Remembering the Past in Sarajevo: Between Empires

Since my arrival in Sarajevo I have spent most of my time focused on learning about and engaging with the current political climate in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The effects that the conflicts of the 1990s had on the region continue to have such an impact on the modern state-of-play in the political and social sphere that anything from before 1992 can seem like ancient history. Even the 1984 Olympic Bobsled Track, now overgrown and abandoned, stands as a ghost of a past that has little to do with the present, a hangover of a story that was violently interrupted by the outbreak of war. But of course, history is not that simple. Conflict does not occur in a vacuum, but is shaped by the social circumstances preceding it. Its legacy is often determined by the status quo that results from it. The story of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one that began long before the fall of Yugoslavia and that will continue long after we are gone. In order to understand where we are at we must know where we came from, and so it is important to take a step back and look at the past if you want to fully understand the present.

The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina is itself a historical landmark, a magnificent building constructed between 1888 and 1913 in the Italian Renaissance Revival style which is in many ways symbolic of the multicultural history of BiH. I visited on a smoggy late-October day in 2017, over 130 years after František Topič took his camera around Bosnia and Herzegovina to capture the photographs that are now displayed in a temporary exhibition at the museum: "Between Two Empires: Bosnia and Herzegovina 1885-1919". As the exhibition makes clear, during this time period BiH was at the very centre of the world, where the interests of colonial powers intersected. After 400 years of Ottoman Rule, the westernmost point of the ailing empire was ceded to Austria-Hungary in 1878 and the influence of the east gave way to the modern domination of the west.

Topič’s photographs document the everyday lives of people during this time of great transition. It was, after all, the farmers, the factory workers, and the merchants that shaped the future of their little patch of land. There was also an image of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife’s bodies as they were being laid to rest, a reminder of the central part this region played in the world at the beginning of the 20^th century. Let us not forget that their assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was the son of poor farmers and a member of the serf classes. Scholars usually focus on the individual powerful people that supposedly shape history, but Topič’s photographs demonstrate the reality of life in the Balkans during a watershed moment in history that would catapult the world into the modern age. And the Balkan people, from the conquerors to the conquered, the emperors to the peasants, were central to this transition.

Transition and a push/pull relationship with the great powers of the world has shaped this region since the earliest days of civilisation. As the archaeological exhibition in the national museum demonstrates, what is now BiH has long been torn between east and west, with the local people co-opting certain parts of both but somehow maintaining a unique local identity. The Kingdom of Illyria, which today makes up much of the Western Balkans, is first mentioned in Greek records dating from the 4^th century BC, with the indigenous Illyrian peoples appearing as a force that battled the Greeks throughout the Hellenistic Period. From the 2^nd century BC, the Illyrian population found themselves in conflict with the Roman Republic, and by 168 BC Roman rule of the region had been established. This period of rule resulted in much of the western influence that can still be seen in the region today. However, when the Roman Empire split into the western Roman Empire and the Byzantium Empire in the East in 395CE, the region once again found itself at the centre of the two new powers, with the River Drina (now on the border between BiH and Serbia) acting as the border between empires. In this context, Serbia turned increasingly towards the east thanks to influence from the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. Bosnia, on the other hand, was still on the fringes of Rome’s sphere of influence.

In the 6^th to 9^th Centuries the Balkans saw looter invasions from the Pannonian Avars, a nomad population from Central Asia, and the Slavs, who brought with them the Slavic languages that are spoken today. Between the 9^th and 13^th centuries BiH was caught between the Hungarian and Byzantine Empires, falling under the control of both throughout the 12^th century and picking up influences from each. The local population, becoming increasingly diverse in terms of ethnic and religious affiliation, campaigned for independence throughout this time and by 1377 BiH became an independent kingdom. Nearly a century later, in 1463, BiH officially fell to the Ottoman Empire, and remained under Ottoman rule until 1878, around the time where Topič’s photography picks up.

Despite playing host to the triggering event of the First World War, Bosnia and Herzegovina remained largely unscathed throughout the conflict and in the aftermath was incorporated into the South Slav Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which would later become Yugoslavia. Attempts at drawing political boundaries that avoided ethnic and historic lines proved difficult to realise in the increasingly nationalistic fervour of the 1930s, and, following the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, much of Bosnia came under the rule of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state that began to target Serbs, Roma and Jews, in addition to dissident Croats and Slovenes, throughout the conflict. The Serb ‘Chetniks’ emerged as a fighting force in response to the persecution of Serbs by the Croat Ustaša death squads. However, in their attempt to form an ethnically homogenous Greater Serbian state, the Chetniks were themselves responsible for much persecution and violence against the Bosnian Muslim population, and many others. It was in this context that Josip Tito’s multi-ethnic, communist resistance group, the Partisans, emerged. Although they too were responsible for atrocities against political opponents of all ethnicities, their military success prompted allied support for their cause and by the end of the conflict the Partisans controlled Sarajevo. This laid the groundwork for the emergence of Tito’s Yugoslavia, which would survive until 1992, when its violent collapse would result in the conflicts with which we are all familiar.

