The Night When Barbarians Shot at Books: The History of Attempts to Annul the State of BiH Is of Great Magnitude

On the night between August 25 and 26, 1992, Serbian forces led by convicted war criminal Radovan Karadžić shelled the Sarajevo City Hall. It was, according to members of the International Expert Team of the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada, a criminal attempt to destroy the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state, but also an attempt to destroy the Idea of Bosnia and the Bosnian Spirit, and the awareness of a place of shared living, which is also an attempt to destroy man and civilization.

- The City Hall was a target of the artillery of followers of criminals Radovan Karadžić and Slobodan Milošević, that is, the Army of the entity of Republika Srpska and the former Yugoslav People's Army. Radovan Karadžić, who likes to consider himself more a supposed poet than a war criminal, issued the order to fire phosphorus bombs at the City Hall building, which particularly fuel the spread of fire. Thus, the City Hall became a synonym for urbicide and culturocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Europe, and the world.

Hit by numerous projectiles, it was burned and destroyed. Few books were saved from the flames. More than 80 percent of the book collection and documents that testified to the thousand-year history of the land and state of Bosnia and Herzegovina were destroyed. About three million books and three hundred unique manuscripts of invaluable worth were lost forever. The City Hall thus became a symbol of aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

When you destroy the written trace of the Idea of Bosnia and the Bosnian Spirit, that civilizational code that belongs to all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then you destroy the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. By erasing the Idea of Bosnia and the Bosnian Spirit, the aggressors attempted to erase the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state, society, land, territory.

The burning of books in the City Hall was a means for realizing the political and territorial goals of the aggressors in the name of spreading Bosnian-Herzegovinian collective oblivion. This dark act is linked to the totalitarian regime of criminal Slobodan Milošević and his like-minded individuals in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, through which they would, by aggression and genocide, settle accounts with the Bosnian-Herzegovinian past, present, and future in the name of destroying the collective memory of Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizens about a unique, free, independent state.

The City Hall is a kind of guardian of the cultural-historical heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a thorn in the side of the aggressors when it comes to the continuity of Bosnian-Herzegovinian statehood. But the City Hall is also a symbol of man and civilization. It synthesizes within itself the history of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, man, and civilization. The restoration of the City Hall and its reopening is a message and lesson to all aggressors against Bosnia and Herzegovina and to all creators and executors of genocide against the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina that the Idea of Bosnia and the Bosnian Spirit have always managed to defeat evil and fascism, aggression and genocide.

Those who burned the City Hall, those who charged with aggression and genocide against the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens, those who killed children, those who raped, those who tortured and killed in death concentration camps, those who forcibly expelled, in fact, burned and destroyed the Idea of Bosnia and the Bosnian Spirit, and thereby burned and destroyed history, culture, tradition of man and civilization. Because of this barbaric, anti-civilizational, anti-human crime of aggression and genocide, the burners of the City Hall and destroyers of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina will forever remain on the garbage dump of history.

Collective knowledge stored in the records of a people represents an essential part of that people's identity. To this day, numerous rulers worldwide, and especially the creators and executors of aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and genocide against its citizens, have not understood that the power of thought and spirit, whether in the form of the written word or expressed through some other artistic language, cannot be erased. No weapon more powerful than the strength of the spirit has yet been invented.

On the 25th anniversary of the barbaric burning of the City Hall, we remind once again that fascism has not yet been defeated either in Bosnia and Herzegovina or in the world - say from the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada