Special Report LAST UPDATE November 8, 2006
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September 3, 2006 Global University Program Unit One – Understanding the Former - Yugoslavia
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A GU student presents, wearing a t-shirt reading “Wake the country up!”
Peace Boat offers participants a chance to study issues during a voyage in more depth through the Global University (GU) program. On the 54th voyage Unit One focused on issues surrounding former-Yugoslavia. The Unit Two focused on issues surrounding US military bases in Okinawa, Japan and Hawai’i (see article on GU Unit Two).

During Unit One, 25 students learned about how war in former-Yugoslavia was manufactured by those who would benefit from the conflict. They studied about propaganda in the media, and the creation of stereotypes to escalate violence between ethnic groups. They also learned about the efforts for reconciliation in civil society, including movements within Japan to reconcile with Chinese and Korean sex slaves (or “comfort women”) and to include more accurate information about Japan’s role during WWII in textbooks.
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The GU students after the presentation
Organized as half lecture and half discussion, the course offers students a chance to further explore what they learn from guest educators. They are also given the opportunity to participate in special study tours that take them to the places they are learning about to talk to people who are directly involved in the issues and are working to resolve the conflict and build peace. During Unit One GU students went on a five-day overland tour to Mostar and Sarajevo, Bosnia. They were joined by long-time staff member and International Student (IS) program coordinator Jasna Bastic, originally from Bosnia, who worked as a journalist in Sarajevo and more recently Switzerland.
Mostar is a small town that now, ten years after the war, still shows scars of the conflict due to a lack of reconstruction. They visited the site of Mostar Bridge, now a World Heritage site due to its symbolic link between divided ethnic groups during the war. They also visited members of Abrasevic, an NGO founded by youth (15 to 30 years old) who are rebuilding the town and working to eradicate stereotypes and ethnic divides through music, art and sports.

They also visited the small town of Srebrenica, just outside of Sarajevo. During the war 70,000 ethnic Muslims were rounded up by ethnic Serbians who took them into the forests and killed them. GU students visited a group of women who survived the genocide and are fighting to find the remains of their husbands, sons, and brothers, which continue to be moved and reburied by the aggressors who wish to hide the evidence of their atrocities. There has been a recent movement to indict these aggressors as war criminals.