In the fourth of BIRN’s series about war-displaced people’s enduring connections to their home countries, the founders of Children of Srebrenica Melbourne explain how they’re turning private grief into public commemoration.
Azem Kurtic
Their next goal is to move into schools. Through contacts with the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo, they hope to introduce structured teaching materials on the genocides in Srebrenica, Rwanda and Cambodia into Australian classrooms.
“In an Islamic school, that’s easy,” Cehic says. “In a public school, it’s harder. But that’s where it matters most.”
Funding, for now, is informal. Community members donate small sums. A donation button sits quietly on their website, rarely used.
“Money is not the problem,” Suljagic says. “Organisation is. Our parents never had the time or tools to build institutions. We do.”
That sense of generational shift runs through everything they do. Their parents fled war. They navigate universities, parliaments and media.
“We have white privilege here,” Suljagic says, bluntly, with an Aussie accent. “We look Australian. That opens doors. We can use that to tell the truth.”
Their activism is not limited to Bosnia. Like many survivors’ families, they draw parallels with contemporary conflicts. During last year’s commemoration, Palestinian flags were raised alongside the Flower of Srebrenica. While speaking to BIRN, Suljagic also wore a small Palestinian flag and a Flower of Srebrenica on her chest.
“For me, Srebrenica is a symbol,” Suljagic says. “Not just of what happened to Bosniaks, but of what happens when the world looks away.”
Cehic adds that such connections are natural for children of genocide survivors. “You recognise the language of dehumanisation. You hear it again and again.”
Still, the core mission remains focused: honouring their families and ensuring their stories do not disappear.
“My father didn’t ‘die’,” Suljagic says. “He was murdered. Words matter.”
The group plans another large commemoration in Melbourne this July, possibly in a central, neutral venue, rather than a mosque hall. They hope to involve academics, artists and teachers. They want to reach beyond the Bosnian community.
“Otherwise,” Cehic says, “we are just repeating the same circle.”
That responsibility is the quiet engine behind Children of Srebrenica Melbourne: not nostalgia, not vengeance, but continuity.
Their parents survived genocide and displacement. Now their children must survive forgetting.
“We can’t leave this to chance,” Suljagic says. “If we don’t tell the story, someone else will rewrite it.”
In a country half a world away from Bosnia, the children of Srebrenica are building something their parents never had time to imagine: a public memory, spoken in English, grounded in evidence, and carried by a new generation.
“It’s not about living in the past,” Cehic says. “It’s about making sure the future knows what happened.”
