Tag Archives: 2014

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’