Tech student gives keynote speech at United Nations

Sejdefa Dozic is a sophomore majoring in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Unlike your average student she is a survivor of a hostile takeover of her hometown, Srebrenica which was a U.N. designated "safe area" in former Yugoslavia by the Bosnian Serb Army.

The massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men is considered to be the worst genocide in Europe since World War II.

Over the summer, she addressed a group at the United Nations in New York at the 10th anniversary of the Bosnian Genocide.

"I was very honored that I was chosen to represent my people that day. My speech was very challenging to deliver but I was happy that it was well-received," Dozic said.

Her boss, Marilyn Somers, the Director of the Georgia Tech Living History Program tells the 'Nique her experience of hearing Dozic address the United Nations.

Somers was introduced to Dozic through ArtReach Foundation, a nonprofit organization that had a pilot program in Bosnia working with children in war-ravaged areas to help them deal with their traumas through the use of the expressive arts.

An excellent linguist, she came to the program as a translator and caught the attention of Susan Anderson, the founder and executive director of Foundation who worked along with Somers in making Dozic's study at Tech a reality.

Somers said of the UN experience, "It was very difficult. First of all we were told to arrive at a specific time and date so that we would go in as a group. I was one of only four people that came from Atlanta. The plan was that there were going to be passes at the gate for us.

"Entering the United Nations is like entering a whole different country. It was ninety-five degrees in the shade, they didn't have the passes for us and then we had to go through all the security stuff. So by the time we actually entered the UN we were all wiped out," she said.

The first thing they were asked to do was to look at the exhibits that had been put up which had very graphic photography and artistic interpretation.

"This is commemorating genocide and no matter how you put it, it's not very easy," Somers said. "Sejdefa had a well-prepared speech but she was very anxious about it ."

The audience included many Bosnian-Americans who had immigrated to America and were not necessarily a part of the genocide but were somehow affected by it.

"In the midst of all the turmoil there was the wonderful Ambassador from Bosnia to the United Nations, Mirza Kusljugic. He really put her mind at ease and relaxed her," Somers said.

They went through more security and were finally ushered into a large auditorium and seated in the front row as guests of honor.

"There wasn't a whole lot of fuss and feathers," Somers said.

Dozic was introduced as the keynote speaker, with no fanfare. Her speech, which was twenty-three minutes long, was broadcast on CNN and often made use of excellent rhetoric.

"She started her remarks with 'When I was a small child I was like any child. I had my friends and my toys and I lived very happily with my family and I thought that that's the way my life would always be' and then she stopped and said, 'But I was wrong.'

"She repeated that every time she talked about it, it would be the positives of it and then it would be 'but I was wrong'. And pretty soon we were all mesmerized," Somers said.

She told the horror of being seven years old and having bombs come overhead, the horror of her family for three years desperately trying to protect the children.

Her uncles and her father dug five-foot deep trenches in the backyard and they put the children there at night and covered that up with branches to try to protect them from shrapnel. School was disbanded.

All of the children that had been friends with her who were not Muslim immediately hated her.

"Everybody looked the same and yet there were very carefully drawn lines where this was the enemy and this wasn't for no rhyme or reason," Somers said.

"She talked about seeing the Dutch peace keepers actually giving their equipment and their uniforms to the Serbs that had come in, so that they could put up a false front and arrest the men that were trying to hideout because their goal was to kill as many of the Bosnian Muslims as possible," Somers said.

"The townspeople got together and decided that the men would lead the troops one way so that the women could get away to head to safety. So all the men and boys under a certain age went into the woods to escape. 80,000 of them were massacred over a period of time."

Somers said, "Sejdefa told us she lost her father, five uncles and 19 male cousins on both sides of the family. They survived with little or no food."

Dozic also talked about being fortunate to attend Tech, whic h she called a great American institutionand said she was learning a skill with which she could earn money to take back to her people.

She has no intentions of staying here and wants to go back to Sarajevo, Bosnia to help out her family.

By the end of her speech not a sound was heard in spite of the 700 people sitting in the auditorium.

"Sejdefa's closing remarks were, 'Today I have come to tell you just a little layers of my story, because I wanted you to hear my story. If I had told you all of the layers, you would have just seen me stand here and cry, and two tears rolled down her cheeks," Somers said.

"She picked up her papers and turned to go down and then people just exploded. They just jumped and they were screaming and crying. They couldn't stop the applause. It was very dramatic," she said.

Somers said, "I have known her ever since she came to the United States and even before she came. I thought I knew her really well and yet at that moment I didn't even begin to know the depth of her suffering that goes into her story."

Dozic went back to Sarajevo to visit her mother, grandmother and brother after her U.N. speech but she was not prepared for what she found there. She was a national celebrity.

"The Ambassador from Bosnia said to me, 'Look at that young woman. She is the hope; she is the future of our country. Someday she or someone like her will be President and that will be the only way there will be peace and forgiveness in my country,' Somers said"

That is a lot of responsibility to hang on a pair of shoulders, especially for someone so young.

Dozic, unlike many of the youngsters in Bosnia of her age group ,wants to take all of her energy and focus it on positive things and making a difference in the world. She does not have any political intentions but she realizes now that everyone is watching her, and as Somers put it, "she had better make everyone proud of her. "

"I'm sure anyone that would hear the story would be proud of her for what she did," Somers said.

Dozic chose Tech because of its technological focus and for someone whose first language is not English, traces her love of mathematics and sciences because of their similarity in all languages.

"When's she not under the gun with classes, she's fun and funny," Somers said revealing a lighter side of Dozic.

"She is making a lot of personal sacrifices and certainly has a load on her back. But she stands up straight," Somers said.