Bosniac Parties Responsible for Croats Leaving

President of Helsinki Committee in BH holds Bosniac parties and the Islamic community responsible for diva and professor leaving Sarajevo.

The responsibility for the departure of professor Dragoljub Stojanov and opera diva Gertruda Munitic from Sarajevo, according to Srdjan Dizdarevic, president of the Helsinki Committee in Bosnia-Herzegovina, belongs to Bosniak nationalist parties and the Islamic religious community.

There are two levels of responsibility. This is a majority nation which is in Sarajevo and which carries the responsibility for the city’s atmosphere, and also with that in mind is the responsibility of Bosniak nationalist parties and the Islamic community which also has its part here. Of the two levels of responsibility, one is general, the one which creates the atmosphere, and the other consists of certain people who are the executors of unacceptable politics –said Dizdarevic for Radio Slobodna Europa.

Party for BH: the situation can be improved

Party for BH vice-president, Beriz Belkic, believes this situation can be improved.

-I called the faculty, tried to intervene, but neither the society nor the community have the instruments. A reaction could follow, not only from the faculty but also from the University and the ministries. The whole situation can be improved beforehand – said Belkic for Radio Slobodna Europa. Stojanov is a respectable professor at the Faculty of Economics, who openly said: «I am not leaving, I was chased away». According to him, he was openly insulted at the faculty and called a Chetnik. «When I told them I was a Croat, they called me Ustasha», said professor Stojanov, who was also a minister in the BH government headed by Haris Silajdzic and Hasan Muratovic and the prime minister of a shadow cabinet.

All professor Stojadinov`s charges were denied at the faculty and characterised as «a malicious attempt to call the whole Faculty and its management nationalist-oriented, which is absolutely inaccurate and completely unfounded.».

Croatian parties: this is inadmissible

Bosniak politics that aspires to make a purely Bosniak city is inadmissible. It is inadmissible that imported citizens of BH and vehabij are more respected than these two people. We condemn the reasons of their departure, they are not just any citizens but distinguished people who have contributed to Sarajevo`s development as a multi-ethnic environment and were present during the most difficult of times during the war, and now some unknown people in Sarajevo who found themselves at distinguished posts use the most primitive expressions of mobbing and pressure – said Miso Relota, spokesperson of the Croatian Democratic Union of BH (HDZ BiH).

A similar view is shared by HDZ 1990. –All of those who think Sarajevo is a multi-ethnic city can be reassured that this not the case. There are various pressures, not only towards doctors and professors, but towards common citizens, and all because of politics of the representatives of the Bosnian people – said Drazenko Primorac, the spokesperson for HDZ 1990.

One should debate

The departure of two distinguished people from Sarajevo had a lot of publicity in the Bosnia-Herzegovina media, which Ljiljana Zurovac, executive president of the Press Council of BH, considers to be a positive thing.

- Controversies are good and should not be feared. The more there are of them, the more the public is involved in the problem’s essence. Things which stand aside somewhere in the corner as sore wounds that should be talked about publicly. If the problems of Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks are talked about intensively, this means there is a problem that should be out in the open. We went through a catastrophe here, but that does not mean things can be pushed under the rug and be forgotten about. If we want to continue living together, we must talk about these things, we must grab the bull by its horns. Controversies mean confronting and the exchange of intellectual’s opinions, of people who rule by thought and logic – said Zurovac. Her commentary, as a journalist, can be read in the “Commentaries” column.