Bosnian and Herzegovinian (BiH) adventurer from Banja Luka, Robert DaceSin, decided to speak out two days ago on Instagram regarding the controversial history textbooks that children in Republika Srpska (RS) are expected to learn from.
He felt the need to comment on this current issue, even though it has nothing to do with the travels he usually posts on social media.
“It’s not fair. As someone who is followed here and there by some people, I sometimes feel the need to speak out on issues that are not so travel-related. Completely unplanned, this morning, I opened the news and saw that in RS, starting now, a special part of ten lessons in ninth grade will be dedicated to the war that happened to us. The article further states that in these textbooks, Karadzic and Mladic are mentioned as heroes, Alija as Hitler-oriented and that there is not a word about Srebrenica,” he said at the beginning of his post.
He stated that he does not know what textbooks are like in the Federation of BiH (FBiH), but he believes that this is not fair to the youth in RS.
“Now, although I have already, a couple of times, received various comments for my views on the topics of Serbs-Croats-Bosniaks, when I see something like this, the main feeling I get is emptiness. To be clear, I don’t know what the textbooks in other parts of the entity look like, but I think that, above all, this is not fair to the young people who are born in RS. It’s not fair that they grow up from a young age learning that one side is good, and the other is not, and to separate Milan from Mirza. To learn from an early age to support Serbia and Croatia and not to follow BiH when they can support both. It is not fair to glorify some while degrading others because, in war, everyone is both good and bad. It is not fair that in those ten lessons covering this topic, there is not even a mention of what generally brought the most tears during it,” Dacesin said.
Despite this, he understands why such narratives are created, but he still hopes that children from BiH will learn a real history without “good” and “bad” sides.
“To be clear, I am well aware of why this kind of narrative is being created, but I think that those 8.000+ victims in Srebrenica deserve at least a mention if nothing else. Many things are not fair in the society we live in, which is shaped by others, but I hope that one day there will come a time when we will all learn from the same books and the same history. That we will understand others’ losses as our own and not strive to forget them. That the history my child will read will be the real one, without good and bad, but with what actually happened, where everyone is equal and the same,” he continued.
He revealed that his father was also in the war in the 1990s, and he grew up loving “the other side.”
“Moreover, my father and the fathers of many of my friends were in that terrible war, yet we grew up to love that other side, whichever it may be because I know that those people, just like us, were never at fault for what happened to us. Perhaps it is precisely because of this that I love this tormented country of mine and am proud of it because few people know what we have been through and still remain human,” he said.
Since he couldn’t fit everything into his post, he decided to briefly add a comment below.
“It’s okay to defend your own, to love your own, to support your own, but it is not fair to disrespect and ignore others, no matter who it is about. To be clear, I am a Serb, an Orthodox Christian who loves my people, but I equally love the country I was born in and that raised me. I think that’s really cool,” he emphasized.
His post was supported by numerous followers, but there were also those who did not share his opinion.
It should be mentioned that the announcement about changes in the Curriculum in the entity of RS, regarding history classes, has attracted significant public attention because it means students will learn about convicted war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, but not in the context of their crimes, rather the opposite.
