TRAVEL REPORT The Hon. Michael Atkinson MP Attorney-General ...

everywhere which is very different from Australia, so my companions took theopportunity to smoke at the dinner table and at breakfast, the drivers drive atbreakneck speed, you'll have to readjust to that after Australia . . . there seemsto be a lot more . . . sexual liberation, I think Australia is perhaps a slightlyprudish society, we don't like to have our newspapers to have scantily cladwomen in them, or we don't like advertising . . . that are explicitly sexual, butthat's not a problem in Bosnia . . . (Presenter. . . .it's been going on for years,you 1 believe listen to some Bosnian music in your car and you bought a trackhere for us) I do, I had an enormously good time at the Bosnia HerzegovinaMuslim Society listening to Mr Tepic sing his songs and I was so impressedby his cabaret performance that I bought his CD and I've been listening to it inthe car, my driver has been tapping his feet . . . and there's a particular track Ienjoy (Presenter. . . .we're going to take a short break and play this track forMichael Atkinson . . .) [music] (Presenter: . . .now Michael will tell us a little bit ofthe trip and places that he actually did visit and I believe it was quite a few andthe driving was a bit scary because the roads are not that comfortable as SturtHighway) No, the roads are narrow, but they must bear the whole traffic of thenation . . . Bosnian drivers, like drivers in Croatia and Serbia are very impatient. . . and they're willing to take enormous risks in order to gain one car length,their overtaking is law defying and death defying, but on the other hand thecars approaching on the other side seem to give people some leeway to get inif they've overtaken recklessly (Presenter.- . .just as well you went to Sarajevonight time . . . so you didn't see all the big drops . . .) Oh no, we drove fromSarajevo . . . during the day and yes it was quite terrifying to look down, this isan extreme but beautiful landscape and I think it's one of the attractions ofBosnia, the magnificent engineering that's been done to get the roads throughsuch a mountainous country, the tunnels and the roads along the river valleys,it's one of the abiding memories I will have of Bosnia, we visited Srebrenica inRepublica Srpska and it was sobering to be shown over the cemetery that'sbeen established for what we think is about 8,000 men and boys killed over aperiod of three days winning captivity during the war, a beautiful memorialpark has been built with stone walls . . . the American Government in particularhas been helpful in identifying the mass graves where the bodies were takenafter the massacre to hide them, the bodies have been with dignity removedfrom the mass graves, they've been identified by DNA testing . . . with a greatdeal of certainty the identity of the bodies have been established thoughthey've been in the ground for a number of years . . . they've been re-interredat the cemetery at Srebrenica, we were shown over the cemetery . . . there isan exhibition which shows how the memorial park was achieved the DNAtechnology and what was done to do it . . . it's good that these bodies havebeen identified and interred according to Muslim religious rights . . . we alsovisited the abandoned battery factory over the road from where the killingsoccurred and where the Dutch United Nations troops have failed to protect themen and boys . . . it was explained to us exactly how this historical disasteroccurred . . . (Presenter: . . .in Srebrenica, it must have been a depressingplace for you to think of all the things that occurred there, to visit, but fromSrebrenica you moved on . . .) Just to be a little bit optimistic about Srebrenica,we did spend some time with the town council and there are Bosniac peoplenow represented on the council . . . as you know the mosque in Srebrenicawas dynamited, but a new mosque has been built under the patronage of theTravel Report, Hon. Michael Atkinson, MP . and Ms. Vini Ciccarello MP., August, 2004 120