Although one would not expect to encounter much interest in war crimes issues among a generation born several years after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, high school students from Brčko closely followed the presentation by ICTY’s Registry Liaison Officer in BiH, Almir Alić, in their school.
A group of 30 students attending the High School of Medicine and Agriculture listened attentively about crimes which were committed during the 1990s only couple of hundred of meters away from their classrooms in the Luka camp, as well as other locations in the centre of the town, and the trials for those crimes before the ICTY.
Today, Brčko District is a separate administrative unit in BiH, structured in a way to reflect its pre-war multi-ethnic character. The high school students who attended today’s presentation come from different ethnic communities however they unanimously found Almir’s presentation “very instructive”, saying it was “time well spent” as part of the school curriculum.
Recognising the fact that “crimes were committed by all the three sides in the conflict”, a 17-year old student from Brčko expressed hope that coexistence is again attainable through facing the past, after which “we should all reach out to each other”.