to network Women in Black against war
"Since the discovery of our bewilderment in the states, ideologies, institutions, faced with international events that terrify us, does this need to recognize, in the double sense of recognition and other new self-knowledge: know, recognize the other women on this side and beyond of new and old boundaries are watching with the eyes of the world woman. "
(Marina Fresa, Women in Black in Mestre 1991-92, p.4)
It is not easy to draw a picture of hundreds and hundreds of initiatives that have marked and mark the location of the Women in Black in Belgrade, to tell their practices, explain their thinking. It is not easy to make an effective synthesis of hundreds of documents - leaflets, press , mail, newspaper articles, interviews, but also a dedicated editorial on the history of women and war - that tell of "protests" in public and in black silence in the streets of Belgrade and other Serbian cities, the countryside in favor of conscientious objection, the support of the deserters, work in refugee camps, workshops traveling through Serbia and Montenegro for the formation of women's groups for peace in an attempt to change the mentality that creates war and the enemy, and the extraordinary growth of a network of women that they have achieved, work and study for Transitional Justice, for comparison with the past and against war crimes, the presence in court processes against criminals, support to families of the victims, visits to places where these crimes were perpetrated.
It is not easy mostly because I know Stasi, Rada, Lepa, Jadranka, Neda, Violeta, Fika, Dunja, Borka, Ljiljana ... and many others I can not remember the name, but keep alive, has been an experience that marked a important stage of my life.
I met for the first time the Women in Black in Belgrade in October '94. I was part of the Network of initiatives against the war in my hometown, Padua, who organized several trips to establish relations with Serbian and anti-militarist actually bring their concrete solidarity. I remember the hospitality of their home in the city center, the small apartment on the top floor of a popular apartment building, the door always open, the coffee is always ready and these women are always available, the analysis clear, concrete action. At that time working in refugee camps, displaced even some of them, dressed the wounds of war.
I was not even part of the movement of Women in Black, but I knew some Italian women who were, and that since '91 they started to go in what was still Yugoslavia, and they had known what would become the Ž ene u crnom , Women in Black in Belgrade, resulting in a report likely to have impacts in the lives of both of them. Through these friends I began to learn Italian practices and thinking of the friends of Belgrade so that tells the story of their movement:
We, Women in Black in Belgrade's city we started in the streets of a state that has set in motion the machinery of war trying to persuade people that "the Serbia was not at war "and that" Serbia is the biggest victim, and this gave a historical right to fire the first shot to defend themselves. " The majority of the population of this country was formed by the state media to live convinced that the war was far away and had nothing to do with it.
We, Women in Black, we were full of bitterness and, as feminists, we knew that our bitterness, our despair and our guilt had to be turned into resistance and public policy. We did not want our deep indignation against the warmongering policy would remain a simple moral revolt.
On 9 October 1991 we took to the streets and we founded the Women in Black inspiring hostility against the war the women of Israel, Italy and Spain.
have since returned several times in Belgrade and in Vojvodina and Montenegro for the meetings of the International Network of Women in Black who gave them life.
I remember the trip to Belgrade cold in December of '96, the streets crowded with a mass of people who protested against the government, and the Women in Black - among the few to have always been against the war, and this often abused and insulted by many of the same that hours showed - in p r ima line, happy to finally broken a long silence, for fear driven back, for more than a month, people came out of the house (with that cold!) to say No! the power that the oppressed and denied their voice by failing to recognize the election results. They distributed a leaflet - "Nonviolence is our choice" - which invited to participate but not to give in to provocations.
remember the first meeting of the Network International Women in Black against war I attended in 1997, on a small island on the Danube in Novi Sad. Since '92, during the war, these meetings had been created as a bridge for communication interjugoslave become impossible: a place to offer alternatives, to proclaim the rejection of nationalist warmongers who wanted to separate their borders with ethnic women who refuse to be enemies and struggling to build together their own alternative policy. I still remember the circle of women sitting on the grass, the many languages \u200b\u200bmingled and discover the joy of coming from many different places: from the whole ex-Yugoslavia - Serbia, Croatia, Vojvodina, Sandzak, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Slovenia , Bosnia and Herzegovina - and then from Algeria, Israel and Palestine, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Chechnya, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, England, Italy, Spain, Greece, United States of America. And in multiple languages \u200b\u200bwas read the document that summarizes the years of resistance to war and hatred, of feminist solidarity:
are six years together we are creating a space for the diversity of women , in which we listen to the experiences of women of different languages, different cultures. Some of these women's experiences are imprinted in our souls and our bodies forever. Not we are the same as before, we always start from the micro, from the concrete experiences of women, creating ethics and politics of difference .... We continue to make visible women of our resistance to war, and even our resistance to all forms of control over women. We reject the role of passive victims of nationalist-militarist policies. We want to create new forms of solidarity in our diversity. Solidarity is neither charity nor paternalism. Solidarity is mutual support, affection, friendship, sisterhood .....
remember these words become stories, told with voices that often broke, working groups in which women pooled their sorrow for the lives devastated by war, but also the hopes because, after all, had managed to save and also to create friendships, relationships, a base for a possible future. Having friends and comrades - supported - this is overcome hatred and fear: the winner who wins the war and hatred.
