6 min listen
2. Dejan Mujkanovic - from Bosnian refugee to Australian Army Officer
2. Dejan Mujkanovic - from Bosnian refugee to Australian Army Officer
ratings:
Length:
85 minutes
Released:
Feb 14, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
My guest today is Dejan Mujkanovic. He is an Australian Army officer with 19 years of military experience. He has completed several tours of Afghanistan and also deployed to East Timor. He was born in Bosnia in 1980 and experienced the full brunt of the civil war in the 90’s. His hometown of Prijedor made global news due to the campaign of ethnic cleansing committed by the Bosnian Serb forces seeking to forcefully remove the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat populations from the area. As a result of these crimes, many of Dejan’s extended family members were lost in concentration camps, which, sadly, includes his father Senad Mujkanovic who was killed in the Omarska concentration camp in 1992. In the ensuing chaos, Dejan was separated from his mother and his siblings, and they have lived apart ever since. During his journey, he was forced to spend over two years in various refugee camps in Croatia and Austria and in late 1995, he was fortunate to settle in Australia with his grandmother. Now, 25 years later, Dejan is married and a proud father to his son. Some of the topics we covered are:
- His reason for joining the Army
- How the war in Bosnia started for him
- The loss of his father and other members of his family
- Fleeing the war and time as a child refugee
- Issues of identity
- Genocide and collective guilt
- The idea of forgiveness
- What good soldiering looks like
- Settling in Australia
- How his experience influenced his military service
- His reason for joining the Army
- How the war in Bosnia started for him
- The loss of his father and other members of his family
- Fleeing the war and time as a child refugee
- Issues of identity
- Genocide and collective guilt
- The idea of forgiveness
- What good soldiering looks like
- Settling in Australia
- How his experience influenced his military service
Released:
Feb 14, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Podcast Introduction: A short introduction to this podcast, how it came about, and what we'll be exploring in the episodes to come. Thank you for joining me. Maz by The Voices of War