Bećirović: Facts are stronger than fabrications and nonsense about January 9

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - SDP Vice President and delegate in the PS BiH Denis Bećirović said today that facts are stronger than fabrications and nonsense about January 9.

"We must never cowardly and calculatingly remain silent before those who would turn shame into virtue! For our state, it would be disastrous to stop speaking and writing about the facts. Cowardice and forgetting are not a solution because that would mean we have succumbed to injustice. Instead of getting used to immoral propaganda, we must have the strength, knowledge and character to present the following irrefutable facts to the entire world:

1. The legal and highest legal act of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not prescribe any right to self-determination for ethnic communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, even in 1992. Therefore, the unconstitutional gathering on January 9, 1992, orchestrated by the Serbian state leadership and finally convicted war criminals (Radovan Karadžić, Momčilo Krajišnik, Biljana Plavšić and others), was an unconstitutional act.

2. After the democratically expressed will of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina in a referendum organized and monitored according to internationally established rules, the vast majority of the inhabitants of our state declared themselves for an independent and sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina, a state of equal citizens and peoples. An independent, sovereign and indivisible state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognized in 1992 by: the member states of the European Community (predecessor of the European Union), the United States of America and numerous other countries around the world, and on May 22, 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina became a full member of the United Nations.

3. With international recognition, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina became a subject of international law. On the other hand, para-entities on the state territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina were never recognized by anyone. Therefore, the so-called RS was a dead entity and the international community never recognized or accepted it as an independent international subject. These are facts that all people in our country and abroad should know.

4. Today's scandalous arrival of the highest officials of the Government of Serbia to celebrate the illegal January 9 represents a dangerous disregard for the final and binding decisions of the legal Constitutional Court of BiH, as well as further proof that numerous officials and media in the West rightly warn that Vučić's regime in Serbia is the greatest threat to peace in the region and Europe. The highest officials of Serbia should publicly answer how they would behave if, for example, officials from other countries came to Novi Sad or Novi Pazar to celebrate a date that the Constitutional Court of Serbia had declared illegal. The Serbian policy of double standards and disregard for Bosnian-Herzegovinian and international law could boomerang back on Serbia.

5. The illegal January 9 celebration is an act of insult and provocation for the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the European Union and the United Nations. The civilized world must not forget that the designers and executors of the genocidal policy were sentenced by the highest courts of the United Nations to over a thousand years in prison. This is a planetary condemnation of the project to destroy the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and this condemnation cannot be hidden by miserable January 9 parades that resemble the most totalitarian regimes of today.

6. The Venice Commission, at its 96th plenary session on October 11 and 12, 2013, adopted an opinion on the compliance of the choice of the Day of the BiH entity RS with the anti-discrimination standards of the Council of Europe, i.e., the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The Commission concluded that the celebration of January 9 is a discriminatory act towards other peoples in that part of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and is not in accordance with basic democratic values and postulates. Such a policy, as stated in the opinion of the Venice Commission, is not in accordance with values such as dialogue, tolerance, mutual understanding and equality.

7. Any attempt to establish continuity with illegal, unrecognized and self-proclaimed para-entities on the state territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina is legally unfounded, politically unacceptable and extremely counterproductive for the policy of building peace and stability. The Constitution of BiH clearly stipulates that entities in the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina have no continuity and that they did not exist until the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement.

8. The celebration of January 9, 1992 has no substantive connection with the real interests of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a date symbiotically linked to the Greater Serbian ideology and policy that led to genocide against the Bosniak population and war crimes against the Croatian and other populations that did not agree with the policy of separating peoples. Celebrating such a policy is just further proof that Belgrade has not abandoned its great-state pretensions towards the territory of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also the territories of several other countries of the Western Balkans.

Finally, I want to emphasize that the future of the citizens and peoples of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not in affirming illegal dates, dark policies and convicted war criminals. The citizens and peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina should affirm anti-fascist values and educate new generations to look up to proven humanists, scientists, athletes, writers...

It is an honor to uncompromisingly protect the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and all good people in it.

It is a duty to speak the truth, even if it is bitter.

Long live the free and unconquered state of Bosnia and Herzegovina", Bećirović said.