November 30, 2008, Washington, DC: The Advocacy Project (AP) recently exhibited the Srebrenica Memorial Quilt at the Theater J in Washington after performances of Honey Brown Eyes, a popular new play on Bosnia.

Set in Bosnia at the outbreak of the war in 1992, the play follows the parallel stories of two soldiers and former friends. In a kitchen in Serbian-held Visegrad, a Bosniak mother and her child are confronted by Bosnian Serb soldier who used to be friends with her brother. Meanwhile, in another kitchen in Bosnian-held Sarajevo, an elderly woman who has been left behind by her family struggles to survive in a city under siege.

AP Executive Director Iain Guest spoke in a panel discussion on the international community’s response to genocide after a showing of the play on November 7. AP Outreach Coordinator Alison Sluiter spoke on a panel on post-conflict reconciliation after the November 30 matinee.

The Srebrenica Memorial Quilt is made by the weavers of Bosnian Family (BOSFAM), a women’s group and AP partner based in Tuzla, Bosnia. Each of its 80 panels carries the name of an individual massacre victim, some of whom are related to the weavers themselves. More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed at Srebrenica, after the UN safe haven fell to Bosnian Serb forces July 11, 1995.

The quilt was also displayed at Mt Holyoke College in Massachusetts on November 21 to accompany a panel discussion titled “Post-Conflict Reconciliation in Bosnia and Rwanda – Beyond National Recovery.” That panel was organized by Hibba Adawy, a former AP intern.