This week demonstrators have been protesting against government incompetence and 40% levels of unemployment in Bosnia. In Sarajevo, protesters set fire to government buildings, including the Historical archives of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Particularly bad was the damage sustained by a specific depot in which thousands of documents from the Ottoman Empire, through the Austro-Hungarian Empire to World War II are stored. These include irreplaceable information about war crimes during the Nazi's puppet regime in Bosnia, while others relating to Habsburg times, such as the one pictured here, help us understand more fully the tensions evident in the area 100 years ago, when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, lighting the touch paper for World War I. Given that so much of this knowledge has now passed from memory into history, these archives are essential for documenting our past.
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