Who doesn't need the Bosnian Cultural Center

Edin Urjan Kukavica

A few days ago, Prijedor saw opening of a Bosnian Cultural Center. The Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats decided together to found – and they have founded indeed – an association solely financed by voluntary contributions of its members and sympathizers, which will be concerned with protection and nurturing of non-material heritage and legacy of all nations (and nationalities) of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Some 300 guests and members including the Austrian ambassador to BiH, as well as several honorable councilors of BiH in the countries farther than our neighborhood, have elected organizational bodies according to their education, skills and (inter)national affiliation, who are likely to be personally interested in promoting an image of Bosnia and Herzegovina that is different from the one sent out from political gatherings and commemorations.

The news that would have echoed louder than any other across regime and 'independent' media had there been any genuine interest by anyone in this country, has instead passed unnoticed.

There's no funeral, individual or collective, and requiem mass that do not 'deserve' at least a three minute report in the central and all other TV news on all TV channels, public and private, controlled and 'independent'.

The silence of the grave that has veiled every news about successful attempts to reconstruct the life, louder than anything else speaks about state of the conscience, or the lack of it, as well as a complete lack of interest in Bosnia and Herzegovina as it was and as it could be. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the death still has precedence over life.

Four years ago, two obscure characters with a long political prehistory and indicative backgrounds, both serving technical mandate, decided to close the Bosnian Cultural Center in Sarajevo (by merging it with some other institutions), and rename it as plainly as 'public institution the Center for Culture of the Sarajevo Canton' and so, from the center of Sarajevo they drove out the 'Bosnian', and the 'cultural', and the 'center'.

It was all done with just one piece of paper, two signatures and a silent consent of political entities, both the ruling ones and the opposition.

Without going into the motive of this, to my mind, hostile act which would take at least two years of struggling through a jungle of bureaucratic and legal idiocies to annul in order to bring the Bosnian Cultural Center back to Sarajevo, I learn a lesson: it takes years to repair what two idiots can destroy in seconds.

The come-back of the Bosnian Cultural Center in Sarajevo passed without any interest by the public and local media. However, that is not such a problem after all; not all in the administration of the responsible ministry knew about closure of the center, not to mention the citizens of Sarajevo (as most of the time the mail was wrongly addressed but somehow it always arrived at the right address).

The time spent on thinking about the topic of: how a former soccer player who has hardly heard about Sarajevo, has obliged this town or its mayor, as well as some other topics such as: who will play at the Live Stage next year... would be a complete waste (of time).

Therefore, let's say that I don't care if the mayor of Sarajevo goes fulfilling his childhood dreams and curing his childhood trauma at the cost of Sarajevo tax payers. Let's say that I don't care for elevation of the people (at our cost) who wouldn't be lofty for anything (if you took away from them their tie, their secretary and the company vehicle).    

Perhaps Bosnia and Herzegovina is an experiment of the international community which is meant to find an approximate solution for problematic multiethnic lands and territories which could have seen explosions of pent up personal frustrations and collective discontent.

Perhaps this country is a prematurely born baby of the history and a territory with special needs, and a currency for arguing regional territorial vagueness, and the Swedish table for insatiable neighbors whose mouth only earth can fill up...

From those times, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been governed by people from the very edge of definition of humanity, mental premature newborns, byproducts of failed historical lobotomies with incurable brain tumors which press upon some non-anatomical centers... and all that has begun when those two scoundrels convinced us that in Bosnia and Herzegovina do not live Bosnians and Herzegovinians but some constituent peoples and completely unknown people who ought to share power and that is all there is to know and be.  

So, the Serbs (only) live in the RS, from Konjic or from Mostar at best down to the South (only) Croats, and in the rest of the country live Bosniaks together with the Others... All those who do not fit in that pattern are (or should be) endangered and oppressed. Which is exactly why I expected any media to notice the irregularity in the matrix... to no avail.

That's why I think there are no innocents in this country... the endangered and the oppressed who do not react to endangering and oppressing are not the victims - they are accomplices.