Genocide denier, controversial writer, and advocate of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime, Peter Handke, got a monument in the center of Banja Luka. This move is a source of pride for the authorities in Republika Srpska (RS), but when looking at the other side and the families who were left without their loved ones, it is a shameful act.
RS authorities, including SNSD President Milorad Dodik, RS President Zeljka Cvijanovic, and Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic, were excited to welcome Austrian Handke and praised his presence. The director Emir Kusturica had the same feelings.
A monument erected in his honor is located near the RS Government building.
Cvijanovic presented Handke with the Medal of the RS in Banja Luka for, as stated by the RS Government, “exceptional work and merits in the field of cultural and spiritual development, as well as for a special contribution to developing and strengthening overall relations with the RS.”
Handke told in Banja Luka that he decided to come to RS “despite strong winds that were against it”.
After Banja Luka, together with Dodik and Kusturica, Handke will visit Andricgrad, which was built in Visegrad, in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), where he will be awarded “The Grand Prize Ivo Andric” at the Andric Institute.
Handke is the winner of the “The Grand Prize Ivo Andric ” of the Andric Institute in Andricgrad for the best book published in Serbia or RS during 2020, “The Second Sword – May Story”.
He passionately advocated for the genocidal Milosevic regime, visited Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, and in 2006 appeared at his funeral. He is also known for portraying Serbia as a victim during the bloody wars of the 1990s.
Due to such attitudes, the Austrian writer was declared a persona non grata in cities such as Sarajevo and Tuzla, while he was invited to Banja Luka as a guest of honor. Many prominent world writers and artists have condemned Handke’s views, as well as the decision for such a person to receive the Nobel Prize. Even though a petition with tens of thousands of signatures was signed, Handke was still presented with the award.
Representatives of the Canton Sarajevo (CS) Assembly, one of ten cantons in other BiH entity, declared Handke an undesirable person in the canton, the day after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Tuzla did the same.
On that occasion, as was stated, among other things, Handke in his public appearances, during the aggression on BiH, publicly supported the aggressor regime led by war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, and repeatedly denied the crime of genocide in Srebrenica, despite all the verdicts of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Klix
E.Dz.
