Three Students From Bosnia Pray For Peace On Eve Of Peace Talks, They Will Lead Prayer Service At Gonzaga
FOR THE RECORD (October 28, 1995): Clarification: A Sunday afternoon prayer service and benefit promoting peace in Bosnia is sponsored by St. Michael’s Institute at Gonzaga University. The group sponsoring the event wasn’t listed in a story on Friday.
Last month, Mirsad Jacevic’s mother was wounded by shrapnel when a shell exploded in a marketplace as she shopped for groceries.
On Sunday, Jacevic and two other students at Gonzaga University will lead a prayer for peace in their homeland of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Jacevic’s mother and thousands of other civilians have been hurt or killed.
The special service comes on the eve of peace talks among leaders of the three warring factions in the former Yugoslavia. It is the first real attempt at ending the war, which broke out in the spring of 1992.
“We feel a need to do something,” said Tatjana Stojak, 19, who was a high school exchange student in Spokane when the fighting began. “We are hoping someone will hear our prayers.”
Ana Kapor, 20, is the third Bosnian refugee living out the war at Gonzaga. Her family fled Sarajevo and sent her to the United States shortly after the war erupted. Her parents live on the Croatian coast.
She grieves every day for her hometown, family and friends, who’ve been changed by the war.
“Somebody will ask me what Bosnia is like and I will say, ‘Do you have five days, five months to listen?”’ she said. “Sarajevo was a normal city, it was great place to grow up. I have to force myself not to think about it every second.”
While they say they are lucky to escape the war, it’s painful to watch the fighting from a far.
“We’re just all hoping for peace,” Kapor said of the prayer service. “And we need something to calm us down a little.”
Growing up in Sarajevo and nearby Tuzla, the three students were enriched by a culture of ethnic and religious diversity.
“I knew about Christmas and I knew about Ramadan,” Jacevic said of the holidays significant to Christians and Muslims. “You can always mix religions if you try.”
Sarajevo was a place where Orthodox Serbs and Croats have lived alongside Muslims, Jews and Roman Catholics for centuries.
Jacevic and Kapor both are from ethnically mixed families, which they said is typical for the region. Jacevic’s father is Muslim and his mother a Serb. Kapor’s mother is a Roman Catholic Croatian, her father Serbian.
“If the Serbs and the Muslims can’t get along, how did I get here?” Jacevic asked. “But the effect now, since the war, is people really do hate each other.”
Three years ago, with the ethnic breakup of Yugoslavia, power hungry politicians built up armies and started a land-grab.
“It could have happened anywhere in Europe. It could have happened in Hungary or Poland,” Kapor said.
Stojak hopes someday to return to Bosnia to raise a family. Kapor and Jacevic doubt that ever will happen.
“What they have gone through is so different from us,” Kapor said. “It is not even the same place anymore.”
The students agreed they often are frustrated when they try to explain how a war started by politicians has broken the spirit of the people.
“The people there, no one wants the war. It was forced on them,” Kapor said. “If it was up to us, to the people, we would all be home and going to school there.”
Roman Catholic Bishop William Skylstad will preside at the prayer service at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Jesuit House Chapel at Gonzaga University.
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