BIJELO POLJE Initiative adopted to strip war criminal Radovan Karadžić of the 'Risto Ratković' award

(Patria) - The Bijelo Polje Municipal Assembly adopted a conclusion instructing the Council of the Ratković Poetry Evenings Institution to amend the rulebook within one month and revoke the literary award from Radovan Karadžić, a final convicted war criminal.

Nineteen councillors voted in favour of the conclusion, while councillors from the Democratic Front, the Europe Now Movement, and Democratic Montenegro did not participate in the vote.

Councillor Amer Smailović of the Bosniak Party assessed this as an important day for the municipality of Bijelo Polje and for confronting the past. He emphasised that the award given to Karadžić represents a burden for the town and the institution itself, and reminded that many writers and citizens refuse to participate in the event due to the fact that Karadžić's name is among the laureates.

Councillor Jelenka Andrić of the Europe Now Movement stated that her party would not participate in the vote, assessing it as an attempt to do something legally impossible. A similar stance was expressed by councillor Marko Ljujić of Democratic Montenegro.

On the other hand, councillor Abaz Dizdarević of the Democratic Party of Socialists emphasised that his party would support the initiative, recalling that the award to Karadžić from 1993 is a "dark stain in the history of Bijelo Polje" and that it was not awarded for his literary work.

The Council of the Ratković Poetry Evenings had already removed Karadžić's name from the list of winners in August, which was presented as a symbolic distancing from the former laureate.

Radovan Karadžić was awarded in 1993, at the height of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while in 2019 he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hague Tribunal for genocide in Srebrenica and other war crimes.

The initiative to revoke the award was submitted on June 26 by a group of NGOs and civic activists, and a day later by the Bijelo Polje committee of the Bosniak Party.