The question of the elections and the role of refugees is examined by I. Djordjevic in the June 19, 1997 issue of the recently formed Banja Luka weekly Reporter .
The story of the refugees in Bosnia and Hercegovina, according to the data of UNHCR, is a story of half of former Bosnia (2,156,278 people).
On one side is more than two million individual fates which resemble each other like eggs. On the other are three national policies, firmly founded on fears and passions of its followers. At the same time, a typical exchange of theses comes into play here, making that Balkans is always encircled by red color on the map of the World. The question is that the state is older than the nation. The matter is senseless, but not historically unfounded, since around here the state was always some kind of guarantor that those Others, armed with cold guns and heated intentions, will not knock on the door. The state, if possible a national one, around here was, and remains, nothing more than the establishment of a codex - who actually has a right to beat us.
How did the Serbs, who have dragged largest historical complex in that respect, understood the whole thing, is best seen by the resettlement from Serb parts of Sarajevo after Dayton. We have lost our houses, but we have gained a state, was the basic thesis of the state propaganda. But, the houses were lost, while the state remained on a long stick. This form of national puritanism, which Serbs confronted for the first time in their history, had definitive practical character - how to remain under the rule of those whom we fought until recently.
When the return of refugees is in question, RS shows intuitive weakness and incapability to rationalize and solve it.: They retreat to the 49 percent of the BiH territory, attempting to organize there something that resembles life, but being deeply conscious that this is not the case. The people organized in such a manner are susceptible to manipulation. In that manner, the elections are won easily - it is announced that coming to such and such city are 10 bus loads of Muslims, each angrier than the other. The things in between are not important.
That is why the story of refugees, in which neither the Muslim or Croat politicians are acting rationally - cannot be a story with a normal moral. Since neither those that place the right to Bosnian know-it-all know who is a bigger victim there. Is it a Serb, Sarajevo university professor, who is attempting to learn something about raising chickens and roof repair in Konjevic Polje, or the Muslim from Konjevic, who cannot get used to watch the birds in their back in the professors Sarajevo 18 the floor apartment. In this story, all option are open, none with a happy ending.
Source: Banja Luka weekly Reporter, June 19, 1997
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