(Fwd) Document: Banja Luka Mayor on the Ferhadija mosque
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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 10:20:26 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: (Fwd) Document: Banja Luka Mayor on the Ferhadija mosque
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Joost van Beek <[email protected]>
(Fwd) Document: Banja Luka Mayor on the Ferhadija mosque
I only now read this posting to the HABSBURG list of 9 May, and
thought it might be interesting to the Minelres-list members as well -
I don't recall having seen it on your list yet.
Joost van Beek
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 12:28:51 -0500
From: "James P. Niessen" <[email protected]>
Document: Banja Luka Mayor Umicevic on the Ferhadija
mosque
To: Multiple recipients of list HABSBURG
<[email protected]>
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the destruction of Banja
Luka's two most beautiful mosques, the Ferhadija and the Arnaudija
(both blown up during the night of May 6-7, 1993). For images of
these historic mosques before, during, and after their destruction,
point your browser to
http://www.students.haverford.edu/vfilipov/home2.html (click on Banja
Luka)
Today, thanks to some helpful journalist friends, I received a faxed
copy of Banja Luka mayor Djordje Umicevic's original open letter,
addressed to Carlos Westendorp, the high representative of the
international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The letter was written
in response to a memorandum from Westendorp, who had asked Mayor
Umicevic to grant the local Islamic community's request for a permit
to reconstruct the 16th-c. Ferhad Pasha Mosque at its original site
(since 1993 a leveled, empty, weed-covered lot in the center of Banja
Luka).
The letter is dated April 13, 1998, and written in
Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic script), complete with the official
letterhead and the seal of the Serb-controlled Banja Luka municipality
and Mayor Umicevic's signature. Since this is a document that has
been much quoted in media reports but never published in full, I
believe it deserves to be made more widely known. An English
translation follows the original text.
I am posting it on this list as an example of the uses and
constructions of historical memory and heritage -- maybe it can serve
to rekindle last fall's H-TURK discussion about the origin and
functions of "imagined communities." The mayor's letter also serves
as a useful reminder of the fact that ideas can have consequences in
real life, and that the ideology that motivated genocide in Banja Luka
and elsewhere in Bosnia is still very much with us.
The letter documents the ideology that supplied a motive and a means
of justification for the destruction of the non-Orthodox houses of
worship and other non-Serb heritage by nationalist extremists. That
is, of course, also the ideology of genocide and of ethnic and
religious apartheid in Bosnia. For legal purposes, it may help to
establish the intent behind the pattern of cultural destruction. But
even as a piece of political rhetoric, it is a truly fascinating
document.
First, it is interesting to see how Mayor Umicevic collapses time -
the Nazi aerial bombardment at the start of World War II, the
unwillingness of the post-1945 Communist regime to permit the
rebuilding of the Orthodox church, the 16th-century Austrian
nobleman's severed head, the Serb maidens allegedly ravished over a
span of five centuries, the mayor's schoolboy memories of having read
the ghoulish impalement scene in Ivo Andric's famous work of
historical fiction, the humiliations of Dayton - all time is collapsed
into an everlasting present, in which history, myth and propaganda are
merged to prove that the timeless suffering of victimized Serbdom
gives Serbian nationalists the right to do whatever they please.
Second, it is amazing to watch how Umicevic tries to turn the Bosniak
parliamentarian's words (that Bosniaks are not in fact an alien race
of "Turks") into another reason why the ancient mosque cannot be
rebuilt. Since "the Turks" built the mosque, then if the Bosniaks are
not the same as the Turks, the mosque is really a monument that
belongs to the Serbs alone - a memorial to their 500 years of
suffering and humiliation - and thus "the Serbs" (meaning Umicevic and
his fellow fanatics) have the sole right to decide whether to allow it
to be rebuilt ... which of course the "nation" cannot ever permit,
since it would be the "blackest humiliation."
