Member-only story
Lessons from Bosnia — the Changes to the Project
And your chance to get involved
As some of you might know, I’ve been working on a project called Lessons from Bosnia for a over a year now. The main aim of the project was to tell the people of the UK that we are worried about what the UK is turning into. We describe it as ‘Balkanisation of Britain’.
I’ve explained how we hoped Balkan would learn from Britain, and become more like Britain — sensible politicians (at least to some degree), strong economy, reliable welfare and social benefits, equal opportunities for all, and a legal system that provides security in the Rule of Law. While many people in Britain might complain how Britain was never any of these, compared to the Balkan, it really was. Sure, we could see there was room for improvement, but we thought if we could reach the level that Britain was at, we’d be happy.
Instead of us reaching the level that Britain was on, Britain is going down to the level we’re at. This is not good. So, we thought that perhaps by sharing the reality from Bosnia it would be like a wake-up call to the people of Britain to get their act together and fight for their country before it gets so bad, it’s hard to find a way forward.
Just before I had published the last article, the lesson 10 about how the whole situation affects community and human-to-human relationships, the genocide in Gaza started. Protests against this genocide were held (and are still being held) all over the world. Despite these protests, our politicians have continued to assist the genocide.
Hence, the first change is for me to introduce another lesson: Genocide. The first protest for Palestine I attended in London, in November 2023, someone held a sign ‘I can’t believe I have to protest against genocide’.
That sentence says it all. Genocide is the one issue that we all agree is off limits. Even if there’s a threat of a genocide, we’re not allowed to assist in any way. Yet, there we were on the streets to raise our voices against genocide. Even if we assume that our government officials were unclear if it was a genocide, since then, ICJ has clearly said that it could very well be. That should have meant that our government officials will automatically withdraw all support for Israel until…