Throughout this entire history remains one constant; the ordinary people of the region. With a culture steeped in several different histories, the population of the Western Balkans boasts some of the most diverse ethnic and religious identities of anywhere in the world. A lot of the history of this area has been defined by violence, and that obviously remains true today, but the legacy of cultural exchange between these different peoples is the most enduring facet of the region. The Roman conquest of two thousand years ago gave way to the gelato stands and European-style cafes of the west-side of downtown today, the Ottoman rule of 500 years ago brought Islam and Orthodox Christianity, Bosnian coffee and Old Town’s markets and bazaars. Austria-Hungarian architecture can be seen throughout Sarajevo. Most people here speak several languages; they learn English or German, sometimes they learn Russian. A lot of the panels and conferences we have visited have touched on the thorny issue of Bosnia’s desire to join the EU. In Ilidža there are neighbourhoods being built with road and shop signs written in Arabic in order to accommodate the increasing number of expats from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait moving to Bosnia for the economic opportunities and beautiful scenery. If you want to go anywhere in Old Town you have to fight your way through hundreds and hundreds of tourists from all over the world, seemingly regardless of the time of day. It really feels here like you are at the centre of the earth. 

What all this demonstrates, and what Topič’s photography captures beautifully, is that whilst it is easy to get lost in examining the big events of history, of focusing on the conqueror and conquered, one must remember the day-to-day lives of ordinary people and at least attempt to understand their experience in order to fully explain history. Those ordinary people might one day become Gavrilo Princip, or Josep Tito, who also came from a farmers’ background and became interested in politics after joining a labour union whilst working as an apprentice locksmith. But even those that do not go down in history shaped the circumstances and contexts in which these people operate, influence them and steer them in ways that might never be recorded in history books but are nevertheless hugely important.

I took a detour on the way home from the museum to go and stand on the Latin Bridge, where Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28^th June 1914. Being one of the oldest bridges still standing in the city, with its wooden predecessor standing from at least 1541, it was already a historical landmark at the time of the assassination that would change the world forever. In Topič’s photographs of Sarajevo’s skyline circa 1908 it can be seen, looking exactly as it does now. In his picture you can just about make out the shapes of people going about their lives in the city, and it makes you wonder. What were their thoughts on the Austria-Hungarian occupation of their country? Were they engaged politically in what was going on? Would they agree or disagree with what would happen there in just a few years time? Maybe 100 years from now someone will look at a picture of me standing on that bridge, or of anybody else, and wonder the same things.

And that is the thing about history. It was not just something we should learn about, or that we remember. It is something we are living. And, regardless of whether we go down in the history books or not, we are shaping it in our own little way. This region in particular has got to where it is today through the actions of the local population in response to the influence of outside factors from all sides. It is multicultural and multiethnic as a result, and this has proven to cause tension and conflict, but also a unique environment of growth and a meeting of peoples that I would argue is not seen to this extent anywhere else in the world. At the root of it all are the people that make up not just this region but the whole of our globalised world. If history is still being written, what we need to ask ourselves is how do we want our chapter to end?

Remembering the Past in Sarajevo

My first three weeks in Sarajevo have taught me more than any other three weeks of my life. It is a magnificent city, seemingly growing out of an idyllic mountain range in central Bosnia, blending the cultures of East and West to create a truly unique place unlike any I have ever previously visited. It is easy to be awestruck by the beauty of the landscape, and even easier to be horrified by the history that it bears. Remembering the past is key to understanding the present of not just the city or the nation, but of the entire Western Balkan region. This is done in different ways to different effect, but all are equally thought-provoking.

Zmaja od Bosne Street

Known colloquially in the 1990s as Sniper Alley because, situated as it is between the industrial and commercial/residential areas of the city, and being the main stretch of road used by UN forces, it became a hunting ground for Serb snipers during the siege of Sarajevo. In 1995 it was estimated that 1,030 people were wounded and 220 people, included 60 children, were killed by snipers on this stretch of road. The high rise buildings that line it made for perfect snipers nests, and many of the buildings still bear the graffiti reading “Pazi, Snajper!” and “Pazi, Metak!”, which respectively warned people of snipers and bullets as they attempted to cross the road. People would run alongside UN convoys in order to travel the road safely. Today, many of the buildings still bear the pockmarks of sniper fire.

Another sobering sight beyond the pockmarked buildings are the chunks of missing pavement and tarmac in the roads, some of which have been painted red. These are shell craters from artillery fire that rained down on the city daily for 1,425 days between 5^th April 1992 and 29^th February 1996, most of which have now been covered up but some of which have been painted and left as a reminder of the city’s violent past.

The War Childhood Museum

Originally conceived as a book in which the author asked young adults who were children at the time of the siege of Sarajevo to explain in 160 characters or less their experience of growing up in war, the museum was founded after he discovered that many had kept their childhood belongings from that time and wished for them to be seen. The exhibition is made up entirely of donated items from these children of war, and each item is accompanied by a story told by the child. This way of presenting information was very affecting because it humanised the experience of the war in a way that documentaries, facts and figures do not. Exhibits that stood out were

1)      A bright, almost fluorescent blue gown that belonged to a little girl which she said was worn out of spite. People told her to dress in grey and pastels in order to blend in with the background when traversing Sniper Alley, but she as a child felt she wanted the shooters to know that she was alive and not scared of them.

2)      Teddy Bear Meho, a scruffy looking pink and blue teddy bear with uneven button eyes and a bow tie that was made from fabrics and items donated by the international community by Ermina, a little girl who had lost her original stuffed toys when she fled her hometown and wanted comfort.

