SARAJEVO AUTHORITIES DECISION ON RESTORING MONUMENT TO FRANZ FERDINAND SHAMEFUL

ISTOČNO SARAJEVO, FEBRUARY 26 /SRNA/ – By restoring the monument to Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie at the site of the Latin Bridge /formerly Princip’s Bridge/, the Sarajevo city authorities are siding with the losers of the First World War and renouncing the ideals of their ancestors, historian Aleksandar Kostović told SRNA.

"This decision is shameful. The Sarajevo political scene has once again proven that political cowardice is its only constant over the past few decades. Avoiding internal dialogue leads them into the trap of perpetual appeasement of others. That is not how a state is built, but what do those who have never built one know about that," Kostović believes.

He pointed out that Franz Ferdinand was not an innocent tourist, but a representative of foreign rule, and that “Young Bosnia” was not a single-ethnicity organisation.

Kostović recalled that “Young Bosnia” was guided by the ideal of liberating all South Slavic peoples.

"Let them look at the old newspapers and see how the liberating Serb army was welcomed in Sarajevo in 1918 by representatives of all peoples. The Serb people brought freedom to these areas - both to themselves and to others. We paid a huge price in both world wars," Kostović emphasized.

According to him, the Serbs liberated those who had been on the side of the defeated, with the desire to unite all South Slavic peoples.

"It is sad that the most numerous people in BiH is in such a deep identity crisis. Its political immaturity is the main cause of political crises in the country. They do not understand political processes, they are not a state-building people, and as long as they do not turn toward the peoples with whom they share this space, hardly this country will have any future," Kostović noted.

The Sarajevo City Council today adopted an initiative to restore the monument to the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie near the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo.

The initiative was submitted by the caucus of the Party for BiH.

The monument to Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie was removed from the Latin Bridge site and destroyed after the end of the First World War and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.