[7][8] At the end of the ceremony, they lined up among the red chairs and sang John Lennon's legendary song: "Give Peace a Chance.".

[11] During the Siege of Sarajevo, 380,000 people were left without food, electricity, water or heating during 46 months, hiding from the 330 shells a day that smashed into the city.

On April 6, 1992, around 40,000 people from all over the country – Muslim Bosniaks, Christian Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats – poured into a square further down the red street demanding peace from their quarrelling nationalist politicians.

The ethnic unity being displayed on the Sarajevo square irritated Serb nationalists, who then shot into the crowd from a nearby hotel, killing 5 people and marking the start of the 1992-1995 war.

The Serb nationalists, helped by neighbouring Serbia, laid siege to Sarajevo and within a few months occupied 70% of Bosnia, expelling all non-Serbs from territory they controlled.

Bosniaks and Croats – who started off as allies – subsequently turned against each other, so that all three groups ended up fighting a war that made half of the population homeless and left the once-ethnically mixed country devastated and divided into mono-ethnic enclaves.