Go move Latići

Once upon a time, Kožo called me at two past midnight to tell a joke. He had this custom even then, he would call in the dead of night from the pub to tell a joke.

First, Comrade Tito went to visit the United States, so he had a long conversation about human rights with President Richard Nixon. "Here in America," the American president began, "anybody can go out into the street, into a bar or a hall, and talk loudly about Nixon, whatever comes to mind, and nothing will happen to him." "It's the same here in Yugoslavia," Tito replied. "Everybody can say whatever they want about Nixon on the street, in a bar or in a hall at the top of their voices."

I remembered that age-old joke when I once read the news in the newspaper that the trial of Josip Broz Tito was held in the famous Vatroslav Lisinski concert hall. I know, it's funny to you Bosnians, but Croatia is an organized European state governed by the rule of law, and the Yugoslav satrap was finally caught by the hand of justice thirty-five years after his death. As a reminder, I guess no one has yet escaped from Croatian justice.

That's right, on the eighty-seventh anniversary of the historic Bomba trial, Josip Broz found himself before the Zagreb court again. This time it was, don't laugh, the Fourth Public Session of the Croatian National Ethical Court, a kind of zombie council that gathers the very toxic sediment of Croatian small-mindedness, from former so-called Yugoslav dissidents, political prisoners and Ustasha emigrants, to some cephalopods from the bilge of Croatian democracy, general , lawyers, actors, journalists and former party commissars, headed by Zdravko Tomec himself, the adjutant of the Croatian communist strongman Jakov Blažević, who in his closing speech in Lisinski dead serious expressed his deep conviction that, quote, "Josip Broz is now roasting in hell ".

Well, we have reached the dreamed ideal of freedom: everyone can talk about Tito whatever they want on the street, in a bar or in a concert hall.

A full twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to cut a long story short, the Croatian National Ethical Court at its session in Lisinski Hrabro, by a unanimous decision of the Judicial Council, issued an "ethical condemnation against Josip Broz Tito and Yugoslav communist totalitarianism", and Tito and the communists are now, it seems, finished : there is no salvation for Yugoslavia after the historic decision of the Croatian National Ethics Court. I wouldn't even tell you about that sad psychiatric session if there weren't guests from all over the former homeland among the two thousand gathered in Lisinski, and among them, by God, one from Sarajevo: before the verdict was pronounced, he got up from the first row and approached the speaker, so biglish that "Bosnia and Herzegovina is also the homeland of the Croatian people", and that "Croats and Bosniaks together will not yield to the Greater Serbian project". This is - you recognized him, clearly, by his accent - the Bosnian poet, Merlin's lyricist and full professor at the Faculty of Islamic Sciences in Sarajevo, respected prof. Ph.D. Džemaludin Latić.

If, after all, there was a place for anyone from Sarajevo among the zombies in Lisinski, there was a place for Džemaludin Latić, who, as diligent and persistent as his Croatian brothers, still today, thirty-five years after the death of Marshal and twenty-five years after the fall of communism and the breakup of Yugoslavia, is still at war with the Yugoslav communists, which even today - little is known in Croatia - is held by all the strategic chukkas in Sarajevo, from the Faculty of Islamic Sciences to the Rijaset of the Islamic Community itself.

Džemaludin Latić is, in addition, among the Bosniaks - "the flower of the Croatian nation" - perhaps the most committed friend of Croatia, not missing the opportunity to "bring the glory of the Croatian people to Bosnia":

"The Republic of Croatia is a democratic country in which its Muslim citizens have reached the highest degree of their freedoms when these freedoms are compared with those of all other Western countries. Perhaps nowhere in the modern world have Islam and Christianity met more humanely and prosperously than in Croatia," he wrote so a month or two ago dr. Džemaludin Latić on the Bosnia Times portal, then continued: "Yes, behind two peoples and two states, where bad historical memories had almost disappeared, there is a dark interval of the last war, the attack of the HVO and the Croatian Army on the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the opening of concentration camps for Bosniaks in Herzegovina, Ahmići, Stupni Dol... but, nevertheless(...) every Bosniak would have to know that with the disappearance of independent Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bosniaks would also disappear, and that today, when the Great Serbian boot is still treading half Bosnia and Herzegovina, a bigger trump card for our country and people to get out from under that boot than Croatia and Slovenia - none! Will the avengers from both sides succeed in destroying that harmony? It depends on numerous factors, as one would say in brotherly Croatian language."

That's how Džemaludin Latić spoke - that's how he also spoke just a week later, at Tito's trial - but it's not such an unknown thing either: I wouldn't even tell you about Džemaludin Latić if he ended up standing next to him, among the two thousand gathered at the sad psychiatric session in Lisinski, greeted thunderously by the whole hall as the main star, the convicted war criminal Dario Kordić himself did not appear, today a civilian young thinker with the blessing of the Church in Croatia, a lay Catholic priest who never repented for Ahmić.

Whether our Dzemo also stood up and clapped with a tear in his eye, I could not swear, but it is not wise to doubt it. Because "there were", it's true, "bad historical memories", and "the dark interval of the last war", and "attacks by the HVO and the Croatian Army", and "concentration camps for Bosniaks in Herzegovina", there were also "Ahmići and Stupni Dol", but - but! - "nowhere in the modern world have Islam and Christianity met more humanely and prosperously than in Croatia": here today, twenty years later, Džemaludin Latić and Dario Kordić - one a former communist prisoner, the other a former member of the Alliance - met humanely and prosperously in Croatia. a communist, one a writer of the Srebrenica inferno, another a murderer from Ahmići, one a professor of Islamic sciences, and another a lay Catholic clergyman, who in an interview for the Hrvsvijet.hr portal a year ago would coldly state that "one should leave it to God or Allah".

I guess Dario Kordić knows, he personally left a hundred and sixteen Bosniaks to Allah back then in Ahmići, so that today he would be the main star of the Croatian ethical - I repeat, ethical! - the court, before which Catholic bishops and professors of Islamic sciences, united in "God and Allah" against Tito, the communists and other "numerous factors, so to speak in the brotherly Croatian language".

When anything can be said.

(Liberation)