ŽIVKOVIĆ-RAJILIĆ: TUZLA REVEALS LIE OF COEXISTENCE AND MULTIETHNICISM

BANJA LUKA, OCTOBER 2 /SRNA/ – The President of the Association of Women War Victims of Republika Srpska Božica Živković-Rajilić said that the threatening message sent to the Serbian Orthodox Church, clergy, and Serbs in Tuzla by Dževad Hasić demonstrates that all claims about the city’s multiethnicity and tolerance are entirely false.

"Anyone who believes in their good intentions toward Serbs is very naive. They still think and want to completely cleanse Tuzla and the Tuzla region of Serbs, and they act similarly in smaller municipalities and surrounding villages," Živković-Rajilić told SRNA. She noted that threats against Serbs in the FBiH have been known since the war and have never stopped. "In the FBiH, people still openly and secretly contemplate the persecution of Serbs. This does not surprise me, but it is entirely condemnable. If they consider themselves residents of BiH, they cannot behave this way—they should be brought in, questioned, and punished," Živković-Rajilić emphasized. She added that the competent FBiH institutions should publicly condemn such incidents and prosecute them. Dževad Hasić, already known for threats and vandalistic incursions into Orthodox churches, sent the threatening letter from Tuzla prison, in which he announced that he would "switch the church bell to vibration". He threatened that he would "convert the priest with the church lamp to Islam so that he could recite the ezan five times a day with the greatest pleasure," and that he would "replace the cross with the crescent and star like in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, with the greeting `Allahu Akbar`".