DODIK: THERE IS NO "BOSNIAN AND HERZEGOVINIAN" CULTURAL HERITAGE

BANJA LUKA, AUGUST 1 /SRNA/ – President Milorad Dodik has said today that Muslims in BiH are attempting to promote the idea of a "Bosnian and Herzegovinian cultural heritage," which does not exist.

"There is a distinct Serb cultural heritage, a Croat and a Turkish cultural heritages, because everything that is today presented as Bosniak cultural heritage was created during the occupation carried out by the Ottoman Turks for more than 400 years," Dodik posted on X.

He added that this was yet another attempt to portray BiH as an integrated and single state, although it is not, as one heritage denies the existence of another.

"The Turks erased much of the Serb heritage here, later the communists did the same. Nevertheless, what remains is what we believe we must continue to defend. /Denis/ Bećirović and the others can do whatever they want and invent various commissions, but they cannot change the fact that there are Serb, Croat and predominantly Turkish cultural heritages in these areas, and that this can never become an integrated 'Bosnian and Herzegovinian' cultural heritage," Dodik said.

He stressed that peoples and nations with centuries-old roots possess their own historical and cultural heritage, and that something which is only now attempting to come into existence cannot have such a heritage.

Earlier, Anđelina Ošap-Gaćanović, a member of the Commission preserving National Monuments of BiH, told SRNA that she had been informed by email that an order had been issued to retroactively deregister her from the institution despite there being no legal grounds to do so. She announced that she would file complaints with all competent institutions, saying the action constituted an attack on the Constitution of BiH.

Ošap-Gaćanović said that the Commission's executive official, Mirzah Fočo, had ordered that she and fellow Commission member Faruk Kapidžić from the FBiH retroactively deregistered as Commission employees effective July 8, allegedly in coordination with the Office of the Bosniak BiH Presidency member, Denis Bećirović. She said she would file criminal complaints over the matter.