Romanians taught Bosnian-Croatian fans a geography lesson

By Haris Ljevo

Where are the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina and what is BiH, it seems, is better known everywhere in the world than by numerous citizens living in this country.

Before the European Basketball Championship match between Spain and Croatia, played in the Romanian city of Cluj, one of the championship hosts, security at the entrance to the hall confiscated flags and banners from Croatian fans that bore the names of cities from BiH: Mostar, Posušje, Livno, Neum, Ljubuški...

The reason for this is that the International Basketball Federation FIBA has a rule prohibiting fans from carrying flags with inscriptions of cities from other countries.

Croatian fans from BiH were angry after the match because security did not return their confiscated flags at the end of the game.

This is not the first time that Croatian fans from BiH have received a geography lesson.

When Croatia hosted the World Handball Championship ten years ago, even Croatian security guards in halls in Split, Zagreb, and other cities where the championship was played confiscated props from fans that bore the symbols of so-called Herceg-Bosnia, because they had to respect international rules.

The commentator on Eurosport, about ten years ago during a tennis match between Ivan Ljubičić and Marcos Baghdatis, called Ljubičić a Bosnian tennis player a dozen times, even though there were hundreds of Croatian flags in the stands of the stadium in Melbourne.

He didn't care. He was well prepared for the match and armed with information that Ljubičić was born in Banja Luka, in BiH, where he also grew up, and the fact that he had to flee to Croatia due to war circumstances and play for it was completely irrelevant to the English commentator. For him, Ivan Ljubičić is Bosnian, period.

If the English, Romanians, and the rest of the world know better than Croatian fans from BiH where they are from and which country they belong to, then we have a serious problem.

Unless it's just about skipping geography classes in elementary school. Then, they can be somewhat forgiven.