Markale Market

Transcript

Markale remained a functioning market during the siege of Sarajevo, when civilians were already living under shelling, sniper fire and severe shortages.

On 5 February 1994 a mortar round struck the market area, killing 68 people and wounding more than a hundred according to Sarajevo’s museum commemoration. A second deadly attack occurred near the market in August 1995.

The siege lasted from 1992 until 1995, almost four years. Reducing it to a handful of infamous incidents can hide the daily structure of violence: water collection, queues, crossings, heating, schools, funerals and the constant calculation of exposure.

This is not a place for a witty closing line.

If the market is active, notice ordinary commerce continuing around a site of memory. That coexistence is not disrespect. It is what cities do when survival has to become life again.

Synthetic narration. Sources are linked below.

Sources

• Museum of Sarajevo — Austro-Hungarian administration in Sarajevo
• Museum of Sarajevo — Sarajevo assassination: 112 years later
• Museum of Sarajevo — 20th-century collection
• Olympic Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina — Olympic Museum
• Museum of Sarajevo — Memory of the Markale massacre