a video that was taped when they still lived there. In the video they are at a party celebration together with their neighbours, Serbs. All together.
I start the story.
Love does not die, nor do pictures.
I remember…the beautiful hand of the Universe.
The hand of my grandfather.
Holding me in his arms…we are going to a garden.
We approach a large tree full of ripe plums. 
Grandfather picks some plums.
He shows me how to do that.
And I will know. I will know how to pick a plum, large, like the sun is yellow.
I raise my arms high and higher.
I see my fingers, my arm.
I pick my first plum.  The first touch of the sun.
Pika and her husband begin to tell their stories.
From the window of their house, one could see the field.
Prior to four years ago, in the summer, grain fields were spread with thousands of poppy seeds.
I feel fulfilled, a feeling that I did not recognize often.
Fulfilled in receiving and giving, fulfilled in pictures and moments stored in eternity.
 

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These pages are dedicated to women’s memories of resistance to war and nationalisms in the countries of former Yugoslavia, but also to the activities of all women in the world who, in the context of transitional processes, raise their voice against war violence and discrimination.