3)      A blue bunny, another stuffed toy that belonged to Meliha, only born in 1991 and therefore an infant throughout the war, who lost her brother and stated that this bunny was the only thing that bought her joy, even on her gloomiest days. Once her family had reached safety she donated all of her other toys to other children who had lost everything, keeping only the blue bunny.

4)      A bike that saved two little girls’ lives. They were playing outside without the knowledge of their parents when shells began to fall. One girl jumped on her bike to escape and the other asked if she could sit on the back because she had to get away from the shelling too. “I’m not supposed to be outside because it’s not safe, and if I die my mum will kill me!”

5)      A diary entry written by Dzenita, a teenager at the time of the siege. The note that accompanied the crumpled page simply read “Written in English. That way it looked as though all of this was happening to someone else”.

11/7/1995 Exhibition

11/7/95 was the date that Srebrenica fell to the Drina Wolves battalion of the Army of Republica Srpska and the UN safe zone was transformed into the site of the greatest massacre in Europe since the end of the Second World War, where 8,000 men and boys were killed and dumped in mass graves, and 20,000 women and children were forcefully displaced from their homes. As expected, it was a harrowing exhibition.

As you enter the exhibition you are met by the faces of all of the people who died during the Srebrenica massacre. There are extremely detailed videos explaining step by step the events of a two week period around the 11/7/1995, showing the build up, the UN failures, the progressively more aggressive tactics being employed by Mladic’s men as they surrounded the besieged city, and the aftermath of the killings all in explicit detail. It was a little overwhelming both in terms of the detail in which it goes into and the emotional reality of what occurred. All of this detail makes it even more troubling that the current mayor of Srebrenica, a Serb named Mladen Grujicic, can deny that there was a massacre at Srebrenica, or that Serb violence against Bosniak Muslims was ethnic cleansing. His claims that the events at Srebrenica were simply events of war, and no worse than similar Bosniak violence against Serbs are extremely contentious and potentially mark the beginning of a shift back towards an ethnically divided culture. A denial of these kind of atrocities is often the first step towards history repeating itself, which makes exhibitions like this all the more important.

A video documentary that discussed some of the events and interviewed people who were present was particularly insightful. A quote from one of the Dutch peacekeepers who were powerless in the face of the massacre stuck with me because of how it resonated. He said that being born in a wealthy country that was largely untouched by conflict meant that he could not fully understand what the Bosniak refugees fleeing Srebrenica were going through. “I understood the words they said, but I did not understand the feelings”. I feel that this is a large part of the reason why the world is so often unresponsive when events like this unfold, as we were with Aleppo in Syria, and seem to be now with the quickly degenerating situation in Myanmar. How can ordinary western people be expected to empathise with something that is completely beyond our realm of emotional understanding?

Two quotes at the end of the exhibition take on a darker meaning when viewed in relation to that question. One from holocaust survivor Primo Levi: “It happened, therefore it can happen again. It can happen anywhere”. The other from Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.  After the discovery of the horrors of the holocaust, the Geneva conventions laid out the groundwork so that things like that would never happen again. And yet, in Srebrenica, in Rwanda, in Aleppo and Armenia and Myanmar and East Timor and Sri Lanka and Cambodia and the DRC and Chile and Iraqi Kurdistan and any other number of places around the globe that you care to mention, atrocity crimes continue seemingly without end. Is there a way to end this cycle of violence?

The Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide

Amid images of people sprinting across crossroads with their bags of shopping to avoid the snipers that were ready to pick them off “like a hunting game” and shelled out schools, mosques and churches were the real life stories of people who lived through the 1,425 day ordeal. There were tales of death; such as the stories of families who tried to smuggle their children out of the city via the trams and buses, only for them to be picked off by snipers on the way, and of life; a pet dog who refused to leave the house for a walk just moments before a shell exploded where they would have been standing had they left on time. Most intriguing were the stories of survival. One man told of how excited he was one day to trade a book he owned for half a bottle of cognac and went home excited that he would finally be able to relax and sleep well, only to remember on the way that he had no flour left and would have to trade that cognac so that he could eat. Several told stories of listening to the local radio, ran by youths who played songs from faraway places to try to feel normal, a DJ who would start every morning with the welcome “well it seems I survived the night, and that’s good. So please listen along with me if you’re still alive as well”, callers-in asking for family members to reach out and contact them, to let them know they were ok, kids excited to hear this week’s number one.

The picture painted of life in Sarajevo at the time of the siege is one completely alien to me, but also one that in many ways feels very familiar. The capacity for humans to adapt to such a situation, to continue to survive and even to thrive when the threat of death is quite literally around every corner is truly astounding. Video footage showed elderly people running across the street with their shopping and men and women going about their daily business suddenly finding themselves dragging a neighbour or stranger out of the road as the sniper fire punctured the day. People spoke fondly of going to football matches and other sporting events during the siege, proudly wearing their Sarajevo team colours and defiantly standing out in sporting stadiums as the shells and the sniper bullets rained down. The reality of living in a warzone is that you still have to live, and these videos were testament to the fact that even in the gravest of situations, humanity finds a way.

