What escalated this week and was even recognized at the national level as a serious security problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a whole series of violent attacks in Mostar and its immediate surroundings, which, to avoid confusion, also administratively belongs to the city, nor is new, it did not surprise anyone, nor is it overly related to the upcoming local elections.
And regardless of the fact that these are obviously two parallel problems, the first one refers to attacks on Serb returnees, and the second to attacks between fan groups, they have the same root, and it is about hate violence.
If this hatred once required that it be fueled from the political top by action, that is, actively, so it may have seemed that it was managed by politics, today it no longer needs such active help. She doesn't need it because it has become a structural fact and a part of everyday life in which generations of young people have grown up, truly filled with hatred. And the truth is that violence is clearly taking place from all sides, both among themselves and against Serbs, but one should not be hypocritical and draw a sign of equality between these types of violence. Because, ultimately, there is only one fan movement that openly draws murals of convicted war criminals, Ustasha and Nazi symbols on the walls of the city and regularly insults or physically attacks people who gather on February 14 at the Partisan Cemetery.
Now, if once a dark political will was needed to encourage this violence, so that it would self-renew by itself, today a policy of doing nothing is sufficient for it. The chain of inaction starts with the police, continues with the judiciary, and ends with politics.
Why from the police? Well, because, despite all the claims about how they successfully solve all cases, it's simply not true. To confirm this thesis, we do not need to go further than a simple question to which we still have no answer: Who broke almost seven hundred plaques at the Partisan Cemetery, a national monument of the first order, located practically in the center of the city?
Furthermore, even when the police find thugs and bring them to court, we as a public have never heard of any of them being sentenced to the serious punishment that a hate crime requires. Maybe I'm wrong and there are such judgments, but even if there are, which I highly doubt, they don't serve any pedagogical purpose if the general public doesn't know about them. And he really doesn't know.
Third, when I say political will, I mean that it is not enough just to hold a crisis press conference and the same crisis meeting with the minister and the director of the police, but simply that the most important political task in Mostar is for the leadership of the two leading and key parties, the HDZ and the SDA , together with the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Islamic community, will be in a four-year campaign against hatred and violence. With constant joint appearances, tribunes in neighborhoods, symposia, books and every possible way, until the story of a common normal life begins to reach everyone's ears, and those who would attack someone out of hatred are not isolated in their own community.
All this applies to both processes that occur, which I mentioned at the beginning of the text. And the matter ceased to be urgent a long time ago, now it cannot be postponed. Because one can try to minimize all this to the point of unconsciousness, but it is, for example, a real miracle that no one lost their life during the previous raid in Donja Mahala or during the confrontation at Hotel Ero, which also happened in front of a police patrol in the middle of the day. Both times we had seriously injured people and who can guarantee that things will not escalate with someone's death, and then normal life in Mostar will be unthinkable for a long time.
However, whatever happens, it is certain that both Croats and Bosniaks will continue to live in Mostar, in this sort of tense balance.
However, the real tragedy, which is why I titled the text Baćevići, is the continuous violence against Serb returnees. Who are anyway mostly poor people who have decided to return home and who cannot in any way become a serious political actor anymore.
And instead of showing these people, because the area of the Neretva Valley and the Herzegovina-Neretva County in general is an area that has remained ethnically mixed and practically the only one in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to which Serbs have returned in significant numbers, that there is a new, common Bosnia and Herzegovina possible. And instead of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and precisely in its most politically sensitive part, being the vanguard that will clearly say: Yes, Bosnia and Herzegovina, ours, together is possible and we want and see it as such, with each of these acts of violence against the Serbs, it is saying the exact opposite .
Those who have political and repressive power should become aware of this.
Bonus video:
