Zagreb, June 20, 2023
On Friday, May 19, 2023, we had the opportunity to participate for the first time in the tenth Kliofest, an annual event dedicated to the popularization of historical science, where we presented four publications that we have published over the past year.
Firstly, we presented a research "Wartime nineties from the Perspective of Young People in Croatia" that we conducted out of the need to understand the attitudes and knowledge of young people related to the period of the nineties, especially in relation to events that stand on the margins in public space, education and dominant political discourse or are completely invisible. The results of this research, in addition to being of utmost importance for the further work of the Initiative, are also useful for the wider historiographic community, primarily professors and students, because they indicate the lack of information and, consequently, the need to fill gaps in the knowledge of youth when it comes to events from the nineties.
Furthermore, we presented a publication on the causes and consequences of nationalist trends in Croatia "Is this a country for all of us?" (“Jel ovo zemlja za sve nas?”), composed of research articles by five young authors who were given the opportunity to write about nationalism from their own academic disciplines and areas of interest, i.e. about different ways in which it materializes and influences the shaping of (post)war reality. By presenting such a publication, we tried to show that it is necessary to create an additional space in which there will be opportunities to rethink the established approaches to the contemporary Croatian history and bring marginalized topics into focus from the perspective of young researchers.
We also referred to the publication "Inclusive Memory: Recommendations for Commemorating Civilian Victims of War for Representatives of Local and Regional Self-Government in the Republic of Croatia", which provides a coherent and concise overview of international acts and examples of good practice in a regional context, and aims to encourage local authorities to actively engage in preserving the memory of all civilian victims of war regardless of their national origin or ethnicity. It is worth recalling that we have delivered recommendations to all units of local and regional self-government in the Republic of Croatia, and it should be especially emphasized that we also sent them to the Mayor of the City of Zagreb in 2021 on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the suffering of members of the Zec family.
The last publication we presented is the photo-manual "Landscapes of memory of the Homeland War" by Vjeran Pavlaković. "Landscapes of Memory" is the result of the desire of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights to deepen knowledge about the politics of remembrance the wars of the 1990s in Croatia, and a special focus is placed on the analysis of monuments built to commemorate the war in Croatia. Bearing in mind the rise of memorialization through street art, above all graffiti and murals, we pointed to the importance of further research of such practices in reproducing the dominant policies of memory in the region.
The participation of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights at Kliofest shows the importance of dialogue and cooperation with the academic community, i.e. the recognition of the Initiative and its work as a relevant actor when it comes to topics that are close to historical science, and concern the period of the nineties and their consequences. In other words, as one of the organizers of the festival put it - "This was not just an ordinary presentation, but a historical and turning performance at the very heart of academic historiography". We hope this is only the first step in achieving future joint activities.
PHOTO: Dora Tomljanović