WAR HOTELS (2/6) – In the category of journalists’ hideouts in conflict zones, the yellow blockhouse in Sarajevo occupies a special place: in the very front line on the front line.
When everything collapses in a country at war, the reporters rush to see, testify, tell. Where do they stay in these extreme situations? Placed at the heart of the convulsions of history, hotels have thus entered into the legend of the conflicts with those who lived there or chronicled them. From kyiv to Sarajevo via Beirut, Phnom Penh, Abidjan and Madrid, Le Figaro revisits these improbable refuges balanced on the front lines.
Sun and shade. Memories collide without linking up. First, there is April 6, 1992, when a crowd of Sarajevans belonging to all the communities parades, proclaiming their desire to continue to live together. Suddenly, guns are pointed at the windows of the Holiday Inn hotel where Radovan Karadzic, the local leader of the Serbs, has taken up residence in suite 530. Before that, there had already been murders and armed incidents in Bosnia- Herzegovina, thanks to the process of decomposition of Yugoslavia, which began…
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