November 2025. Mostar. A woman runs down a street in the city. A man is chasing her with a gun in his hand. She shouts, “Call the police, he has a gun!” No one stops, no one gets up from their chairs. “Help!” Nothing. Gunshots. He caught up with her. Her name was Aldina Jahić and she was 32 years old
During 2023 and 2024, 35 women were killed in Bosnia and Herzegovina – more than one murder per month. Who still remembers their names? For years, young people on the program Perspektiva have been warning about and speaking on this issue.
“The punishments here are encouraging. Stimulating, to do it again, instead of being deterrent, so that if you’ve done something wrong, you end up behind bars.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-zenica-mladi/33364460.html
“I think that women are profoundly dehumanized, seen as second class beings. Especially from a political perspective, where they are not viewed as human beings but as someone’s sister, someone’s mother, as something that belongs to someone, as if they were an object.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/mladi-brcko-distrikta-ep-tri/31305136.html
“I am wearing a skirt today, that is, a dress. Does that mean I will burn in hell because of what I chose to wear? Does that mean I must not and cannot move safely down the street dressed like this? Does that mean everyone has the right and opportunity to approach me and say, you are indecent, I will rape you?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u98tBMFJQy4&ab_channel=RadioSlobodnaEvropa
A columnist on the website Buka.ba wrote that Bosnia and Herzegovina lives in a time when “the victim bears the burden of guilt, and the perpetrator the burden of justification.” But in the story from Mostar there is another problem. What kind of society have we become that no one, but no one, calls the police while a man with a gun chases a woman who is crying for help?
“Domestic violence, violence in relationships, and violence in general are taboo topics in Montenegro, thngs that are rarely talked about.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-budva-crna-gora/32300214.html
“We are totally fragmented as a society, down to the smallest parts, into the cells in which we exist.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-beograd-drustvo-podjele-kosovo-srbija/32923969.html
“I have the feeling that human rights are being reduced to a kind of cultural imperialism, where we view them like a buffet, and that whatever I think, whatever my cultural code is, whatever my idea of how things should be like, I feel entitled to impose that on everyone else.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-beograd-drustvo-podjele-kosovo-srbija/32923969.html
“Violence favors the powerful and benefits those who have something to gain from such situations.”
https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/perspektiva-u-zenici/33349582.html
Experts say that more people mean fewer chances that someone will react – everyone thinks, why me; people choose self preservation because they are afraid; they do not trust institutions; a culture of silence dominates. In addition, there are no campaigns to inform victims how to seek help and report abusers. The authorities are concerned not with lives, but with their own interests. The names of the victims are forgotten.
When will my name be forgotten?
