Serbs have the right to truth and a history that will not be written by Western Serbophobic media or self-proclaimed colonial administrators of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said historian Miloš Ković.
Regarding the interference of the partial Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the teaching of history in Republika Srpska and the prejudgment of historical facts about events and figures from Republika Srpska and the Defense and Homeland War, Ković emphasized that tribunals’ ambitions to write the history of the Serb people are not new.
He pointed out that Serbs faced such attempts as early as 1909 during the so-called Zagreb High Treason Trial, the Banja Luka Trial in 1915/1916, and later with the Hague Tribunal.
“Let us not forget that the main ambition of the Hague Tribunal was to write the history of the Serb people, to brand Serbs with the mark of guilt, which actually belongs to NATO countries for the breakup of Yugoslavia,” Ković, who is also a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade, emphasized.
He indicated that the goal is to portray the victims as criminals, while the main victims of the wars and the breakup of Yugoslavia were precisely the Serbs.
“Just as the first president of Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, was tried and is now imprisoned in British dungeons, so today, the current president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, is being tried,” Ković said.
He underscored that attempts to dictate what should be written in history textbooks for Serb students “truly go beyond the competencies of any colonial administration.”
Ković reminded that every nation, including Serbs, has the right to freedom and truth, which no one can take away from them.
“We have the right to the truth, and we have the right to our history. Our history will not be written by Western Serbophobic media or self-proclaimed colonial administrators of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Ković declared.
He pointed out that there are always attempts to dispute established historical facts for political interests and recalled that Nazi Germany similarly disputed established facts about the responsibility for the outbreak of World War I.
Ković emphasized that it is a well-established fact that the Serbs were prepared to live with everyone, including in 1992 and the previous year of 1991, in a shared state and that they were the last to abandon the Yugoslav idea.
“Serbs were willing to make all compromises. The war started when secessionists, heavily armed Muslim secessionists, supported by Croatia, attacked Yugoslav People’s Army barracks. That is how the war began in both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Ković explained.
According to him, the war began when the laws of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina were violated by the outvoting of Serbs by the other two nations.
“These are historical facts. Political interests are political interests, and that is clear, but you cannot change history. History is not so relative and not as susceptible to manipulation as the enemies of truth, both contemporary and postmodern cynics, claim. What happened has happened, and it cannot be changed,” Ković stressed.
On October 11, the partial Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina temporarily suspended the application of a section of the Rulebook on the curriculum for primary education in Republika Srpska and the supplement for the subject of history for the ninth grade, which relates to the topic of Republika Srpska and the Defense and Homeland War.
Source: RTRS