The rest of the exhibitions are not so much a celebration of humanity overcoming great torment as an examination into the depths to which humanity can stoop. As you trace the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) timeline to the present day you are confronted with exhibits detailing several of the concentration camps employed by the Army of the Republic of Srpska and the individuals behind them. One can take solace in the fact that as of today not one single fugitive wanted by the ICTY remains at large, but the fact that so many perpetrators received lighter sentences due to plea deals and that some continue to be seen as heroes by many is extremely troubling. A documentary produced by P-CRC, Uspomene 677, showing a demonstration of ethnic Serbs protesting the arrest of General Ratko Mladic in 2011, who they view as a hero and defender of the Serb cause, reveals the extent to which the ethnic divide in Bosnia and beyond remains. Mladic, known colloquially by some as the Butcher of Bosnia, was largely responsible for orchestrating both the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre at Srebrenica, two of the most defining points of brutality in the conflict.

The brutality of the violence is not brushed over, with graphic images of the conditions inside the concentration camps taking centre stage as you make your way around the exhibit. It is harsh viewing, but it succeeds in ensuring that the viewer will not forget what they see. One particular concentration camp, Vuk Karadzic, an elementary school bearing the same name as Radovan Karadzic, President of the Republic of Srpska during the conflict and the man with whom Mladic shares the Butcher of Bosnia title, was the site of some particularly brutal violence, with witnesses claiming that “those who were killed in this camp were butchered, with nose, ears and genitals cut off, and crosses being cut into their bodies” according to a Human Rights Committee report. Similar atrocities occurred at Keraterm camp, home to infamous ‘red room’ and over 1200 detainees, along with many other camps operating all over the former Yugoslavia. But it is important to remember that the horror did not end at the barbed wire surrounding the camps. Crudely cut wooden rifles were given to prisoners of the Croat military, who were also forced to dress in Croat military uniforms so as to attract the fire of the opposing side. Mass graves continue to be uncovered to this day, and there are likely many more still to be found. We may never truly understand the true scale of the violence inflicted by and on all sides of the conflicts during this time, but this exhibition is a disturbing and sobering start.

In the midst of these atrocities remain stories of hope and of bravery. The tale of Goran Cengic, the righteous man, is one such story. Cengic was the winner of the Yugoslavian Handball Championship and played for the national team. On June 14^th 1992 he lost his life attempting to save his neighbour who was being tortured by Veselin Vlahovic Batko, known as the Monster from Grbavica. He was honoured by the city of Sarajevo for his bravery, and is remembered today as a hero in the face of terror. Stories like this remind us of the two faces of humanity, and calls us to question how things would have turned out if these two individuals, one a brave hero giving his life to save his neighbour and the other a murderer now serving 42 years in prison for crimes against humanity, had been on the opposite side of the conflict. If nobody is born evil, what drives individuals to commit such evil acts? Why did one grow up to become a righteous man, and the other a monster? People often call these acts inhumane, to give the perpetrators names such as the monster or the butcher, but the frequency with which they occur suggest that is in many ways just as human as the righteous acts that we celebrate. The best in humanity must be celebrated, but the worst in humanity must be acknowledged.

A particularly moving finale to the museum is a wall of post-it notes where visitors can write a message and leave it for others to read. Amidst the expressions of horror and outrage were some of hope, hope that by remembering the past we can change the future so that this does not happen again. “We cannot forget, and we cannot ‘leave it behind’. For if we do, the violence of the past will continue to repeat itself”. Bosnia has come a long way since the conflict that threatened to tear it apart, but the threat of a return to violence remains present. The ethnic tensions that exploded into conflict in the 1990s have not gone away, and such ethnic politics remains globally relevant. The expressions of solidarity with the people of BiH and the former Yugoslavia that dominated the wall at the end of the exhibit were interspersed with acknowledgements that such violence is not a thing of the past. “It is happening right now. All over the world”. “Bosnia is strong. We must stop the same from happening in Myanmar”. Once again, as the world looks away, the face of genocide rears its ugly head.

Exhibitions like these are incredibly important in that they tell the story of atrocities that would otherwise be forgotten, and they do it in a way that humanises the victims and raises important questions about the nature of the perpetrators and why they were capable of doing what they did. The problem is that they are largely preaching to the converted. We visited them because we were interested in the history, because we already had a base understanding and because we care about the events and about their repercussions. What about those who don’t know, don’t fully understand, or simply don’t care? Is there a way to galvanise those people to act and to speak out against atrocity crimes? For every organisation working to make post-conflict environments better, and for every well-intended UN intervention and peaceful protest there are those willing to commit acts of unspeakable violence on a group they view as lesser than their own. As the UN failures of Srebrenica demonstrate, a willingness to engage in the most heinous violence imaginable cannot be met with a peaceful or passive response. And yet meeting violence with more violence can lead to escalation and increased instability. Not to mention that a more robust UN will need better funding and better support, which is difficult to achieve when the western world has interests and priorities that lay elsewhere.

Learning about the terror of BiH in the 1990s demonstrates the importance of change, of making a stand against ideologies of hate and dehumanisation tactics, and yet it gives us little in the way of answers as to how we should do this. That is for us to figure out.

The EU Referendum: A Case for Remaining In

The debate on which way to vote in the EU referendum is building in momentum in the run-up to June 23^rd, with both camps advancing their messages through flyers and articles documenting what might happen should we stay or go. However, due to the complex nature of the European Union and a lack of easy access to information on how and why it does what it does, it is incredibly difficult to establish which arguments are based on fact and which are an example of political rhetoric. Here, I attempt to address some of the myths that are clouding our ability to make an informed decision in the EU referendum.

