An “exceptional generation of people” restored the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina 77 years ago when they overcame their ideological, political and ethnic differences to work for their common interest, the Croat member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency, Zeljko Komsic, said in his speech marking Bosnia’s Statehood Day on Wednesday.
Komsic spoke in the medieval Bosnian city of Bobovac, today a protected cultural site, where the crown jewels of Bosnia were kept. The town contains a burial chamber for several Bosnian kings and queens.
RELATED NEWS
“The act of restoring the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the act of an exceptional generation of people. People who overcame ideological, political and ethnic differences and had enough wisdom, which we often lack today, to find what their common interest is. And that interest is the state,” Komsic said.
He argued that it would take ages to list all the contributions of the many heroes and antifascists to the statehood of Bosnia. “We should let history speak of them, let books be written about them, as the French are doing when they write about the leaders of the French Revolution,” he said.
The Presidency member said that he visited several memorials on Wednesday, “both those from the period of remembrance of the national liberation struggle, as well as memorials related to the period of the last aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
He said that he often thinks of the names written on the Vraca Memorial Park, dedicated to the Sarajevo’s WWII victims, and the Sarajevo Memorial for Children killed during Siege (1992-1995).
“I ask myself – what were those children guilty of in the eyes of the perpetrators? There is no answer. Except that they were killed by the same ideology, the ideology of fascism, hate and evil,” he said.
“But despite all this, despite these painful facts, Bosnia and Herzegovina was not killed, nor was the idea of Bosnia and Herzegovina killed. It lives on through the younger generations that love their homeland and want to make it a progressive and safe country,” he said.
Komsic called Bobovac “one of the symbols of the progressive Bosnia,” explaining that the city is “material testimony of the force of our state and its ability to be its own, and nobody else’s but its own.”
“The state of Bosnia from that time, although stretched between the East and the West, found its place under the sky and was a stable country which strongly protected its border from outside enemies because of its leadership at the time,” Komsic said.
“The future belongs to those who want to look forward. I believe that now there is a foundation for the progress of the state and that we will only return to the past in our memories,” he said, congratulating Statehood Day to all Bosnian citizens.
