The Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency expressed on Saturday satisfaction in a letter to the head of the Swedish Academy for awarding writer Peter Handke, a vocal supporter of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, the Nobel Prize for literature.
Milorad Dodik added that a letter his Croat colleague, Zeljko Komsic, sent the day before criticising the decision, does not represent the stance of Bosnia.
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Dodik wrote that what Komsic, the current Presidency Chairman, wrote to Markus Malm represents only his personal stance and not that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, “so we urge you to understand that letter as the dissatisfaction of an individual in Bosnia.”
Dodik wrote that Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia’s semi-autonomous Serb-dominated region, welcomed the decision to award Handke, which was made with full consideration for the value and importance of his work “without which the world we are living in would surely be poorer,” his cabinet said.
“By giving out this award, the Nobel Prize Committee has honoured this extraordinary writer and his work in the best way. The campaign being waged against Peter Handke since the moment it was announced he would receive the award is an attempt to politicise culture and revise the truth,” Dodik wrote.
He emphasised that the “Nobel Prize for literature ended up in the right hands” and that “with this award to Handke, the trust in valuing world achievements in various areas, as well as in literature, was returned.”
