January 17, 2022, Zagreb/Sarajevo
At the mini-football tournament that took place on Saturday, January 14 in a hotel in the village of Ilidža (Bosnia and Herzegovina), several events took place about which we believe it is necessary to inform the general public, to strongly condemn the violence and to point out the urgent need for a reaction from the authorities.
In the police statement, according to the media, it is stated that four young men between the ages of 20 and 27 were detained after it was determined that they had attacked a group of Serbian citizens during the aforementioned tournament. It is also alleged that hooligans attacked a group of parents whose children play for the football club Zvezdara from Belgrade and that one of the attacked was injured with a knife.
At the same tournament before the attack, a separate incident was recorded in which a group of children on the playground shouted "Kill the Serb!". The organizer stated that boys from Split shouted the above.
A sporting event that was supposed to be marked by fair play and be a meeting place for players whose only criterion for distinguishing the quality of the game will be remembered as an open training ground for sowing inter-national and inter-ethnic hatred.
This kind of violence, physical and verbal, is not the only, and unfortunately not a rare example of the spread of hate speech and crimes motivated by hate on sports fields in the post-Yugoslav countries or among fans of clubs and national teams from these areas. The legal framework and accompanying case law condemning hate speech in sports fields are necessary and important. However, without the improvement of education based on the values of truth, peace, dialogue, tolerance, solidarity, and reconciliation, it is not to be expected that incidents like this will become rare.
We also consider it important that state officials and decision-makers show by their example and prove their sincere desire to build a solidary society based on democracy, non-violence, the rule of law, and human rights in such a way that they renounce petty opportunistic policies based on nationalist tendencies that indirectly encourage such incidents.
We are particularly angry that young people are the protagonists of hatred in this case, but we are aware that the responsibility for such actions lies with society as a whole, and especially with those who are policymakers. And on this occasion, we would like to mention that the process of dealing with the past is especially important for young people. Young people carry the potential for the present and the future, and we, as civil society organizations that work specifically with young people on the topics of building tolerance and mutual understanding in relation to the heavy burdens of the unresolved past, do not want them to become transmitters of currently dominant values based on nationalism and exclusivity, but creators of a better and more peaceful future.
Youth initiative for human rights - Croatia
Youth initiative for human rights - Bosnia and Herzegovina