Prof. Eric Gordy on 2014 Bosnian Protests and Plenums

Professor Eric Gordy, senior lecturer at University College London, gave a short interview for the “Direct Democracy and Active Citizenship,” providing valuable insights into social movements, global crisis of democratic institutions. commented on the what it means to be an active citizen today.

“Time/space can expand. What keeps the institutions closed now is the presence of the vested interest from the past within them. And they are not always going to be there. But a movement that is independent, that is more or less autonomous, has a couple of advantages. One of them is the ability to bypass institutions, to operate beside them independently. And the other is the ability to get attention, which is something the non-institutional movements on the far right know very well. That a few dramatic public performances can change discourse really fundamentally, and is it something the cognate movements on the left are very hesitant to do.”

Besides Professor Gordy, check out the other interviews and video materials gathered on the uprising in Bosnia during February 2014.

Reclaiming the factory: a story from Bosnia by ANDJELA PEPIC

Originally published at Open Democracy.

Privatisation processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina have gradually destroyed workers’ rights and ownership. But there are stories of hope and resistance emerging from this battered country.

Privatisation processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the 1990s onwards have gradually transferred ownership and power from the socialist state to private entrepreneurs. As elsewhere in Europe and the rest of the world, this process, in most cases, was accompanied by a large number of lay-offs. Company assets floated in the market and were bought and sold at unusually low prices, dismantling large factories and industrial giants of former Yugoslavia.

Financialisation/globalisation became embedded in Bosnia especially in the wake of the Dayton Accords. The workers, who were once deemed to be the owners of the enterprise, overnight became proletarians, deprived of fundamental rights and any form of possession over the production process. This was pretty much the case across the entire East-Central Europe, although the case of Yugoslav socialism was different, as the workers, through the self-management system, had had a much more direct control of the means and objects of their production units than anywhere else in the so-called countries of “really-existing socialism”.

Yugoslavia’s dissolution and transition to free market capitalism was also different in that it set in motion a bizarre process of primitive ethno-accumulation, i.e. primitive accumulation on the basis of ethnocratic-conflictual lines. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a typical example.

Among the many examples of the negative effects of privatisation processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one that was under the media spotlight in the past two years, is the case of “Dita” detergents factory from Tuzla, an industrial city in the central part of North-East Bosnia. The factory was privatised in two rounds (2001 and 2005) and become part of retail chain, “Lora”, from Sarajevo, who owned the majority of shares. The privatisation of “Dita” resulted in more than 20 million Euros in debt for the enterprise and over 20 wages being unpaid, affecting a four-year retirement plan, also due.

In the end, this led to the official bankruptcy of the enterprise. A series of workers’ strikes ensued in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The 2014 February protests started as joint protests of workers from several factories and enterprises in Tuzla (Dita, Konjuh, Aida) requesting the government of the Tuzla Canton to resolve the outstanding issues and waive the blame attributed to workers. The workers claimed that the cause of the crisis was and is the privatisation process and irresponsible management. These protests turned out to be the trigger for wider social protests in several cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In early 2015, the Tuzla Canton government decided to revise the privatisation process of several enterprises, including “Dita”, starting an orderly bankruptcy procedure in view of enabling the creditors to get their money back while creating possibilities for re-launching and reviving production. The problem with the bankruptcy procedure (according to the existing legal framework) is that the workers are the last in the list of priorities: the “investors” and bureaucratic agencies will have to be paid first, and whatever is left over would go to the unpaid wages, pensions etc.

A sparkle of hope for the workers themselves is actually their own efforts for restarting production and trying to save what is possible to be saved in order to keep their jobs and eventually have their salaries paid. In June 2015, the Union of Workers of “Dita”, and the bankruptcy manager, reached an agreement to restart some of the production lines (since much of the production lines are in need of repairs for which there is no money available).

The plan is to start with production of some famous (in former Yugoslavia) products and support for this initiative is enlisted by civil society actors and people across the country (mainly expressed through support on Facebook and calls for support for purchasing “Dita” products). Some of the supermarket chains have already decided to support the efforts of “Dita” workers by buying their products and making them available on their stores’ shelves. However, this all is just a trial version of activities to be tested and any form of continuity has to be decided by the shareholders’ assembly to be held on 30 June 2015.

Will these efforts take root or quickly fade away? Does this mean that the spirit of the workers’ self-management is coming back in advanced and mature post-socialist colours, emblematically in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the most ethnically fragmented region of the former Yugoslavia in which primitive accumulation was criss-crossed with vicious ethnic war?

