On the Tuzla sidewalk, a metal box with a grate and two pieces of styrofoam. That is what greeted those who came to Tuzla this year to mark the death of the JNA soldiers. It would be too much to expect from the people of Tuzla a monument that would remind them of their crime. Even this one day in the year is unpleasant for them.

The attacks on the columns of the Yugoslav People’s Army in Sarajevo and Tuzla are war crimes, objectively speaking. This essential characteristic of those events cannot be questioned, since there are no reasonable grounds for doing so. Neither in Sarajevo nor in Tuzla, nor in other cities of the Federation of BiH, are there proper monuments commemorating these sufferings. Why would there be? Both Sarajevo and Tuzla take pride in their crimes. International institutions – which had taken upon themselves the task of determining crimes and punishment during the breakup of Yugoslavia – did not pay much attention to these events. Only enough to emphasize their lack of jurisdiction.

On the other side of the entity line, the situation is different. In the Republic of Srpska, monuments have been erected at several sites to half-truths and false narratives. The best known is certainly Srebrenica, namely Potočari, and the entire narrative built on denying the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from central Podrinje and on the events of July 1995, constructed on the lie about the character of the Muslim military column that was breaking through toward Tuzla. When these sites are visited by Bosnian Muslims, it is done in the presence of wartime flags, military uniforms, militant slogans, aggressive messages and the glorification of de facto war criminals.

The foundation of justice is the principle of equality. To each in accordance with the law that is the same for all. In this also lies the basis of a stable political system, especially one that was negotiated and signed in Dayton through an international peace agreement. A state deprived of justice for all those who inhabit it is an inexhaustible source of self-generated crises that, over time, render its very existence meaningless. Bosnia and Herzegovina is such a country.

Caught between the political arrogance – amplified by false victimhood – of the Bosnian Muslims and the social engineering of foreign actors, contemporary BiH is not a state but an artificial construct, put together by force and by force maintained. An experiment. In such a BiH, the Serbs – as a constituent people and a contracting party to the Dayton Agreement – are meant to atone for their Serb identity until the moment they cease to exist.

Taking all the above into account, the logical question arises about the further purpose of BiH’s existence and of the Serbs and the Republic of Srpska remaining within it. Bosnia and Herzegovina has failed the test of justice. Moreover, the final idea of BiH as a unitary state is conceived on the assumption of institutionalizing injustice toward the Serbian people. Where there are no Serbs, there are no monuments to Serbian victims. Nor should one expect there to be any. Crimes against Serbs are celebrated. The criminals who committed them are honored with the title of hero. These are the foundations of BiH as envisioned by the Muslim political elite.

Serbs are prone to internal divisions. This is one of the secondary motives behind the current political developments in Serbia. In contrast, those hostile toward us, when it comes to the killing, persecution and assimilation of the Serbian people, see Serbs only as Serbs. That is the lesson of Sarajevo and Tuzla.

Accordingly, the course of Serbian politics once again becomes what it was before embarking on the retrograde Yugoslav experiment: liberation and unification.

The foundation of justice is the principle of equality. Since the joint institutions have neither the drive nor the intention to base relations between the two entities and the three constituent peoples on this principle, the Republic of Srpska is called upon by the historic moment to do so on its own, in all matters. A metal box with a grate and two pieces of styrofoam awaited the Serbs in Tuzla. That is enough for everyone else.