Myth 1: The EU is undemocratic and curtails British democracy

Much of the Leave campaign’s argument revolves around a future where Britain can regain control of its own democracy. According to Vote Leave Referendum Communication posted through letter boxes across the country a leave vote will result in the UK taking back control and once again making its own laws. It is argued that the EU is run by unelected elites that can overrule the UK government on policy decisions. However, this is untrue. Aside from the fact that in 2012 the EU won a Nobel Peace Prize for its contribution to “over six decades... of the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”, the EU is in itself a largely democratic institution. The European Commission is comprised of bureaucrats appointed by leaders of the member states and has only the power to propose and dispose of new laws and to oversee their implementation. It cannot create new laws. The European Council and Parliament are comprised of elected officials of the member states and vote on the creation of new laws. In that sense it works similarly to the UK Parliament where the House of Lords is made up of individuals appointed by the Queen on advice from the Prime Minister, and the House of Commons is comprised of elected MPs. British MEP’s represent British interests in Europe and our elected Prime Minister sits on the European Council with other elected heads of state. The EU, therefore, works as a pseudo-confederacy, a union of states that maintain sovereignty over their own laws, providing those laws fit within a framework decided by the states themselves. Rather than telling individual countries what they can and can’t do, the EU attempts to represent the interests of all of its member states in a fair and representative way. The EU Parliament is in fact considered by many to be more representative than the House of Commons, utilising proportional representation over the UK’s much-criticised first-past-the-post system. Far from being an impotent force in the EU, as Nigel Farage suggests, the UK is an active member of a democratic institution that seeks to increase international cooperation and solve issues through political means rather than military.

Myth 2: Membership of the EU increases Britain’s security risk

Sir Richard Dearlove, former Chief of MI6, suggests that “the ability to dump the European Convention on Human Rights” would be an important security gain for the UK. It is argued that the European Convention on Human Rights harms the UK’s ability to protect itself from a terror attack by reducing our capacity to use certain forms of security measures. The measures the Act prohibits include mass surveillance, torture and detention without trial. The argument regarding the necessities of these particular measures is a different one altogether but for myself and many others, the thought of a UK government with the capacity to engage in any of these activities without recourse or oversight is a scary one, and even outside of the EU it is likely that national legislation would regulate this sort of action.

The unification of Europe has allowed individual member states to spend less annually on their own military forces whilst maintaining a secure border around “Fortress Europe”. The thought of two European countries going to war against each other today is laughable, which is quite a statement for a continent that only 70 years ago nearly tore itself apart in the biggest war in recorded history. Today we solve our differences in boardrooms in Brussels rather than on battlefields, and the EU has a large part to play in that. The last two wars that claimed significant numbers of British lives and arguably made our homeland less secure were not led by our EU neighbours, but by the United States.

Myth 3: EU membership has led to unsustainable levels of immigration

Although the EU open-border policy has encouraged greater levels of immigration within the EU, the “uncontrollable” level of migration Boris Johnson fears will destroy our economy is simply not borne out by the evidence. Although 184,000 EU citizens arrived in the UK last year with the intention of staying for over one year, it should be noted that 188,000 arrived from non-EU nations. This suggests that simply leaving the EU will not curb the current rate of immigration to the UK as citizens of EU member states would still be able to move to the UK through our domestic immigration system. More importantly, though, fear over the number of immigrants arriving in the UK may be misguided. Far from being a ‘strain on public services’, as Nigel Farage claimed in a speech on the 3^rd of June, a recent report from HMRC stated that recently arrived EEA (European Economic Area) nationals paid £3.1 billion in income tax and national insurance in 2014, and took only £0.56 billion in HMRC benefits. With the aging UK population, immigration may be one of the only ways to ensure enough money is entering the state economy to keep national services afloat.

According to the Financial Times, approximately 1.8 million Britons live outside of the UK in the EU, compared to 2.34 million EU migrants in the UK, meaning that the number of EU nationals arriving is almost completely offset by the number of Britons leaving, again disputing the idea that immigration is out-of-control and our public services are unable to cope. Britons living outside the UK are also often conveniently forgotten in immigration debates, and in the event of a Leave vote their future in Europe could be in question.

The debate over Europe has been unfortunately light on facts, and whilst this is far from exhaustive it has hopefully challenged some of the prevailing notions that are dictating people’s choices in the current referendum. The fact of the matter is that the United Kingdom is a forgotten power, and outside of Europe we run the risk of fading into insignificance on the world stage. In Europe, we are a leading contributor to the greatest political and economic power in the world (with a larger GDP than the US and China), a champion of freedom of movement and the sharing of cultures, and a testament to the power that a multicultural society can bring.

The European Union has many flaws, but it is the first political experiment of its kind. Around the world other attempts at regional integration have followed in the footsteps of the EU, ranging from the African Union, Eurasian Economic Community and the Union of South American Nations, as well as many others. In a globalized world, integration is preferable to isolationism. None of these organisations are perfect, and in fact many require huge reform if they are to continue to work and do the best for the most people (the EU included) but we stand a better chance of having our say and making a difference within these communities rather than outside of them. The big world is getting smaller and we as a country need to learn to adapt.

