It is the third year of the war and we are still in the street. For three years, the black in which we wrap our bodies has reminded others that war was instigated here. For three years, our female presence continuously told the Serbian regime: “your politics are death, disaster and sorrow for those in whose name you speak. Your ‘national interests’ only lead you to retain power and others to be destroyed.”
We, Women in Black, have made our protest visible. In the name of nation, blood and soil, towns and villages that we love have been destroyed. In the name of masculine war logic, women were raped, thousands of women, individually, many times.
In the name of ‘every nation’s right to self determination,’ Bosnia was murdered and is still being murdered. Women were tortured as human beings, as bodies, as members of a nation. People of all nationalities are escaping from Bosnia. They are killing everyone in Bosnia - children, women, and men of all nationalities.
Since the beginning of August 1994, the Serbian regime proclaims its support for "peace with no alternative" and condemns its recent disciples from the Republic of Srpska. Now, the Serbian regime is responsible for the blockade of the Republic of Srpska which affects the civilian population. With its new ‘peacemaking’ image, the Serbian regime would like to erase the facts about its responsibility for torture, murder, detention camps, rape, and destruction.
To forget a crime is a crime.
The actions of the global powers, particularly the Contact Group's support of Slobodan Milosevic’s ‘conversion to peacemaking,’ will certainly be used to justify and strengthen the regime’s internal repression against its ideological opponents, refugees, women, and people of other ethnicities, especially Albanians. Is this just one more case of the mutual understanding and compatibility between regional and global militarism?
Women will remember. Women are speaking to each other. We are the witnesses to many crimes that this regime is responsible for. Our women friends from throughout the former Yugoslavia are still telling us about the suffering they endured and what they are continuing to experience. Nationalism had not separated all of us. Truth still flows between women, regardless of their other identities.
We, the women who have gathered in the group Women in Black because of our pacifist and feminist beliefs, believe that peace is not just a maneuver, a tactic, or only the absence of war. For us, peace means decisions are made without hate. For us, peace means a life without violence and safe conditions for a life together with ‘the other.’ Our peace policy proves that it is possible to live together. Tenderness is one of the values we do not want to renounce.
EXPEL THE VIOLENCE FROM OUR LIVES! EXPEL THE WAR FROM HISTORY!
Belgrade, October 8, 1994
Always disobedient, and still in the streets...
Women in black - 30 years of resistance
9th october 1991 we took to the streets of Belgrade for the first time - that is when we began non- violent resistance to the war and the policies of the Serbian regime. So far, we have organized about 2,500 street actions. We are still in the streets ...
Women in Black / WiB is an activist group and network of feminist-anti-militarist orientation, consisting of women, but also men of different generational and ethnic backgrounds, educational levels, social status, lifestyles and sexual choices.
