• 

• 

• 

Everything is so quiet. While there are some people out, there are significantly fewer than I would expect and I have seen very few cars driving around. Honestly, the whole vibe of this city is really throwing me off. I think that is due to the fact that it’s a new, unfamiliar place that we’ve only heard about as being in the Republika Srpska, which is majority Serb and opposes the Federation. Given that we began this trip in the Federation, we obviously have a biased view of Republika Srpska, but after meeting with the bishop and the government officials, I was not comforted by their positions at all.

When meeting with the government officials, I was immediately put off by how they denied the presence of ultranationalism groups. Specifically, the one man said that he had only heard of the 1389 Movement in the media. We were literally in Banja Luka for less than 48 hours and I saw graffiti all over the city supporting it. This, coupled with the discussion of youth’s perspective of the political corruption, made me question how often they interact with their constituents. How can they not acknowledge the potential for this problem as it continues to grow and gain prominence?

In addition, there was blatant Islamophobia during the discussion. They began by talking about how liberal and open-minded Muslims are, but by the end they were saying how they feared the creation of a Muslim state in the center of Europe. Also, they automatically assumed that all terrorist groups and nationalist groups were based in Islam. They went so far as to compare Al-Queda to the 1389 Movement and say that that movement (if it did exist) wouldn’t be nearly as bad. While one can always try to draw parallels, those two groups are completely different in terms of their motives, but they automatically painted the Muslims as the bad guys. They didn’t even acknowledge the threat that the 1389 Movement plays to Muslims and other non-Serb in BiH. I acknowledge that everyone has the right to their opinion, their opinions of Muslims were entirely Islamophobic and misguided, and I don’t understand how they can base government decisions off of them.