I’m voting Remain in the EU referendum. Register to vote by the end of today and make your voice heard on the 23^rd of June.

https://www.eureferendum.gov.uk/register-to-vote/

"They Got What They Deserved" - The Slippery Slope of Targeted Assassination

The Daily Mail front page on Tuesday 8^th September depicted the images of 21-year-old Reyaad Khan and associate Ruhul Amin, 26, accompanied by the headline “They Got What They Deserved”. The men were killed in an RAF drone strike in Raqqa, Syria on the 21^st August. They were fighting with ISIS. David Cameron announced that the fighters had been killed in a targeted attack, at the same time that Defence Secretary Michael Fallon threatened the UK would “not hesitate” to launch more secret airstrikes in Syria in order to tackle terror. This, it seems, is a “perfectly legal act of self defence”.

Whilst claims that one of the men was planning an attack on UK soil are as yet unconfirmed, this event signals what could be a new turning point in the struggle against ISIS. It is largely acknowledged that ISIS itself poses little direct threat to the UK, with its attention focused on the ongoing struggles for control of its territory in Syria and Iraq. What concerns UK politicians is the threat of radicalised Britons returning from ISIS training grounds and enacting terror plots using the skills they have learned abroad. This may be the most significant terror threat to the UK at the current time, but does that justify the killing of two young men?

These men had been identified and were fighting for ISIS in hostile territory against hardened soldiers. Their chances of returning home were slim, even if that was indeed what they wanted. If they had chosen to return it would have proven extremely difficult to enter the country without the authorities being aware. If they had committed crimes worthy of being killed, why could they not have been arrested and put on trial? They may have committed acts that are reprehensible to us as ordinary citizens. They may have been fighting for an organization whose ideals are very different to our own. And they may be guilty of crimes that deserve a punishment. But did they deserve this?

The UK justice system is based on ideals that do not fit with our expanding drone program overseas. A murderer at home can expect to receive a trial in which they must be shown to be guilty of their crimes beyond any reasonable doubt, and if this is the case they will receive a prison sentence. We do not believe in the death sentence in this country. But fighters who choose to commit their crimes on foreign soil receive the death sentence before any jury is consulted or facts of the case are discussed. They have no representation, no chance to explain themselves or to repent for their sins, no trial by jury, and no second chance.

What is left behind is a grief-stricken chorus of friends and families who never got to say goodbye to their sons or confront them for what they did. What is left behind is a sense that justice has not really been served, that maybe instead of trying to bring these men to trial we instead opted for the easy way out by striking them down without giving them a chance to fight back. What is left behind is an angry public that see two terrorists on the front page of their newspapers, and not two human beings who were not necessarily beyond salvation. Now we will never know. It seems that the War on Terror in its current form has become a points-scoring exercise rather than a real battle for peace. Kill one of ours, we’ll kill one of yours. Perhaps we are beyond rebuilding bridges, but it would be nice to see someone trying.

Just a week after Cameron said that instead of taking in more refugees from the Middle East we should instead focus on stabilising the situation in their home countries, he admits to the killing of two young fighters in an airstrike on a country that we are supposedly not at war with. This sort of mission creep is exactly the kind of destabilising force that we need to avoid if we have any hopes of pacifying the region. Attempts to understand the fighters and their struggle are non-existent, because it is easier to kill from a distance and claim a victory. Two British men have been killed by our government. If they are soldiers we should have fought them on the battlefield. If they are criminals they should have stood trial for their crimes. You do not have to agree with their ideologies to understand that this was a miscarriage of justice. And in the long-term this will only serve to destabilise the situation in Iraq and Syria, and turn more people towards the jihadist groups in the region. The refugee crisis will not be solved through increasing the violence currently ravaging the Middle East. Nor will relationships between clashing factions be mended through targeted assassination. It is time to rethink our strategies both at home and abroad when tackling the threat of terror globally.

Crisis Care and Policing Mental Illness

In 2014, 710 individuals sectioned under the Mental Health Act were detained by Sussex Police. This constituted one in every five individuals detained unduly by police under the Act across England and Wales. However, under a new pilot scheme being rolled out across the country, the force is looking to rectify this number. By paring police officers with mental health nurses, forces across the country are creating new ‘street triage teams’ to respond to crisis situations.

Historically, mental health issues in the UK have been dealt with through criminalization. The Mental Health Foundation reports that over 70% of the UK prison population has two or more mental health disorders. Last year alone almost 4,000 individuals were unduly held in police cells for mental health-related concerns and disturbances. The effect this has on an individual already suffering is undoubtedly negative. When police alone are used to diffuse crisis situations, mentally ill individuals are inherently criminalized through arrest and detention. This unnecessary involvement with the criminal justice system can worsen a situation through the emotional trauma associated with being treated as a criminal threat. What the inclusion of mental health professionals in the policing profession provides is an ability to judge what the best treatment for an individual in crisis is. Some individuals involved in potentially threatening or criminal behaviour may need medical treatment, whereas others may require arrest and detention. Police officers often lack the resources to establish the mental state of individuals, and are also viewed with suspicion by the people they may be trying to help. Trained psychological professionals can provide the guidance and care needed at an extremely difficult time. The inclusion of mental health nurses in the policing field is therefore a very welcome development, and one that will undoubtedly aid the improvement of both our mental healthcare and criminal justice institutions.

However, the news that crisis intervention programs are so desperately needed invokes a more instrumental question regarding attitudes towards mental health provision in the UK. Why are so many people in need of crisis counselling and intervention across the country? In 2013, there were 53,176 detentions under the Mental Health Act across the UK. Despite the myriad reasons that sectioning may occur, this represents an alarming number. Detention is usually a last resort for individuals considered a threat to themselves or others, so why is it being used so often?