But the war went on and came the day of the bombs on Kosovo and Serbia. The war was no longer a taboo as perhaps we were deluded: Become a "humanitarian." Another, however, was the fact that we told her friends reached by telephone from Belgrade, trapped between NATO bombs Milosevic's regime and that they came out stronger while any opposition became impossible. Days from their experiences with anger, fear, fear for the friends with whom Albanians remained stubbornly in touch. Staša Zajović wrote to friends of the Network of Women in Black:
... we know that this plot of local and global militarism dangerously reduces our space and it will soon disappear. How to acknowledge the global militarism not accuse the local, like blaming the bombings without blaming the massacres, repression, which is experiencing the horror the people of Kosovo, with NATO this posting, is still paying a price greater than before? NATO IN THE SKY ... we, MILOSEVIC ON EARTH. For now our ghetto human mutual support works well. Your support gives us strength, means a lot to us.
after the war and its aftermath, the last nail of the regime against those who always continued to oppose non-violent form stating their unfamiliarity of the death of his choices. It 's the time for the Women in Black of persecution, interrogation, searches, arrests.
Milosevic finally falls, and great hopes will turn on and go out soon: the men of the regime continue to occupy key posts, and few substantial changes in setting policy that guides the country.
Another broad field of work opens, one of the comparison with the past, the need not to forget the past if you want to build the future, to make
... memory of the war and its crimes, dell'inaudito interment and that in any armed conflict is contained. The duty of remembrance, for that matter, between the anti-militarist in the former Yugoslavia, was never taken from the perspective of victims, never has been confused with the lament has always demonstrated political choice, a commitment to distinguish their voices and their actions the screams of the powerful, by the orders issued by the apparatus of the regime, by armies and paramilitary leaders who commanded the destruction of cities, ethnic cleansing, rape.
The duty of memory is not configured as an "obsession", but as the ability to read the war over the interpretation of traditional male stereotypes, researchers, beyond the military strategies and geopolitical events, the trauma of everyday life broken, the modification of the violent individual stories, which he has always wanted to give face, body, subjectivity. From there sprang the request for a clear identification of responsibilities for crimes committed, the need to reach a "personalization of guilt" in refusing to give weight to an entire community of the devastation and murders perpetrated.
The Network of Women against the war in Serbia decided to take care of the victims of the crimes done in their name by starting a journey that takes them to places where these crimes were perpetrated to ask them to apologize for injustice which have been subjected to tell them: we know who the culprits are "our", and must be punished. It 's a location where you learn many things not only justice, but safety, friendship, politics, peace, nonviolence.
And my last memory is linked to this necessary practice for complaints and taking responsibility for a past so heavy. July 10, 2009, the Republic Square in Belgrade, the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, so many women in black and in silence, surrounded by a cordon of police separating us from militants Obraz (nationalist and fascist organization) signs with uplifting pictures of Karadzic and Mladic. Lay a large sheet on which were painted in 8372 roses, one for each of the 8372 victims of the Srebrenica genocide, the great written around it - Solidarity, do not forget the genocide in Srebrenica, Responsibility, remember - and women all around us, each with a white rose in his hand. The whole time we were in the square where the militants Obraz continued to sing the praises of Karadzic and Mladic, "Serbian heroes, not war criminals, and to insult the Women in Black:" Hookers, who will pay? Americans? what gave you this time? ".
And I thought that the duty of remembrance, and the demand for justice for the crimes committed, tasks so strongly felt by these women, we call into question, even though we live in a country at "peace", but we can not stop or ease, with regard to "our side", the radical critique of any notion of war and the reporting of complicity of our governments.
Now in Belgrade and other cities of Serbia continues to work - just read the reports coming regularly with the precise list of all the work done, to get an idea of \u200b\u200bthe wealth of cultural and policy of this network of women -. If for me, personally, this report continues to be a source of reflection and stimulus to a deeper commitment, I am convinced that for many of us, Italian Women in Black, my friends in Belgrade have been a point of reference, strong and authoritative, without which our own Italian movement could not have been mature and grow. From the beginning, In fact, groups of Italian Women in Black have focused on a particular director's commitment, as indicated by the words "Visit difficult places." They tried to forming relationships, relationships, bonds of solidarity for the development of an international policy of women an alternative to the logic of oppression, annihilation, capable of opposing nationalisms and ethnic divisions, a policy which he knew to take the criteria of non-violent conflict, and that would give recognition to the diversity of the parties in the field. Meeting the women of the Balkans, we were able to deal with the elements of their thinking and their action, factors that have enabled them to form aggregates policies that will last.
The highest and most significant step that these women have done was an act of disobedience, of abduction itself to the dominant ideology.
Instead of adhering to the demands of your country in the name of national unity urged to line up against an "external enemy", the women were able to identify "within their party, their institutions, those choices of violence, oppression, they could not share. Starting with himself, bringing out the reasons for its subjectivity, acted a rebellion from within and against of his world. "
(...) Back to these examples and retrieve this memory in the overall story of the International Network of Women in Black is important for us Italian, calls, in recent years to measure up a state that exports the war beyond its borders. ... and it reaffirms the logic and tools inside.
Today we are living difficult times: almost no one takes the word more against the war, but just For this reason, pronounce this word becomes increasingly necessary political action, because war is war now in our lives, and made against civil, the social fabric is crumbling though often presented as "humanitarian" and dispenser of democracy, whose enemy is war - both external and internal - is demonized, dehumanized, with which one can not speak nor treated.
Once again therefore it is necessary to stress the importance of our personal responsibility, opposition and condemnation of our governments, not in our name! Here, as in Belgrade and elsewhere in the world where as women take the floor, knowing how much we give strength to the report as a practice women's fundamental in our movement. A report which should be preserved, developed, revitalized, aware of the diversity and possible conflicts, resources and obstacles in the path of women who want to see the world through their eyes.
This also we learned from the relationship with the Women in Black in Belgrade.
Marianita De Ambrogio, Women in Black of Padua
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