(May-June, 2002)
“Transeuropean,” a French NGO, organized this two-week journey through traumatized areas of former Yugoslavia and the Balkans. Civil society and antimilitarist activists participated in the trip. Since 1994 “Transeuropean” has facilitated meetings and contacts outside of the local environment in the Balkans. The idea to travel from Slovenia to Albania was formed in 1999, among activists from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo. One of its main goals was listening to, looking at, and taking on others’ pain, and having compassion for it. The caravan passed through many cities that were chosen as symbolic places of different aspects of conflict and as places of working alternatives to the politics of war: Vukovar, Tuzla, Srebrenica, Nis, Kraljevo, Pristina, Prekaze, Kosovska Mitrovica, Kumanovo, Tetovo, Petrovac na moru, Skadar, Mostar, and Knin. The activists crossed the border on foot each time. “This was the fundamental political problem,” Zarana Papic said of it later, adding that in this way 10 years of life were moved in 15 days. The only border where there was a problem was the border between the western and southern parts of Kosovska Mitrovica, which the activists crossed but where they were not allowed to walk on the western, Serbian side of the town, because they had come from the southern, Albanian side.
