[LINK] "St. Louis’ Bosnians demand more policing in wake of brutal killing"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera's Ryan Schuessler, in looking at the aftermath of Ferguson, notes the surprisingly large Bosnian immigrant community in the St. Louis area. The aftermath of the killing of a Bosnian immigrant highlights concerns in the community about worsening law and order in their neighbourhoods.

Bosnians in St. Louis are demanding a stronger police presence in their community after 32-year-old immigrant Zemir Begic, whose funeral is being held Saturday in Iowa, was brutally killed last Sunday.

And early Friday morning a 26-year-old Bosnian woman was attacked in the same neighborhood, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, an incident the FBI is investigating as a hate crime.

Hundreds of people protested on Sunday after Begic was beaten to death with a hammer, returning to the streets on Monday. The demonstrators held signs reading “Bosnian lives matter,” playing off protests in nearby Ferguson, where “Black lives matter” has become a theme of demonstrations over the Aug. 9 shooting of black teen Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson. The Bosnian protesters blocked traffic on Gravois Avenue, a main thoroughfare that runs through southern St. Louis and the heart of the Bevo Mill neighborhood, known as Little Bosnia.

[. . .]

The city’s Bosnian population, which is estimated at nearly 70,000, is largely made up of Bosnian Muslims who arrived as refugees during the bloody civil war that ripped the former Yugoslavia apart in the early 1990s. Many are survivors of brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns.

Since their arrival, they have been largely credited for rebuilding Bevo Mill, a dilapidated industrial-era working-class neighborhood in southern St. Louis. A long stretch of Gravois Avenue is now lined with Bosnian-, Albanian- and Roma-owned businesses, restaurants and cafes.