SARAJEVO: Unemployment in Europe causing wide spread protests for the last two years and now this time it is Bosnia where 150 persons injured in Bosnian anti-government protests including 104 policemen.
Bosnian town Tuzla is under the grip of protests and Thursday is second day of anti-government demonstrations. Police fired teargas to drive back several thousand people throwing stones, eggs and flares at a local government building in Tuzla that is an industrial heart of Bosnia’s north where factories are closing due to financial meltdown increasing unemployment among youth particularly. Joblessness increasing in entire Eastern Europe since the end of former USSR because Eastern Europe was hub of industrial activities during soviet era but now factories are closing down almost every passing week. Majority of former Eastern European countries are looking towards European Union (EU) to get its membership but EU has its on system that is delaying membership to many countries including Bosnia and in January 2014 meeting of the EU heads of state and foreign ministers expressed hopes that other Balkan countries, Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia, will be successful in their accession process. Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, was not mentioned at all. It seems that it is not drawing nearer to the EU but instead more distant. This situation is also frustrating youth of Bosnia.