Larisa Kasumagic on the Culture of Silence

Larisa Kasumagic is an educator from Bosnia and Herzegovina who has worked with organizations offering psycho-social support for war-traumatized children and their families. Kasumagic attended Facing History's Global Symposium during the Summer of 2005. In this clip, videotaped in 2004 when Kasumagic attended a Facing History Institute, she talks about the silence in the people of her country when it comes to discussing their recent history, and the danger of not openly confronting that history.
Transcript: 
"When I'm talking about this different sort of silence, which is not wholeness which is not fulfillment, which is not joy. I am thinking about many things that are still not talked about in our country. And that is the war itself, the genocide itself, the things that have happened, the silencing that we are experiencing between Bosnia and Serbia, between the people of those two countries. It's about getting together, talking about what had happened. Why it had happened. I'm just afraid that by repressing those things and by neglecting them, we can have the explosion of emotions in twenty, thirty, fifty years again, if they are not dealt with right now, then they will become, we will forget about them, many facts and many events will be blurred and blurred more. And then we will invent some other historical interpretations, and then we will suppress the feelings. And I am just afraid of that A-bomb as I see it, that might explode again if we don't talk about it openly."
Video length: 
1 min 08 sec
Date filmed: 
Jun 15 2004