Zetra Project commemorating a 1991 anti-war concert in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Image: YouTube It's summertime in the former Yugoslavia, when nationalist passions run high, as people look back on the wars in the 1990s that tore the nation apart. This July, some Internet users decided to go a different route, remembering the proud, albeit unsuccessful, attempts to stop those wars. Traditionally, political elites in the region have used the war anniversary to provoke ethnic and religious tensions by organizing state celebrations and making inflammatory public statements, including denials of genocide and war crimes established by international courts, sometimes resulting in media frenzies. The two most politically charged anniversaries are the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, and the August 1995 Operation Storm in Croatia. (The former is the internationally-recognized genocide of the ethnic Bosniak population by Bosnian Serb forces. The latter is a major military victory by the Croatian Army, resulting in ethnic cleansing of ethnic Serb population in the region of Krajina.) Fed up with the tendency to exploit these anniversaries for divisive political purposes, some Internet users throughout the region have tried to refocus the public's attention on anti-war efforts from the early 1990s. This approach breaks with official histories and most mainstream media coverage, and creates opportunities for “true reconciliation,” activists argue. The effort combines both spontaneous individual acts and organized activities. For example, the Serbian Twitter user Zoran Torbica posted a link to a video clip with the first public performance of the anti-war music super-group Rimtutituki, held on March 8, 1992, in Belgrade. Ozbiljna hrabrost je bila '92 tražiti mir, da su poslušali nas klince, ne bi bilo rata… #rimtutituki https://t.co/SCnuWQ3TQT — Zoran Torbica (@torbica) July 28, 2016 It took serious courage to ask for peace in '92. If they had listened to us, who were kids at the time, there wouldn't have been war… After the authorities refused to allow them to organize a concert, the band performed on the back of a truck, driving through the streets of Belgrade. The video documents the performance and the participation of thousands of young people, who protested against the war and conscription. July 29 also marked the 25th anniversary of a massive pro-peace rock concert held in Sarajevo. The Zetra Project has worked to document this event and inform people at home and abroad about its importance. As an article published on Balakanist.net explains: Due to a bad weather forecast, the concert was relocated to Zetra at the last minute. A Sarajevo taxi company ferried thousands of people from the original outdoor venue for free. An unprecedented 30,000 people amassed inside Zetra, while another 50,000 gathered around the sports hall to hear the show from outside. The concert was organized and broadcast by the Yugoslavia-wide television station Yutel and carried the name Yutel za Mir (Yutel for Peace). Yutel for Peace was the culmination of earlier peace protests in Yugoslavia uniting anti-war activists from all over the country with Yugoslavia’s most popular rock bands in a collective effort to save Yugoslavia from war and dissolution. The working languages of the Zetra Project are the local Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, as well as German. The project's website hosts interviews with several people who attended the concert about what it was like to be there, and what its ramifications were at the time: In late July, the media organization Deutsche Welle published an interview with Zetra Project author, Berlin-based journalist, and film director Danijel Visevic, who explained: The “Zetra Project” is an online space where people that were at the Zetra Hall concert can meet once again. We are collecting stories from people that were actively engaged in promoting peace, who were at the concert, and have a connection to the peace movement. They can tell us their stories so that the memory of the movement remains alive. But also to remind others that back then people around the country wanted peace. Jadranka Pejaković Hlede, who as 13-year-old girl in 1991 gathered 11,586 signatures for peace with her friends from Tuzla, also shares her memories: Mojih 11.586 potpisa za mir bili su utopija i zaista je smiješno kad se sjetim s kojom vjerom sam ih skupljala, to je bio posao, danima od jutra do navečer, misija. Sjećam se točno kako je priča krenula, o čemu sam razmišljala, čak i gdje sam sjedila kad sam odlučila pokrenuti akciju. Priča je uskoro postala veća nego što sam očekivala. Ali ako ništa drugo, tih 11.586 ljudi mi je ostavilo vjeru u ljudski rod.