We have been apologizing and adapting for too long, let's stop: If someone is bothered by the aspiration for a normal state, that's their problem!

By: Rasim Belko

Two aggressions, genocide, common criminal enterprise, ethnic cleansing, rapes, and a whole spectrum of crimes unprecedented since the fascist attack on the world. All of us who love Bosnia and Herzegovina and who wanted it to be an independent, sovereign, and unified European state have survived all of this.

And after everything, we extended a hand, wholeheartedly accepting apologies as glimmers of hope that normality would take root in our environment. We agreed to compromises and generally bad solutions for ourselves, just so that our neighbors would remain in our common yard, our homeland, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Oh, how wrong that was. We are living the consequences of the goodwill and peacefulness we showed after the double aggression and all those crimes today, trapped between a rock and a hard place. Because while we believed and hoped in the common sense of those who slaughtered us and the compassion of the world that allowed them to slaughter us, the enemy was consolidating its positions. No, they were no longer doing it with weapons. Not because they didn't want to, but because they no longer dared to, as we had leveled the playing field.

Armed aggression was replaced by political aggression. Those who will not and cannot unite anywhere else but in Bosnia and Herzegovina joined forces, because thanks to Dayton and the international community, they can only dream their hegemonic dreams in Bosnia.

And us? We spent three decades mourning the dead and trying to appeal to the world's reason that what was built on the foundations of two aggressions, genocide, common criminal enterprise... is unsustainable. But it took us too long to realize that no one is interested. And it's questionable whether we have fully realized it, as we have started to settle for letters, resolutions, and pats on the back, enjoying the hope that someone will reward the victim simply for being a victim. In doing so, we have forgotten that this is a world of force and power, not justice and truth.

And we clearly haven't learned that lesson. Because, when a phenomenon emerged among us that defied the role of victim and dreamer of justice, we started to apologize. And not just apologize. From the very first appearance of individuals who no longer agreed to be just victims but played the card of opposition, figures emerged among us who said that this should not be done, that it is dangerous to oppose neighbors, and offered stories of some kind of reconciliation between peoples.

This apologizing has been going on for almost two decades, and even today it seems like we are apologizing to hegemonists for simply wanting our homeland and state to be unified, sovereign, and independent. They have not apologized to us for all the crimes, and we apologize to them for legitimately blocking their paths to the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina through political means.

My editor doesn't allow me to curse, but I would most like to curse the reconciliation of peoples, the apologizing, and the role of the victim. Because, the wise said long ago that whoever apologizes too quickly and too much admits guilt that may not even exist. And guilt for wanting to preserve one's homeland is heroism and chivalry everywhere, except in this Bosnian political cauldron.

We stifled every voice that had the potential to create resistance and action among us towards what we all desire, instead of supporting those very voices as glimmers on which we could build a policy, just as we built an army from nothing.

And even then, we had those among us who stifled the voice and the resistance movement. This is a phenomenon that experts should study. Such self-destruction of Bosnian politics must have some phenomenological basis, because the amount of condescension, subservience, and self-humiliation is abnormal for a people who have successfully survived two aggressions.

Therefore, it is high time to stop apologizing and clearly state that we are FOR A UNITARY BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, a state for every one of its people under the same conditions and rights. If someone doesn't like that, that's their problem, not ours.

And that fact only bothers those who want to keep our state in a status quo because only then can they preserve the desire to one day tear it apart through political action, since they couldn't do it by force of arms.

And if it's not a problem for them to openly act and say they want the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, why should it be a burden for us to say that we are for a unitary state with protected citizens' rights, and partly collective rights, but without the possibility of blockades and destruction of the state.

Similarly, why is it a problem for us to say that we voted and will vote for Lazović, Ljujić-Mijatović, Komšić, Miletić... we will also vote for Slaven Kovačević. Not because of their names or identities, but because of what they advocate, which is also what we advocate - a state with the rule of law where citizens are equal in both obligations and rights!

It is high time to say and show this to the international community as well, which, for its own reasons and interests, keeps us trapped, favoring those who would divide us at the first opportunity. Because that international community aims for our wealth and resources and wants to take them away from our children who then seek their future in the developed countries of the West. And those Western countries are developed from the wealth of enslaved countries, once Africa, and now increasingly Europe itself.

We are older as a state than most of those countries in the international community. We have shown that we can defend ourselves even when they turn their backs on us and deny us the right to live. Why are we appeasing them today and agreeing to let them openly destroy us.

It is time to start exposing both those who openly, and those who in the background, sell our future by selling the interests of our state. And there is no fundamental difference in the colors of the jerseys of our political representatives. Some have to do it openly for their own interests, some do it secretly for the same reasons. But both sides work exclusively to our detriment and their profit.

It's time!

To finally stop apologizing to enemies who want our disappearance and to drive away those among us who, by serving the enemy, directly contribute to that disappearance. It is not an easy and simple path, but if we do not take that path, we probably won't be able to soon!

Apologizing and adapting is a privilege of the weak, and we no longer have that privilege if we want to survive!