BIRN Launches ‘Diaspora Tales’ Podcast on War, Emigration and Balkan Roots

BIRN Launches ‘Diaspora Tales’ Podcast on War, Emigration and Balkan Roots Illustration: BIRN/Igor Vujcic. Over five instalments, the “Diaspora Tales” podcast series, launched on Friday, follows artists, journalists and professionals who were forced to leave the Balkans during the conflicts of the 1990s – or grew up abroad after their families fled – and who have maintained strong ties to their roots. The podcast series, developed and narrated by BIRN journalist Azem Kurtic, weaves together interviews and personal reflections, and is part of BIRN’s “Diaspora Tales” project, which also includes a six-part feature series. “This project gives an insight into positive examples of people who left their homelands during the turbulent 1990s but made a genuine difference as members of the diaspora,” said Gentiana Murati, deputy regional director of BIRN. “Despite the traumatic circumstances in which they left, they maintain close connections with their homeland and continue to work for benefit of people living there,” she added. One episode focuses on Kreshnik “Nik” Shala, who as a 15-year-old refugee helped to digitise lists of displaced people during the Kosovo war so that families searching from abroad could locate relatives who had fled. Today, based in Finland, he works in digital technology and builds websites and digital tools for cultural initiatives and NGOs in Kosovo, often free of charge. Another story follows artist Anita Karabasic, who grew up in the Netherlands after her parents fled Prijedor during the Bosnian war. Her work explores memory, denial and the legacy of wartime crimes, including a ceramic monument inspired by the crimes in Prijedor and a multimedia project that draws on archival material to examine patterns of genocide. The series also looks at the experiences of journalists Faik, Ragip and Valbona Luta, who reported on the Kosovo war from London while working for the BBC Albanian Service. Years later, they returned to their hometown of Orlan and founded a literary festival near Lake Batlava, bringing writers and musicians from across the region and beyond to a small village in Kosovo. Another instalment features Sandra Ivanov, whose family fled Serbia during the wars of the 1990s and settled in New Zealand, leaving behind sanctions, hunger and uncertainty. Today, she is a humanitarian worker whose life mission has become to help others. The series also features members of Children of Srebrenica in Melbourne, who are helping to preserve the memory of the 1995 genocide and supporting educational and initiatives linked to survivors and their families. Through these stories, “Diaspora Tales” examines how exile, identity and memory continue to shape the lives of people from the region. Rather than focusing solely on trauma, the project highlights the ways diaspora communities contribute to cultural life, civil society and public debate both abroad and in their countries of origin. Listen to the podcast series via this link. The six articles published by Balkan Insight prior to the launch of the podcast can be found on the Diaspora Tales focus page.