Despite recent increases in mental healthcare funding under the new Tory government, NHS resources dedicated to mental health issues are still spread drastically thin. NHS practitioners are not equipped to deal with the sheer number of mental health cases reaching them on a daily basis. With an estimated quarter of all adults suffering some form of mental illness in any given year according to the Mental Health Foundation, more needs to be done to ensure we have the resources to provide good primary care to everyone suffering from a psychological disorder. The nation’s first line of defence against mental illness is insufficient, and this places undue pressure on the crisis counselling teams across the country. Sectioning and crisis counseling resources are therefore being stretched to near breaking point because individuals do not get the help they need to treat their illness before it becomes a life threatening ordeal.

Awareness needs to be raised of the counseling, medical and psychological services available to individuals who feel like they might need extra support if we are to reduce the pressure on the crisis care system. Individuals who get symptoms treated earlier require less treatment and have less long-term negative effects associated with their illness. Mass public campaigns have helped raise the awareness of the public on what signs to look for with strokes or heart attacks so that individuals can get help quickly and the emergency services can be alerted as soon as possible. The same should be done for mental illness, so individuals can spot early signs of depression or other illnesses in their loved ones and maybe encourage them to get help before it gets too much. Mental health in the UK needs to become a priority as our understanding of what affects psychological wellbeing develops. Crisis counseling is a necessary part of any system dealing with mental illness, as important as accident and emergency staff, but without general practitioners and primary care facilities provided by the NHS the UK would be a much sicker nation than it currently is. This is the situation we find ourselves in regarding mental health. Mentally ill people are not criminals. That this has been acknowledged is a good thing. It is also just the first step in reforming our healthcare system to ensure that every person is given the care they need to live healthy, happy lives with well managed mental wellbeing. 

Mental Health Services in Cameron's Second Term

The man that I met living rough on the streets of Chicago was one of the many victims of the city’s mental health service budget cuts. In 2012, 50% of the city’s mental health clinics were closed in cuts that saved just $3 million, but negatively impacted thousands of lives in doing so. His story was similar to many I had heard from other homeless people around Chicago’s downtown Loop neighbourhood. An uninsured schizophrenic who suffered from auditory hallucinations that made him paranoid and scared, he found it near-impossible to get the drugs that he needed to control his condition. Unable to hold down a job with such severe symptoms, he quickly found himself unemployed and incapable of paying his rent. And then, as is the story with so many of the mentally ill in Chicago, he ended up on the streets. Now, his main concern is finding something to eat. The voices in his head have not gone away. Daily, he stands on a corner next to a Swarovski jewellery store and is ignored by shoppers as he begs for money.

The healthcare system in the US is broken. Having dealt with it briefly myself, I was exposed in a small measure to the mental strain of worry about medical bills. As a fully insured foreign national I was well protected against unwanted costs, but an ambulance ride and a trip to the emergency room still kept me awake nights with concern that I would awake to a bill on my doorstep that I would have to conjure up the funds to pay. For someone suffering with a long-illness that requires extensive treatment the stress of simply affording life-saving medical care can be too much to handle. Make that illness a mental health related condition and the strain becomes immeasurable. Why do so many mental illnesses in the US go untreated? Because people simply cannot afford even basic treatment. The states cannot afford it. The federal government cannot afford it. And this is not because of lack of money; it is because mental health is not a priority (see my earlier blog post, The Mental Health Crisis in Chicago).

Which is why I am heartened to see the recent £85 million increase in mental health service funding in Scotland. This comes at a much needed time, when a recent Care Quality Commission review found that mental health crisis care services in the UK are ‘struggling to cope’ with emergency situations across the UK. In March, Nick Clegg pledged £1.25 billion to develop mental health services in England, and yet in the context of a shrinking NHS this still may not be enough. The same Care Quality Commission review, published in June 2015, found that 42% of patients in emergency mental healthcare situations did not receive the treatment they required.

Part of the problem with mental health issues is the continued stigma surrounding them. Illnesses such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and PTSD are not fully understood, and are often not considered illnesses in the same that cancer is. When these afflictions are not treated seriously by the medical profession or by lay people, a situation develops where it is difficult for individuals suffering from mental illness to get help. Our NHS is the only barrier preventing the UK from developing the same epidemic of homelessness and criminality within the mentally ill population that is currently gripping the US. Universal healthcare is a wonderful thing that should be protected, and in the age of austerity we must fight more than ever not to lose this vital lifeline.

Despite recent boosts to mental health funding, an investigation by the charity Young Minds recently found that over half of local councils in England had frozen or cut funding for child and adolescent mental health budgets in 2014/15. This is the most vulnerable time for victims of mental illness. The new Conservative government has started positively in its rhetoric surrounding mental health issues, with Care Minister Alistair Burt stating that “mental healthcare is [his] priority”, but it remains to be seen what reforms will come as the new cabinet establishes itself.

The Conservatives have previously stood in the way of meaningful mental health reform, with the previous Cameron government cutting many services nationwide. However, with the coalition dissolved and the Conservative party now established as the majority party in government a new era is beginning. Though no bill has been put forward regarding mental health, a further £8 billion has been pledged to fund the NHS and new mental healthcare standards have been promised. Whether this materialises remains to be seen. As individuals we must continue to fight for rights for the mentally ill, and continue to raise awareness to help end the stigma surrounding these life-destroying afflictions. And, in order to avoid us going the way of the American mental healthcare system, we must hope that the Conservatives stay true to their word. Lives very literally depend on it.

