Sanski Most to mark 80th anniversary of the Second Session of ZAVNOBiH

(Patria) - A two-day commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Second Session of ZAVNOBiH, held in this town from June 30 to July 2, 1944, begins in Sanski Most tomorrow.

According to the program, on Saturday, June 22, a round table titled "Decisions of the Second Session of ZAVNOBiH and their significance for the development of BiH statehood" will be held in the City Hall of the National Library.

Speakers at the round table will include Sead Đulić, president of SABNOR in BiH, Doctor of Historical Sciences Omer Merzić, Besima Borić, lawyer Suada Hadžović, publicist and journalist Zlatko Dukić, Vehid Šehić, lawyer and human rights activist, and vice-president of SABNOR Jasmina Pašalić.

On Sunday, June 23, a joint delegation of SABNOR, cantonal organizations, and the Municipality of Sanski Most will lay flowers at the site where the building where the Second Session of ZAVNOBiH was held once stood. At 12:00 PM, a gathering of anti-fascists from all parts of the former country will take place in the Small Park in the center of Sanski Most, with a cultural and artistic program and participant socializing.

At the Second Session of ZAVNOBiH on July 1, 1944, the Declaration on the Rights of Citizens in BiH was adopted, which states:

"In the flames of the just liberation war, brotherhood of Serbs, Muslims, and Croats is forged, thus laying a secure foundation for a free and fraternal BiH, an equal federal unit in Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. For the first time in history, Serbs, Muslims, and Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina, united in the National Liberation Movement, have embarked on the same path, begun to build their common home, into whose foundations the bones of their best sons have been built.

For the first time in history, they have become the architects of their own destiny, firmly resolved to bury the centuries-old dark and difficult past once and for all and to build a state community in which they will live in equality, freedom, peace, and prosperity."

This Declaration is a historical and substantive precursor to the European Convention on Human Rights because it guarantees the equality of the then peoples of BiH in a "common and indivisible homeland," freedom of religion and conscience, equality of all religions, freedom of speech, association, and the press, personal and property security of citizens, freedom of private initiative in the economy, equality of women with men in political life and all areas of social activity, the right to vote, secret ballot based on universal, equal, and direct suffrage, active and passive electoral rights, the right to appeal decisions of state bodies, as well as petitions and complaints, and the right that no one can be convicted without due process.

A total of three sessions of ZAVNOBiH were held: in Mrkonjić Grad on November 25, 1943 (Statehood Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina), the second in Sanski Most on June 30, 1944, and the third and final one in Sarajevo on April 26, 1945.