Gaza, genocide | I use the word slaughter, and you must bear to read it

(Tronder Discussion): Genocide is not just a term that is discussed from a legal perspective at the moment. A genocide is taking place in Gaza as you read this. It was also the genocide that brought me to Norway in 1993.

Genocide is what we humans create new laws to prevent from happening – every time it happens again. Today, genocide is something we see broadcast on laptops in real time.

In 2010, I did a theater show under my name 1000 zato 1000 zato. An hour, during which I read from the stage my memoirs that I wrote from 1989 to 2000. The period between December 1989 and February 1993 were the years I lived in hell on earth. There was genocide on European soil, and I was waiting to be slaughtered because I was a Bosnian Muslim.

I use the word slaughter, and you must bear to read it.

When we allow a people to be systematically exterminated on the basis of their affiliation, we allow people to be treated like animals in the meat industry: we allow people to be slaughtered.

The world allowed mass slaughter to happen in the 1990s in the Balkans.

I will never forgive you.

Today we allow another genocide to happen before our eyes. With the exception of some of my friends on social media, who share news and information about Gaza and the West Bank, it is strangely silent.

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When I worked with 1000 zato 1000 zato I promised myself that I would not be the person who always talks about genocide. But unfortunately I don't have a choice.

As long as we continue to accept that this is happening, I must continue to tell what happens to humans who are being exterminated. 1000 zato 1000 zato It means “a thousand whys, a thousand whys.”

When I was a kid in Bosnia, there was a book called 1000 zato 1000 zato. It was a children's encyclopedia containing many different questions about the world and life, which children should be interested in. You know, where did the world come from, how many legs do centipedes have, why do beetles have spots, who built the pyramids, why is the sky blue? Questions that I was very interested in as a child and found reading about very exciting.

I spent a lot of time with this book. Then it was December 1989. I was 10 years old and went from having a thousand questions about the world to just one: Why isn't anyone helping us go extinct? The answer is not found anywhere. I soon realized that there must be something seriously wrong with us, and that we therefore did not deserve the right to live.

This subtle feeling is still present in the spinal cord. It's not just about getting rid of these experiences afterwards. Such traumas become embedded in DNA and are passed down through generations.

My life was saved. I came to Norway, and gradually I understood more about the world. I also understood that we are civilized beings, and we have a legal system that protects us from injustice, discrimination and oppression. Which will guarantee my right to exist, something I cannot take for granted based on my experiences. All people are of equal valuewe said. Genocide is terrible and must never be repeatedwe said.

She presented the above-mentioned theatrical performance in which the child's voice is heard in the midst of genocide. I traveled with her all over Norway, and there were many good conversations afterwards with the audience about how terrible it was. Questions like “How can the world sit and watch for years as something like this happens in the Balkans?” He was regular.

Over the years, I also began to observe the Bosnian past and my own past from the point of view that something like this could not happen today. We have power, we can speak out, and we will not let this happen again. We know better. we He is better.

It's hard to explain how frustrating it is to survive a genocide, then live a decent, civilized life, talk about ethnic cleansing as a kind of past, and then witness it still happen again.

Ask yourself: “Wait a minute, is this the cycle? Aren’t we better off accepting the annihilation of a people over and over again?”

As I write this, I notice the ten-year-old who hears gunshots and grenades, who sees a functioning society collapsing, who screams for help and no one comes, who fears that her father, mother, and siblings will be killed. , watching me. It's like she knows something I don't know.

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We see and hear the children of Gaza chanting on the TV news, on our computers, and on our phone screens. People crowd around the cameras asking where we are while they are being slaughtered. We Bosnians who survived the breakup of Yugoslavia know that genocide can be stopped. Even children understand it.

The question is whether we understand our responsibility to the power structures that feed on our silence. Folks, it happens once again that the stronger party is trying to completely eliminate the weaker party.

I'm not allowed to be quiet, and I can't be quiet.

Not because I suffer from survival guilt, but because we all do and will therefore feel the sting of the West's unbearable embarrassment, the abuse and disgusting superiority of the superpower in question.

When I traveled around Norway for four years with… 1000 zato 1000 zato I told a story about genocide in the Balkans. Something I wanted, and still want, so the world won't forget. Little did I know that a few years later I would witness the genocide in Gaza. Listen to NRK reports from Israel as people express Israel's right to exterminate Palestinians.

Little did I know that this injustice would become normal again.

In the 1990s, it was us Bosnians who suffered, and today it is the Palestinians and their children. Maybe you don't think your kids will be exposed to it next round? That it could be their turn at any moment? Or do you think we can create a new world order?

The silence that occurs when we turn away from the screams of children being slaughtered has a price, and we pay dearly when we are forced to give up our decency.