A few days ago, Sabina Ćudić hosted a reception in the City Hall attended by 30 parliamentarians from 28 European countries. Her speech caused numerous reactions from politicians and associations stemming from the war, and then Ćudić herself clarified her statement.
During her address to parliamentarians in the City Council, Ćudić spoke about the siege of Sarajevo, stating that it was an attempt to destroy the city’s multi-ethnic character.
“The conflict we experienced in this city is not ethnic, it is not religious, it is not between Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, it is not even between ethnic groups. It is a struggle for power. And I refuse to believe, because I have spent most of my life here, that this city and this country are connected with such conflicts,” said Ćudić.
Politicians’ reactions to the statement before European parliamentarians
However, this provoked a reaction from certain politicians, first of all the SDA party, which evaluated the terminology “struggle for power” as one of the most shameful political statements in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“The president of our party tried to obscure in front of the European representatives what international courts have clearly established, which is that the crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina were not the product of some vague conflict of political ambitions, but the result of an organized policy of persecution, terror against civilians, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The judgments of the Hague Tribunal speak unequivocally about the nature of the crime, including the campaign of shelling and sniping against the citizens of Sarajevo, whose goal was to spread fear among the civilian population,” they said from SDA.
They pointed out that her speech does not represent a European approach to dealing with the past, but an escape from the truth for the sake of, as they state, political appeal to those who are bothered by the clear naming of aggression and the crime of genocide.
“This kind of speech by Sabina Ćudić is a political pattern in which the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina is relativized, the responsibility of the aggressor is equated with the responsibility of the defender, and the suffering of the victims is pushed into the fog of general phrases about conflict, power and divisions. Such speech humiliates the victims and encourages those who have been trying for decades to balance the sides and rewrite history. This is not a European approach to dealing with the past, but an escape from the truth for the sake of political appeal to those who are bothered by the clear naming of aggression, crimes and genocide,” said the SDA.
In addition to the SDA, politicians from the RS, Edin Ramić and Sevlid Hurtić, and numerous politicians from FBiH also reacted officially, and the Association of Generals of BiH also sent a strong message.
“We are deeply hurt and shocked by her speech in the Sarajevo City Hall in front of European officials, in which she tries to reduce the siege of Sarajevo and the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina to a ‘struggle for power’… It is obvious that she does not distinguish an aggressor from a defender, a victim from a criminal, historical facts from political constructions. She has confused women and men, and at the same time she publicly claims that she thoroughly prepares for every performance. If she calls the aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina a ‘struggle for power’, then let him say clearly: Does he accept the narrative that there is a ‘civil war’ and ‘religious conflict’ going on in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Answer by Sabina Ćudić
Today, Ćudić responded with a status on Facebook in which she said once again that she does not agree with beliefs that state that an ethnic war was fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He especially points out the claim that Alija Izetbegović said exactly what she wanted to say in the City Hall, namely that the goal of the war was an attack on multicultural Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Let’s bare things to the end – did Alija Izetbegović lie to us when he characterized the war as an attack on multicultural, multi-ethnic, independent, sovereign BiH, or is the SDA lying to us today that the war was only against Bosniak Muslims? Because the former is claimed by all of us who spent the war in Sarajevo, and the latter, which is now claimed by the SDA, is also claimed by Milorad Dodik,” wrote Ćudić.
Then she clarified that individual Serbs and Croats fought in Sarajevo, listing some of them and stating that they did not fight for Serbian, Croat, or Bosniak Sarajevo, but multi-ethnic and anti-fascist Sarajevo.
“Sarajevo was defended by Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats and many other fighters against fascism, and renouncing that erases the history of this city. They defended a city that stubbornly fought for its multi-ethnicity as much as for its survival during the siege,” said Ćudić.
Ćudić also believes that it is disastrous to resort to explanations that say that this is about age-old religious and ethnic bigotry.
“Sarajevo did not agree to that. The ‘age-old religious conflict’. That ideological narrative, which the war criminal Radovan Karadžić tried to impose with his collaborators in the early nineties of the last century and which has been renewed in recent years, must be opposed,” she said.
In particular, he points out that her position on the fact that a war was waged against multi-ethnic BiH does not deny the court-established facts that genocide was committed against Bosniaks or that there was a Greater Serbian project, Klix.ba writes.
