Every year on April 6 the inhabitants of the Bosnian capital commemorate the Day of the City of Sarajevo. The day marks both the city’s liberation from the German occupying forces in 1945 — and the start of the siege by Bosnian Serbs in 1992. The day before, the Bosnian parliament had declared the country’s independence from what had been communist Yugoslavia.
On April 5, 1992, more than 100,000 people also took part in peace protests — until shots were fired on the demonstrators from the seat of the Serbian nationalist party. The bullets killed two women: the first victims of the Bosnian War. The following day, what had been the…
