Judging by the graffiti that are cluttering the seat of cantonal government - " Death to nationalism," "Stop the national division of the Bosnian people ", " united Bosnia " - you would think that with Tito in Tuzla lived better. This population of 170,000 in northeastern Bosnia, cast aside a bleak landscape of factories, apartment blocks and cells and a sky textured paste, is the cradle of the protests since last Wednesday have jeopardized the different governments - the federal, cantonal and local- Bosnia - Herzegovina. The essentially peaceful uprising of thousands of citizens took to the streets daily to demand social justice.
The Dita factory, producing detergent and employed 110 people who are owed 27 months of salary (and 50 pension contribution and health insurance), is the epicenter of the popular uprising. Without meaning to, their workers have lit the fuse of discontent throughout the country, and not even explain how. " We manifestábamos every Wednesday for two years to reclaim our money, and the last, everything changed. Now we feel that we support, "he explained in the factory yard Bukvic Mirza, who has occupied the premises with others " to keep the valuables owner takes ".
The owner is a tycoon who bought this Sarajevo and other plants in Bosnia when the state privatized and left to die slowly, if not scrapped, with a record of bankruptcy that is worth less than the wet paper and different administrations are bounced with the excuse of not having the power to process it. Many see behind the process, a thinly disguised attempt to reclassify land and give urban pitch.
"We have no unemployment insurance, no aid of any kind. We have spent two years living in our families: parents or children. At best, some fudge for hours or days, "said Bukvic. Slalojka Markanović, a co-worker with the same face cracked he explains that his family home is six (one less), none of the adults work, and they all live in the 300 convertible marks (150 euros) father 's pension. Thirty years of work behind and uninsured for three, nor will board whether the conflict is not resolved. " Do not tell politicians that demonstrators are hooligans " cries, referring to the unrest Friday that authorities attributed to fans of the local football team. "These are our children, who have spent years watching us suffer, it is hunger. The real hooligans were the ministers and the Prime Minister [ Tuzla Canton ], which does not want to understand what it is to have nothing to eat. "
Dita is not the only one affected by a wild privatization process (without legal guarantees) factory, for conversion to any part of, polluting heavy industry of the Yugoslav era. Tuzla was the economic heart of the region, and four other factories have suffered the same fate. Apart from the power plant, which exports electricity - at the cost of threatening and spitting smoke acre, with volume - mushroom cloud, other plants survive in dire condition, as Solana, which processes local salinas salt and whose production piled in sacks in the yard because Sarajevo, neighbor and partner theoretical Tuzla within the Bosnian - Croat Federation canton, you do not buy stocks to undo the snow in winter, on the contrary, is imported from abroad. Solana exported to countries in the region, yes, but ignores Bosnia. Things of local politics: fighting between nationalists (Sarajevo) and socialist (Tuzla), as part of the protest because people are hungry.
In Tuzla not seem to have dropped the iron curtain. City pulling leftist roots and tradition of working - insurgent monument to mining, applied example of socialist realism recalls his struggles in the last century, and retains the faded patina of deep earthy Serbia or Kosovo cities backward. A relic of Eastern Europe, revived 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, only further stained with blood.
Mehmedovic Djivaz, union president Dita workers, know it well, for it was combatant " and defender of the city " during the war (1992-1995). "Those who accuse us of causing riots, burning buildings [Friday partly burned the headquarters of the cantonal government and the city ] do not know what they say. I defended this city jugándome life during the war, I am a worker, not a leader or a politician. Continue manifesting, because it is not only a protest of workers but of all citizens, "explains Djivaz.
Just out of court, claiming a solution for the umpteenth time to file bankruptcy all are passed from hand to hand and no one matches - or dare - solve. It is a valiant survivor, with as fragile as the dividing line between the citizen and the deep despair that engulfs everything encouragement of violence.
Tags: battle, Bosnian