A small group of students and citizens responded to a protest walk on Saturday in Sarajevo, demanding responsibility for 29 deaths, including two unborn babies, in the floods in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) at the beginning of October.
Organized by the informal group of students “Will that change happen?”, those gathered walked from the Sacred Heart Cathedral to the building of the Government of the Federation of BiH (FBiH), sending a message to the public that the Government of the FBiH is responsible for last year’s October floods that hit Donja Jablanica, Buturovic-Polje, Fojnica, and Konjic as well as other areas.
The government, they point out, is equally responsible for all the steps it failed to take to prevent the floods. They continue, as they add, with the protests because none of their demands have been fulfilled and because the authorities abandoned the residents of the mentioned areas.
“The rehabilitation plan for the affected areas, which the Government committed to, has not been implemented. The humanitarian organization Pomozi.ba has already started work on new houses in Donja Jablanica. Since 2014, more than one billion BAM have been collected from various fees for natural disasters, thanks to the citizens’ salaries. Today is 2025. Eleven years have passed,” they stated.
They also asked “why we still do not have an early warning system and why citizens’ money has not been spent on adequate flood defense systems.”
Among the demands of the informal group of students were the urgent initiation of investigations and the urgent filing of indictments against those responsible and urgent informing of the public about all actions taken by the authorities regarding the death of 29 people, criminal sanctioning of those responsible for the operation of an illegal quarry that allegedly caused the landslide in which 19 people died in Donja Jablanica.
They demand criminal sanctioning of those responsible within the competent bodies, services, and institutions who failed to act preventively and prevent the death of 29 people in the floods, revision of all quarries and other environmentally hazardous projects that represent a future danger to lives in BiH, and the harmonization of all spatial plans with the map of landslides and torrential rivers.
They also demand the public disclosure of all data on collected aid and the spending of budget and donations for all flooded areas, as well as the plans for the rehabilitation of the flooded areas, AA writes.
Photo: Anadolu Agency
