Komsic: Bosnian Croats are a Frustrated People

The number of Croats in Bosnia has halved. The pre-war 16 percent of Croatis has dropped to only seven in Sarajevo’s Centar municipality.

After two prominent Bosnian Croats, an Economy Faculty professor, Dragoljub Stojanov, and opera singer Gertruda Munitic, announced they were leaving, the issue of Bosnian Crots emigrating from the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina was reopened. 

From the pre-war number of 40,000 Croats in Sarajevo, only 15,000 are believed to still be living there. The Croat population has halved in the entire country. Of the former 800,000 Croats, it is believed that only around 400,000 to 450,000 remain. But, these are all only presumptions, since an official census has not been conducted since 1991. The Sarajevo Centar municipality is one of the few with a current census, but only for the municipality. According to the census, in 1991, 12,960 Croats, or 16.4 percent, lived in Sarajevo, while today there are only 4,880, or 7.25 percent of them.

Croats are frustrated

The first large emigration wave happened during the war, and the second after the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, today, the issue of Croat emigration (and that of non-muslims in general) is opened in incident situations, such as those caused by the announcements of Stojanov and Munitic.

“Are there elements of nationalist pressure – yes, there are. You will meet fools everywhere, whether they be dangerous or not. I, too, have been called many things. When some fool told Stojanov that he was a Chetnik, and when he replied that he was a Croat, he said he was an Ustasha, then that is a fool. But, I do not have information about there being a wave of emigration of people on the basis of their nationality. There is much economic emigration. People simply cannot find jobs,” the Croat member of the three-member Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency, Zeljko Komsic, told Javno.

Before the war, Sarajevo was a city with the largest number of Croats. Their departure, mostly for Croatia, was most prominent during the war and the years that followed. This is when the entire intellectual, scientific and cultural elite left, said Alen Zornija, former editor of an extinct Croatian weekly, the “Hrvatska rijec”.

President of the Croat National Council, friar Luka Markesic, confirmed that economic reasons were the chief reasons for the departure of Bosnian Croats.