The Banja Luka mayor stops just short of openly admitting who
destroyed the Ferhadija (as well as the city's 15 other mosques), but
the motive is clearly stated in the letter and there is no mystery
whatever about the identity of the perpetrators.
The final, and most revealing twist in the mayor's thinking is his
bizarre appeal to the values of the "civilized nations of Europe" - in
whose name the men on the Bosnian Serb Army army trucks who carried
out this barbaric act of destruction claimed to be acting on that May
night five years ago, when they blew up the two most beautiful mosques
of Banja Luka. The amazing thing is that the nationalist mayor really
believes in what he is saying and doing. Even more amazing is that he
is allowed to get away with it by the "civilized" world.
Andras Riedlmayer
______________________________________________________________________
(The original Cyrillic text in Latin transliteration skipped. Those
the wishing can receive it by request. - Boris)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
/translation/
| MUNICPAL COUNCIL
<seal> CITY OF BANJA LUKA
| MAYOR
Trg Srpskih Vladara; Tel. 078/11-525; Fax 078/12-526
Mr. Carlos Westendorp
High Representative
Dear High Representative,
In your letter regarding the Ferhadija [mosque], you insist that "the
destruction of mosques, as well as sacral buildings of other religious
communities represents one of the darkest chapters of the war in
Bosnia and Herzegovina" and that "if we want the efforts for
reconciliation and the establishment of a true peace in both entities
to succeed, we have to make it possible for the religious communities
to reestablish [themselves] throughout the country".
I agree with you that the destruction of sacral buildings was "one of
the darkest chapters" not only during the latest war but also during
the Second World War in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first victim was
the Serbian Orthodox church of the Holy Trinity, located between the
Banski Dvor and the Municpality building, damaged in 1941 by German
aerial bombardment and then leveled to its foundations by the
authorities in front of the public. The authorities [in World War II]
were recruited from among the Croat and Muslim people, who in those
times did not feel themselves to be Bosniaks. More than 45 years had
to pass before Serbs could collect some of the wherewithal and obtain
[official] permission for its reconstruction.
I do not know whether you are informed that the Ferhadija [mosque] -
whose reconstruction you have requested in the center of the city of
Banja Luka, in which there has never been more than 15% Muslim
population - is a monument of the cruel Turkish occupation and that it
was built from the ransom obtained for Count Wolf Engelhard von
Auersperg's head. Thus, according to Annex 8, article 4 of the Dayton
Agreement, it cannot be treated as a national monument of the Bosniak
people, because we are assured that the Bosniaks are not the
descendants of those whose grandees raped Serbian maidens for 500
years - as has been pointed out during a recent session of the
National Assembly of the Republika Srpska by Mr. Nedzad Sasivarevic -
and of those who impaled on stakes the Serbs who fought for human
rights.
Accordingly, if the international community really wants there to be
reconciliation and real peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it must stop
insulting the Serbian people and stop demanding that Serbs do
something that no civilized nation in Europe has done: to revive
memories of the blackest [i.e. most degrading] days of slavery, and
what is more in the most prominent place in the city.
The reconstruction of Ferhadija would be perceived by the Serbian
people as the blackest [i.e. most degrading] humiliation, it would
reopen old wounds and engender far-reaching consequences.
There will not be any problem with regard to finding an appropriate
location and issuing a permit to the Islamic community to build a
mosque for the needs of their believers. Thus the Islamic community
must decide if it supports the establishment of religious communities
throughout the country, or if it wants to keep reminding Serbs not to
deny their dark past, as Mr. Sasirevic did.
If, after being acquainted with the facts of the situation, you still
keep insisting on the rebuilding of the Ferhadija [mosque], and not
just on the construction of an Islamic house of worship in a more
appropriate location in Banja Luka, I will present this problem to the
Municipal Council and let those who were lawfully elected by the
people make the final decision.
Respectfully yours,
No. 12/11-8/98 MAYOR
On the 13th day of April 1998
Djordje Umicevic
<signature>
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we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
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