The Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag is a celebration of love for one’s own people and an awareness of the price paid by generations before us so that today we have the right to our name, our faith, our script, our land and our flag, Milorad Dodik said.
On the occasion of the Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag, being marked today in Banja Luka and organized by the governments of Republika Srpska and Serbia, Dodik said in a column that September 15 should be a day to raise the flag high – not against anyone, not as a threat and not to seek anyone’s permission to be who we are, but for ourselves.
“For those who carried it across Kajmakčalan. For those who preserved it when it was dangerous to display it. For those who created Republika Srpska. For Serbia, which today is strong and capable of supporting its people wherever they live. And for the generations to come, to whom we must leave both Serbia and Republika Srpska stronger than we inherited them,” Dodik wrote.
His column follows:
There are days we commemorate because the calendar tells us to, and there are days that remind us why we survived. September 15 belongs to the latter.
The Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag is not merely a celebration of a date. It is a celebration of everything we, as a people, had to endure so that today we can freely raise our tricolor without anyone taking it down.
The Serb flag has never been merely a piece of cloth. Within it are our defeats and victories, graves and baptisms, churches and homes, those who died beneath it and the children who will carry it when we are no longer here.
When I look at red, blue and white, I do not see three colors. I see centuries. I see Kosovo. I see the Salonica Front. I see suffering and uprisings. I see the Corridor. I see Republika Srpska. I see a people who, many times throughout history, were left with nothing, but never agreed to be left without themselves. That is the true significance of September 15.
On that day in 1918, the Serbian soldier did not ask which great power would give him permission to be free. After Albania, Corfu, hunger, disease and death, he set out for home. He had a worn uniform, a rifle, memories of fallen comrades and one idea that proved stronger than far more powerful empires – Serbia had to be free.
And he returned.
That is why this holiday is not a celebration of hatred toward others. We do not need someone else’s hatred to know who we are. It is a celebration of love for what is ours and an awareness of the price generations before us paid so that today we have the right to our name, our faith, our script, our land and our flag.
Empires changed. States changed. Borders were drawn. Ideologies emerged and disappeared. The Serb people remained. What remained was the awareness of who we are, what language we speak, which tradition we belong to and what freedom means to us.
And perhaps the Drina is the best proof of how powerless administrative borders can be in the face of the life of one people.
The Drina is an administrative border. But it has never succeeded in becoming a border between brother and brother, between the same family patron saint’s day, the same language, the same songs, the same church, the same family memories and the same sense of belonging.
It is not a cut through the Serb national body. It is its backbone.
That is precisely why Serbia and Republika Srpska jointly commemorate September 15. The decision to jointly celebrate the Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag was made in 2020, while Aleksandar Vučić later described it as a celebration of the identity and unity of Serbia and Republika Srpska. We should be honest and grateful for that.
Many things have connected Serbia and the Serbs west of the Drina throughout history, but there have been few periods in recent history when relations between Serbia and Republika Srpska have been more substantial, direct and natural than they are today. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić deserves significant credit for that.
Vučić understood something that was not always taken for granted in Belgrade: Republika Srpska is not a burden for Serbia, not an uncomfortable subject and not a relative remembered only on holidays. Republika Srpska is part of the life of the Serb people.
He also understood that administrative borders should be respected, but that they do not have to become walls.
There are roads. There are bridges. There are schools, hospitals, universities, cultural institutions, joint projects, economic cooperation, assistance to local communities, shared holidays and, above all, an awareness that the same people live on both sides of the Drina.
That is how a border is not torn down, but transcended. Not through irresponsibility, but through cooperation. Not through conflict, but through connection. Not by denying political reality, but by building ties stronger than any administrative line.
That is why Serbia and Republika Srpska today, more than ever, can breathe together.
When Republika Srpska faces hardship, Serbia feels it. When Serbia grows stronger, Republika Srpska is more secure. When Belgrade understands Banja Luka and Banja Luka celebrates Serbia’s success, those relations cease to be merely protocol between two governments.
They become what they truly are – the relationship of one people with itself.
Vučić had the political breadth to understand that national unity does not mean abolishing borders, but abolishing alienation. That is an enormous difference.
Throughout our history, borders were often drawn by others. Some were drawn after wars, some after major conferences, and some in offices far away from the Serb people. But there is something much older and much stronger than all the barriers erected among Serbs over the centuries.
There is belonging. There is memory. There is language. There is faith. There is family. And there is the flag.
That is why the tricolor is perhaps the simplest, yet most powerful symbol of that bond. It is the same when held by a child in Banja Luka, Belgrade, Trebinje, Novi Sad, Istočno Sarajevo, Niš or anywhere else in the world where Serbs live.
It does not ask which side of the Drina you come from.
It tells you who you are.
At the 2023 commemoration of this holiday, Aleksandar Vučić said that the Serb people may live in many countries, but they have one flag. That perhaps best describes the essence of a policy that does not demand that anyone tear down borders, but insists that borders cannot erase identity.
But patriotism must not end with raising the flag. If all we leave our children is the tricolor, without leaving them a country in which they want to live, then we have not completed our task.
Our generation no longer has the task our great-grandfathers had – to break through the Salonica Front. Our front consists of schools that produce educated people, jobs that allow families to live with dignity, villages where children’s voices can once again be heard, roads that connect us, and a society people do not leave because they have to, but return to because they want to.
The loudest anthem is not always the one we sing. Sometimes it is a house where the lights have been switched on again. The greatest victory is not always military. Sometimes it is a young person saying: I am staying here.
Our ancestors fought so that we would exist. It is up to us to fight so that there will be more of us.
That is why on September 15 we should raise the flag high. Not against anyone. Not to threaten anyone. Not to ask anyone’s permission to be who we are.
But for ourselves.
For those who carried it across Kajmakčalan. For those who preserved it when it was dangerous to display it. For those who created Republika Srpska. For Serbia, which today is strong and capable of supporting its people wherever they live. And for the generations to come, to whom we must leave both Serbia and Republika Srpska stronger than we inherited them.
Because a flag is not merely a symbol of territory. It is a symbol of continuity.
Borders have been drawn and erased throughout history. Empires emerged and disappeared. Powerful rulers came and went.
But the tricolor remained.
And as long as we recognize one another beneath it, as long as Serbia and Republika Srpska understand one another, and as long as we know that the freedom of one part of our people gives strength to the other, no administrative border will ever be stronger than what connects us.
Long live Serbia. Long live Republika Srpska.
Source: RTRS