After years of their voices being unheard, struggles to keep the factory under collective ownership seem to bear some fruits. These struggles exposed corrupt governments and managers and brought to the fore the class issue as opposed to the ethnic and religious division which, if anything, divert attention from the real social issues.

Prior to 2014, there were numerous cases of workers’ rights violations that were only seen as a by-product of “transition“ and “post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina”, which were mostly related to ethnic, religious and political divisions. This is no longer the case after the protests of February 2014.

The narrative begins to change and the story of workers is becoming more and more important. Class cleavages supersede religious and ethnic ones and the ethno-capitalism of primitive accumulation and privatisation, of political clientelism and corruption have shown their limits. No one can explain the spirit of this mini-revolution better than the words of a “Dita” worker: “Industry is alive as long as there are workers ready to fight for their basic right – the right to work”.

Documentary: Bosnia and Herzegovina in Spring

“This short documentary tells the story of the uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina that started in early February 2014.

Since February 5 2014, protests have swept across Bosnia and Herzegovina. The protests were started by workers from five factories in northern city of Tuzla: Dita, Polihem, Poliolhem, GUMARA and Konjuh. The factories had been privatized, bankrupted and stripped of assets, leaving the workers with large debts, no salaries, no health care and no benefits.

The protests culminated on February 7, 2014 when several governmental buildings were set on fire in cities across the country, including the presidential building in Sarajevo. Under pressure of protests, four regional governments resigned.

The protests were followed with mass popular assemblies, referred to as plenums, that quickly spread across the country.”

Brandon Jourdan is an award-winning independent filmmaker, journalist, and writer. Visit his blog and website at:

Sead Bušatlija on people’s unity

Sead Bušatlija from Plenum Bugojno talks about how people got united during the protests and plenums. “It is all about the politicians fear…We as the people got united through plenums, 100%. Serbs, Muslims, Gypsies, Bosnians.”

We have talked to some of the leaders of the February 2014 uprisings as well with some scholars in the field who offer valuable insight on the situation. Listen to more interviews.

Aida Sejdić about the Bosnian Spring

Aida talks about the injustice that she could no longer stand which was the moment when people took to the streets. “It was not about ethnic-nationalism…this was about socio-economic problems in which we have been all united and we still are.”  Continue reading Aida Sejdić about the Bosnian Spring

Wolfgang Petritsch & Christophe Solioz: 1914–2014 Bosnia needs an assertive Europe

 In most countries which have recently converted to democracy or, more precisely, where western democratic methods have been imported without proper preparation within the country, there we find a pseudo-democracy, or a corrupted democracy, because there is no real creative tension between the social power and the political power, only the manipulation of pseudo-democratic institutions by the holders of social power. In such a case, there is no possibility for the representatives of new social classes to come to power. At which point, there is revolution.

[Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie politique, Paris: Fallois, 1997, p. 108.]

Continue reading Wolfgang Petritsch & Christophe Solioz: 1914–2014 Bosnia needs an assertive Europe

Danijela Majstorović: What remains ‘after plenums’: activist citizenship and the language of the ‘new political’

In defense of the commons

Bosnian protests

Asking for resignations of the entire government

Plenums are informal assemblies of citizens that emerged out of the February 2014 protests, of “the humiliated and insulted” in Dostoyevsky’s terms, and as such they reflect a plurality of voices and multitudes untied in overthrowing the comprador, profiteering elites in power in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the first time since the 1992-1995 war, there were individuals and collectives instead of bureaucracies and institutions, a.k.a. ethno-nationalist political parties holding uninterrupted power for almost twenty years after the Dayton, who came together in renewed solidarity in sharing common past, bodies, goods, and goals in what they recognize as a state of exception (Agamben 2005). The plenums/protests in Bosnia are the greatest “event” (Badiou 2007) after the peace followed by the 1992-1995 war and as such they are articulating the new political. Wo(men) that poured onto the streets present a point of breaking and entering into the public space and are a rupture within the register of current political practice.

Continue reading Danijela Majstorović: What remains ‘after plenums’: activist citizenship and the language of the ‘new political’

Declaration Of Sarajevo Protesters

IN THE NAME OF CITIZENS ON THE STREETS OF SARAJEVO

We declare:

We, the people who went out onto the streets of Sarajevo yesterday, also regret the injuries and damage to properties, but our regret also extends to the factories, public spaces, cultural and scientific institutions, and human lives, all of which were destroyed as a direct result of actions by those (ALL THOSE) in power for, now, over 20 years. We ask our fellow citizens and fellow sufferers not to allow these unpleasant scenes to cloud the fact that this kind of government and those in power have costs us immeasurably more.

Continue reading Declaration Of Sarajevo Protesters