THERE IS NO PLACE IN SARAJEVO FOR THOSE WHO LIBERATED IT, BUT THERE IS FOR OCCUPIERS

PALE, FEBRUARY 27 /SRNA/ - Historian Georgije Vulić told SRNA that the initiative to reinstall a monument to Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo represents an attempt to revise the symbolic order, and added that, after such a gesture, it is even clearer why the city no longer has the Vojvoda Stepa Stepanović Quay or a street named after Živan Ranković.

"It is evident that there is no longer a place in this city for those who liberated it, but there is room for those who occupied it," Vulić emphasized. He pointed out that this is not an isolated case of glorifying occupiers in the Federation of BiH /FBiH/. "Very often in Bosniak public discourse, as well as in historiography, the advantages of Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule over BiH are emphasized. It seems that, in such interpretations, the only historical periods considered problematic are those in which the peoples of BiH lived without foreign tutelage," Vulić said. He stressed that history is not merely a matter of individual tragedy, but also of clashes between imperial policies, national movements, and global interests. "Erecting a monument to the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne in a city that, over the past centuries, has gone through severe experiences of war and suffering inevitably raises the question: what is being symbolically affirmed by this act? Is it a culture of remembrance aimed at reconciliation, or a gradual shift in historical interpretation toward relativizing the imperial context in which BiH was an annexed territory?" asked Vulić. According to him, the historical consciousness of a people is an extremely sensitive category, and any repackaging of the past, under the guise of European values or urban redesign, must be the subject of serious public debate. "It is not disputed that Sarajevo is a place of world history - the issue is how that history is interpreted and in whose interest," said Vulić, a research fellow and senior associate at the Institute of Historical Sciences, University of Istočno Sarajevo. The Sarajevo City Council yesterday adopted an initiative by the councilors' caucus of the Party for BiH to reinstall a monument to Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife near the Latin Bridge /formerly known as Princip’s Bridge/ in Sarajevo. The monument to Franz Ferdinand and his wife was removed from the site of the Latin Bridge and destroyed after the end of the Great War and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.