In 2019, Austrian writer Peter Handke was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Since the end of the 1990s war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), intellectuals and journalists repeatedly criticised the writer for relativising and negating war crimes in his work and public statements, as well as for his close relationship to Serb leaders and war criminals. International criticism for the nomination arose promptly from many sides, but public debate was led most intensively in Sweden as the country accommodating the Swedish Academy as the institution nominating the laureate, as well as a considerable Bosnian population. In Stockholm, members of the Bosnian diasporic community organised a rally on 10 December, the day of the award ceremony. In this paper, I explore the mobilisation of a broad coalition composed of former refugees, genocide survivors, human rights NGOs and activists, journalists and academics contesting the Swedish Academy's decision to awarding this internationally highly renowned prize to this controversial author. They aimed to raise awareness that with this decision, the Swedish Academy made itself complicit in the internationalisation and normalisation of the denial of genocide in BiH. Drawing on a transnational mobilisation perspective, I analyse this ad hoc or episodic protest as an example of transnational memory activism. I identify processes and mechanisms of mobilisation (Tarrow 2005) that have been important to realising the protest. Thereby, I draw particular attention to the formation of a transnational coalition of a variety of actors located in many different places, from the region of former Yugoslavia to Western Europe and the United States, and their framing of the protest. With regard to the framing, two aspects are important. First, the protesters warned of the negative signal that the Swedish Academy sent with its decision and its repercussions for the internationalisation and normalisation of genocide denial. On the one hand, they pointed out how present-day Serb nationalist politicians in BiH and Serbia draw from it legitimation for their divisive politics. On the other hand, they put it in a larger context of globally rising right-wing terrorism that draws inspiration from 1990s Serb nationalist leaders and war criminals like Radovan Karadzic (e.g., the terrorist attack in Christchurch/New Zealand in 2019). Second, I highlight how the mobilisation of memories of the Bosnian war has played an important role for this protest. The collective and different individual memories of the war united the diverse actors that have long been engaged in seeking transitional justice and recognition of the Bosnian genocide. These memories thus functioned as a glue that brought this 'community of protesters' together. The analysis is based on data that I gathered through participant observation during the day of the rally and a public panel discussion the evening before, and through interviews with organisers and participants. In addition, I include the accompanying hashtag activism on Twitter by analysing tweets using the #BosniaWarJournalists.
