Dert

The Insieme cooperative was founded in 2003 on the west bank of the Drina on the Bosnia Herzegovia-Serbia border, a few kilometers from Srebrenica. The bloody war that hit the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s left the area with more than 100,000 dead, thousands of missing, more than two million refugees and an economy and infrastructure in tatters. As a result of “ethnic cleaning,” the conflict provoked a profound change in the demographic structure of the population. The area around Bratunac was the theatre of very heavy fighting and many families sought refuge in the town of Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave in an area with an Orthodox Christian Serbian majority which the United Nations had declared a “safe area.” On July 11 1995 the Bosnian Serb army violated the area, entered the town and systemically massacred Muslim men, the young and the elderly included. The women and children who survived were transferred to refugee camps. The scale of the massacre, with an estimated toll of more than 8,000 victims, was unprecedented. It was the first genocide recognized in Europe since the Second World War.

Mario Boccia, the photo-journalist who reported on and documented the conflict in the Balkans right from the start, is bound by a deep, sympathetic friendship with Rada and Skender, respectively president and director of the cooperative, which gathers berry fruits and processes them into juices and jams. The wild blueberries that go into these organic products are picked in summer near Bratunac and in Central Bosnia. Many would describe the more than 500 members of the cooperative, for the most part women, as being of different ethnic groups but they refuse the distinction. They work side by side, united by the desire stay in their common land. In spite of a past which saw them divided, they are now rebuilding a present together. Their example is like a cry of hope to Bosnia Herzegovina and Europe as a whole: if it’s possible here, it’s possible everywhere.