Bringing Out Unity Through Interactive Transformation

BOUT IT (Bringing Out Unity Through Interactive Transformation) is a program developed and run by Roosevelt University professor Dr Melissa Sisco that is designed to help mentor at-risk youth in the Chicago area. Dr Sisco has previously mentored youth in foster homes and behavioural health facilities (most notably at the University of Arizona in the form of a mentorship program run jointly with Dr Julie Feldman) but the BOUT IT approach differs from previous approaches to mentorship in various ways.

First, it focuses on youth-to-youth mentorship by taking students from Roosevelt University and exporting them from the classroom into the field of practice. Through her relationship with the Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network (UCAN), Dr Sisco found a space to take undergraduate students off campus and place them in an environment that would enable them to develop their skills as future psychologists and professionals working with at risk youth. UCAN is a facility dedicated to housing and caring for youth that have had a rough start in life, and many of the youth at the Chicago facility have suffered abuse and gang-related neighbourhood violence from a very young age. The BOUT IT program (the only program like it in Illinois, Indiana or Wisconsin) brings university students from Roosevelt to UCAN and pairs them with an at-risk youth for a semester-long mentorship program.

The mentorship is focussed around the concept of SMART goals. Dr Sisco states that the most important thing to instil in a youth that has suffered trauma is the ability to dream. Youths that are a ward of the state are entitled to free college tuition, but many of them are unaware of this fact or simply cannot see themselves ever going to university. The SMART goals framework enables them to visualise a dream, and then begin to take the steps required to achieve it. Through making small steps one at a time, these youths can find a way to achieve something they never deemed possible. The goal of the program is to show that not only are these dreams possible, but that we can take steps on a day-to-day basis that get us closer to reaching them. There are now two UCAN youths that have graduated the BOUT IT program and attend Roosevelt University. The mentors, current Roosevelt students, facilitate the development of these goals by being a positive role model and helping to provide a framework that enables the youth to take the necessary steps to achieve them.

Many of the youth at UCAN are unwilling to discuss their past, but one of the methods through which they can express themselves is music. In particular hip-hop and spoken word can be used as a tool for tackling their emotions. The newest BOUT IT project for these kids involves a partnership with Chicago-based spoken word group Row Cypher. Established by Dr Sisco, this partnership is hoped to help provide the youth at UCAN further positive role models that can demonstrate how these kids can use their skills to develop themselves and tell their story.

In the city of Chicago as a whole it is estimated that 1 in every 1000 people will be in contact with police regarding a violent crime, either as a victim, perpetrator or witness. In certain gang-infested neighbourhoods such as Humboldt Park this figure can reach as high as 1 in 4. Youth that grow up in these communities are at a very high risk of entering criminality themselves, especially if their home life is unstable. UCAN hopes to provide a sense of stability for these at risk youth but it can only provide shelter for a 3 month period before funding for the youth is cut. What programmes like BOUT IT hope to do is provide that stability through the establishment of SMART goals, allowing the youth to make sense of their own life story and take control of their future by providing them positive role models and a means by which to achieve what they want to achieve.

As a mentor in this program I have been consistently impressed with the professionalism of both the BOUT IT team under Dr Sisco and the UCAN staff who go above and beyond to foster good relationships with youths that can at times be difficult, for understandable reasons. I have similarly been blown away to see the resolve of so many of the youth in the program that have overcome all the odds and made it to a point where they are ready to move on with their lives and begin to think about a future away from violence and crime. Programmes like BOUT IT, though few-and-far between and desperately underfunded, are essential to instilling a sense of hope in youth that may have none. But more than that, BOUT IT takes college kids who have had little to no experience in the field of practice and throws them into a real world situation that is both challenging and incredibly rewarding. For me, it has been perhaps the most educational experience of my time in Chicago and that is solely down to the perseverance of the youth at UCAN in the face of unbelievable hardship, and the effort put in by Dr Sisco to enable us to take part in a program that is unlike any other I have ever seen.

Chicago is a great city with a great potential to help its poor and disadvantaged, but the current administration shows little interest in tackling the gang issues in the South and West sides. With little to no government help, programmes like UCAN aim to intervene in the lives of damaged youth and change their lives for the better. This would not be possible without the input of BOUT IT, which both relieves the staff and gives the youth a release where they can hang out with similarly aged individuals who can act as role models and hopefully provide an example of what is possible with a little hard work and perseverance. These services for underprivileged youth are essential to ensuring our continued success as a society, because these kids that have survived unbelievable hardship and come through the other side are our future, and they have the potential to make an incredible difference to the city, the country and the world.

So what can we do as bystanders to help these programmes continue to function? The simple answer is to get involved. Fundraise, show an interest, become a mentor, tell people about these amazing things that are happening. Running a program like this is a constant tight-rope walk of trying to balance the needs of the kids with the available budget and volunteer resources. If you believe in this sort of transformational experience as a way of changing the lives of both disadvantaged youth  and college students who are gaining an experience they can get nowhere else then take the advice of Dr Sisco and the BOUT IT team: don’t just talk ‘bout it, be BOUT IT.

For more information on any of these programs please visit their websites:

http://boutitlifecoaching.webs.com/

http://www.ucanchicago.org/about/

http://www.rowcypher.com/