Stolac residents hold warning protest: Patience exhausted over slow works and other unresolved issues

(Patria) - “WE WANT ANSWERS!” - Under this slogan, residents of Stolac held a half-hour protest and blocked the road through the town today. Residents of Stolac gathered in the city center at 2 PM for a warning protest by dissatisfied citizens of Stolac.

Recall, the peak of dissatisfaction was reached in the Uzinovići neighborhood due to prolonged and poorly organized works on the main street. The lives of Uzinovići residents have been unbearable for some time, but in the last few months, citizens have been pushed to the limits of human endurance.

They emphasize that the Uzinovići neighborhood is mostly inhabited by Bosniak returnees. Because of this, there is a belief that the harassment is not accidental but deliberate and intentional.

Residents of the Uzinovići neighborhood, through two public meetings, made decisions about the need to highlight the problems they directly face, but also called on other citizens of Stolac to join them. There are many unclear, and therefore suspicious, events in Stolac that affect Bosniaks in Stolac more than other citizens of this town.

Bosniaks of Stolac believe they are discriminated against on many grounds and that it is possible that all these activities are a continuation of the plan for the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks from Stolac.

In addition to the issue of works in Uzinovići, residents are also demanding the resolution of the illegal landfill near the Badanj cave, illegal waste dumps in the Gorica settlement, the construction of a solar power plant in the Komanja brdo area, the unsolved physical attack on four young men from the Masline settlement, which occurred on April 7, 2024, and the continuous harassment of the Sefo family and other residents of an apartment building in Ada, opposite the Police Station, due to, as stated, excessively loud music from a commercial facility located on the ground floor of the building.

Through the protest and traffic blockade, they pointed out that numerous activities, initiatives, demands, and requests from elected city councilors of Bosniak ethnicity to all levels of government, aimed at resolving the mentioned problems, have been unsuccessful. Therefore, with this protest and blockade, this time symbolic, they indicate that they will not give up their dignity and will not accept being second-class citizens.

Organizers emphasize that the goal of the protest is to draw the attention of competent institutions to these, as well as all other, problems that directly affect the lives of citizens. They state that the gathering is peaceful in nature and call on all fellow citizens to join them in the fight for a more orderly, safer, and healthier urban environment.