CHARTER OF BAN KULIN IS BEING POLITICALLY MISUSED

SARAJEVO, JANUARY 29 /SRNA/ - Attempts by certain Bosniak circles to present the Charter of Ban Kulin as evidence of the continuity of statehood of modern-day BiH amount to historical manipulation and political abuse of the past, Bojan Krunić, senior assistant at the Department of History and Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Pale, told SRNA.

Commenting on the parliamentary initiative by Denis Zvizdić, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, calling on Russia to return the Charter of Ban Kulin to BiH, Krunić said that this is a well-known pattern in which every effort is made to link the incompatible - medieval Bosnia and today’s BiH. He emphasized that, in this context, the Charter of Ban Kulin is being distortedly presented as evidence of some kind of continuity of statehood, which is not true, and that it is particularly dangerous, as he stressed, that this alleged continuity is being linked exclusively to the Bosniak or Bosnian ethnic corpus, which as such did not exist in the Middle Ages. "Sources that speak of the Serbian character of medieval Bosnia are deliberately omitted," Krunić explained. According to him, following the same principle, the language and script used in medieval Bosnia are also being subsumed under some supposed Bosnian variant of Old Church Slavonic, whereas in reality, it was the Serbian language and script. Krunić recalled that the only language mentioned in documents originating from the territory of medieval Bosnia is the Serbian language, and that there is no mention of any other language. He emphasized that, in this context, presenting the Charter of Ban Kulin as a document written in the "Bosnian language," supposedly proving a link with the statehood of modern-day BiH, is not only inaccurate but also malicious. "Zvizdić's initiative can be interpreted as a clever political move aimed at stoking national tensions and mobilizing potential voters in an election year,” Krunić said. Zvizdić stated that the Charter of Ban Kulin is "a fundamental document of Bosnian statehood and part of BiH's inalienable cultural heritage".