July 11th 2015 marks 20 years since the genocide in Srebrenica, a city in Bosnia, where Serbian troops killed over 8,000 Muslim boys and men. The Bosnian community in Rochester will commemorate this event this Saturday (July 11 at 7.45 pm) at their local mosque, located at 312 Fisher Road, Rochester, NY 14624. This event is free and open to the public. Pls attend.
If you would like to learn more about the Bosnian community in Rochester, pls contact my friend Aisa Purak who has written a research paper on the subject. The paper is an attempt to study the Bosnian community as a part of the larger Muslim community in the Rochester metropolitan area. Because of the State Department sponsored Refugee Resettlement Program in Rochester, the Catholic Family Center facilitated the resettlement of refugees from all over the world, and two decades ago, on September 17, 1993, it opened its doors to the first refugees from the former Yugoslavia. According to a Catholic Family Center unofficial report, there are approximately five thousand refugees from the former Yugoslavia living in the Greater Rochester area, the majority of whom, about 80 %, are Bosnian Muslims, from Bosnia and Herzegovina. This research project is focused on the lives and experiences of a sample of 100 Bosnian families living in Rochester who successfully adjusted and adapted to a new environment, but are still facing many challenges including religious, cultural, language and identity issues.