IGK on Ćosić's statements: BiH has a 1000-year history, and RS only exists within it

(Patria) - The Institute for the Research of Genocide from Canada reacted to the shameful statements of Ljubiša Ćosić, the mayor of East Sarajevo, who, commenting on the speech of the Reisu-l-ulema Husein ef. Kavazović, said that 'Bosnia and Herzegovina is Serbian land, we liberated you'.

"Ćosić's inhuman and unconscionable attitude towards the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state clearly speaks to the character of the individual. His anti-state actions and media appearances aim to deny the continuity of the statehood and independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But it should be known that Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a Dayton creation but continues its existence with a changed name and a modified internal structure. The entity RS, with the prefix 'republic' and a name after only one nation, cannot exist on Bosnian-Herzegovinian land, in Bosnian-Herzegovinian society and state, in the idea of Bosnia and the Bosnian spirit.

Bosnia and Herzegovina concerns all of us because it is the noblest human aspiration that no one has managed to destroy in a thousand years. For Bosnia and Herzegovina to be better, its peoples and citizens must be masters of their will and servants of their conscience. Because nothing ever causes greater rebellion than injustice. And injustice is the internal and external anti-Bosnian coalition working against the state, diplomacy working against its own state, denial of judicial, scientific, and historical facts about aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, glorification and celebration of convicted war criminals, establishing a culture of forgetting instead of a culture of remembrance.

Only those who respect a unified, sovereign, independent, democratic Bosnia and Herzegovina, those who recognize its thousand-year tradition, should feel honored by the historical fact that they belong to the generation of defenders of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state. We will not beg those who deny the aforementioned, but rather state: Bosnia and Herzegovina was, is, and will forever remain a symbol of Bosnian-Herzegovinian state and social existence and progress," the IGK announced.