Bećirović: We must never agree to the policy of denying the Bosnian language

Candidate for the BiH Presidency member Denis Bećirović reacted to the continuation of the unconstitutional policy of denying the Bosnian language.

For years, I have been persistently asking elected officials in our country to seriously take concrete steps regarding the unconstitutional and scandalous denial of the Bosnian language. Unfortunately, so far there has been no serious response or action. Is it possible that we are again so easily and naively underestimating the danger of the brazen denial of the Bosnian language?

Democratic forces in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region must never tire of fighting against all bearers and concepts of exclusivity, discrimination, segregation, injustice, and the endangerment of elementary individual and collective human rights and freedoms.

I believe it is the obligation of the aforementioned forces to insist on achieving the highest level of protection of internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, among which the right to education and mother tongue are of particular importance. Also, for us in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this is also a constitutional obligation, because Article II of the BiH Constitution stipulates that the rights and freedoms provided for by the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms shall be directly applied in the legal system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they are given priority over other domestic positive legal regulations.

The ruling circles from the BiH entity of RS must take into account that the denial of the Bosnian language by the RS entity government is unlawful and extremely undemocratic, because neither that government nor anyone else has the right to decide on the fundamental freedoms and rights of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. No one in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I am convinced not even in the scientific world at all, would venture to discuss and argue with uninvited entity politicians who are engaging in the unacceptable and dirty business of even deciding whether a language of a historically absolutely verified people exists and what it is called, a people who have spoken that language for over a thousand years, written in it for over eight centuries, and in which that people has created and left to the world an enormous spiritual and literary treasure as a legacy.

The international community also has no right to remain silent in the face of such a dangerous and destructive policy. The name Bosnian has always been used and taken as its own and as a known and recognizable linguistic determinant under the name Bosnian language throughout the entire area of today's Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond. It was, in fact, used and cited by our scholars and foreign scholars alike, as Bosnian, completely equally and normally, just as Czech, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian are, for example.

Before any discussion about a language, it should be said that the fundamental determinant of a people, i.e., what defines it and by which it is recognized and distinguished, and by which the people is proud, is certainly its language. Indeed, how would it be without language, dare we even think? Without it, there would truly be no written literature, no oral tradition, no culture, no records of the past, and thus no people. The duration and being of a people is certainly determined by its care for its language. Hence, in every mature and healthy people and society, the language has been maintained, nurtured, cared for, standardized, and preserved. Such has been the case and remains so in our homeland, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our mother tongue, Bosnian, has thus survived numerous trials and centuries up to the present day, in which we are its direct speakers.

There have been many attempts to eradicate and erase the name of the language we speak. From the first decades of the 20th century until today, the painful and open attempt - a crime - to erase the Bosnian language forever and thus make it disappear forever has been ongoing. However, the deniers of the Bosnian language and the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina have not succeeded and have suffered a historic defeat.

It is the sovereign right of every people to call its language by its historical name, which is understandable and close to it and which has factual historical credibility for it. The latest ideologically designed stories about the Bosnian language only fit into that age-old nationalist mosaic of blatant denial of all forms of Bosnian-Herzegovinian distinctiveness under the guise of so-called science. The denial of language is equivalent to the denial of a people and its entire spiritual and cultural heritage shaped in its mother tongue; the denial of the Bosnian language is the denial of the right to life of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the right to national dignity, the right to a more peaceful future.

For Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizens who speak the Bosnian language, it is unacceptable for any of the elected representatives at any level and in any institution to compromise on the name of the Bosnian language and on attempts to replace it with some unconstitutional terms invented in Belgrade, says Bećirović.