Hello friends,

Welcome back to the second term of ASTU! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas break and is energized and ready to work hard. Personally I just came down with some sort of illness which spared little symptom wise(even though I got my flu shot). It looks like a second wave of disease is passing around campus, so make sure to wash your hands plenty and dress warmly.

In our previous ASTU classes we have been reading and discussing the graphic novel Safe Area Goražde by Journalist Joe Sacco. This novel details the interviews, experiences, and recollections of Sacco during the Serbo-Bosnian War. Touching, extremely graphic, and at times humorous, it tells the story of the Enclave of Goražde, A UN designated safe zone during the war that is eventually cut off entirely from its home country of Bosnia, save for a small strip of road called the “blue road”. To access this road, a special pass was needed, and even then travel was done mostly with UN protective convoys. Residents of this enclave, many of whom would never have been able to obtain said passes to travel, were trapped in Goražde; their right of mobility taken away from them.

Mobility is a topic that comes up on multiple occasions in Safe Area Goražde, with many of the residents simply just wanting to be able to travel safely and freely again. It is a basic human right that is not usually taken into consideration when thinking about what the average person needs to be healthy both physically and mentally. While the restriction on Goraždes’ residents was without a doubt a traumatizing and debilitating feature of the Serbo-Bosnian War, I was spurred to look more into just how important mobility was by researching the most extreme version of mobility restriction: solitary confinement.

A search of the words ‘solitary confinement’ and ‘mental health’ brings up hundreds of results negatively portraying solitary confinement and its effects it has on the mind. The effects of mobility restriction and solitude, such as being placed in a small room alone with no outside access, has been researched by many top universities and schools, starting in around the mid 20th century. Research is difficult to conduct… as test subjects are needed, but two cases from the 1950’s really stood out to me as exactly how jeopardizing to the mental state solitary confinement can be.

During the mid-1950’s, a team from the University of Wisconsin held a trial in which a monkey’s were placed in a solitary confinement tank shaped like an upside-down pyramid to prevent the monkey’s from climbing out. After no more than 2 days, every test subject was found huddled in the corner of the tank in a hunched position. The monkeys were placed in the tank for different set periods of times, with the longest being a full year. Regardless of the time, all test subjects came out of the tank extremely disturbed, either staring blankly at spaces for long periods of time, pacing their cages, or even mutilating themselves. Most eventually recovered, save those that were in the tank for 12 months, who where completely socially obliterated.

In 1951, a different team from the University of McGill conducted a similar experiment in which human volunteers were placed in a small room with a bed and toilet and were given blindfolds, gloves, and earplugs to deprive the senses. The test was to last 6 weeks, but not a single volunteer was able to last more than 7 days, stating they could either no longer think clearly, or began to experience strong hallucinations.

There are countless other stories of solitary confinement, be it through  Prisoners of War, jailed prisoners, or kidnapped/tortured victims. In all cases, the mental state of mind is always severely affected, and causes numerous social problems.

Mobility seems to be something the average human being takes for granted; having never been a situation where it has been taken away, few know just how it can feel to have the space around you constricted for long periods of time. However, it seems to stand out as one of the ways that can most severely detriment the human mind. For the Residents of Goražde, who were confined to their village for numerous years, I cannot imagine just how anxiety-inducing, restrictive, and frustrating it must have felt to not be allowed to leave. Especially as Goražde was a very dangerous place for many Bosnians who merely wished to escape to safety. In my opinion,  One should never underestimate the power of free movement, and as such, one should never set to abuse it either.