Bosnia City Salutes Kung-Fu Fighter Bruce Lee As Icon Of Peace

by Vesna Peric Zimonjic

(IPS) -- It took a long-dead martial arts movie star to bring the divided people of this war-torn town together Saturday, at least for a while.

A life-size statue of Bruce Lee was unveiled in the City Park to show that good can prevail over evil.

Lee was a hero of kung-fu films. He was 33 when he was killed in 1973. The unveiling of the bronze statue in Bosnia came a day before a statue of Lee was due to be unveiled in Hong Kong, where he made most of his movies. Mostar struggled two years to unveil its statue before the one in Hong Kong.

"We live in a hyper-politicized region and we wanted to show that something can be made that is acceptable to all the people here, something that has sense and value," Nino Raspudic, member of the local group Urban Movement, told IPS.

"Bruce Lee was chosen as he was the symbol of our youth, when loyalty, friendship and skills that win over rude force were cherished," added his partner in the enterprise, Veselin Gatalo.

Their proposal prevailed in the face of opposition from many in the town.

Mostar, once a prosperous home to some 120,000 people, paid a high price in the 1992-95 war that devastated Bosnia-Herzegovina. Two thousand people died in the conflict here.

The fighting in the town raged between local Catholic Croats and Bosniak Muslims of Slav origin. The local Orthodox Serb minority fled when the war began, and few returned.

Croats moved swiftly to take control of the western part of the city, and forced more than 26,000 Muslims across the Neretva river to the eastern part, the Turkish-era core of the city.

Heavy shelling by the Croat army devastated more than 5,000 homes in eastern Mostar. The Muslims evicted from the western side found shelter only among the ruins.

Reconstruction is still under way. Scars of the war remain visible along the street that divided the old, Turkish-era part of town from the new Mostar, with its modern high-rise buildings, neat parks and shopping malls. The street, The Boulevard as it was called, became the frontline in the war.

The old stone buildings along the street were destroyed by Croat shelling a decade ago. Warnings of mines still hang on many of them. Other signs warn against a snake infestation.

The Bosnian Croat army also destroyed the Old Bridge that had stood for centuries as the symbol of Mostar. It was reconstructed and opened last year.

The Mostar tourist office says more than 600,000 tourists visited the town this summer, bringing millions of dollars in badly needed hard currency. Tourism remains a prime hope of the impoverished region.

But the people of Mostar remain bitterly divided, despite the peace, international reconciliation efforts, and reconstruction of the bridge. Its population has shrunk to less than 100,000.

Separate health, police and fire-fighting services are run for the east and west parts of the town. There are no joint schools for Croatian and Muslim children.

Amra Kazic, head of the ombudsman office in Mostar, describes the situation in the town as "still catastrophic" in terms of human rights.

"Neither the city authorities, nor international organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) or the Office of the High Representative (OHR -- the international administrator of Bosnia-Herzegovina), do anything to improve the situation," she told local media.

Property rights, the question of return to pre-war homes, and employment of people of "undesired" ethnicity remain the most painful issues.

"We even had a problem to what side the statue would point its raised hand," Gatalo said. "If it pointed west, it would be as though he would fight Croats. If he pointed to the east, it would be against Muslims. So, he's pointing north, nowhere in particular."

The statue was put up in the western part of the town.

Bruce Lee is also "so neutral," Gatalo said. "He has no historical links with us, did nothing bad in World War I or World War II, has no local origin -- he was not Catholic, Muslim or Orthodox. But he represents the idea that the good guys can win."

Not everybody sees it that way.

"That is so weird," Jasna Jerkic, 33, a teacher from the Croat side, said. "What real connections does he have with us, or what has he ever done for Mostar?"

Like many local Croats, she says she has never been across the reconstructed Old Bridge.

"It's not in Mostar (the Old Bridge), but in Turkey," 23-year old Damir Sunjic told IPS. "Mostar has an important monument of its own," he added, pointing at the giant cross erected in the war years at Hum, the tallest hill overlooking the western part of the town.

"That is the spot where Christianity ends in this region," he said. "From that spot on, it's the Orient."