Serbs unveil statue to 'hero' who set Europe marching to war

Serbs in Bosnia have unveiled a statue of the man who shot dead the heir to the Habsburg throne a century ago, thumbing their nose at the country's official commemoration of the act that triggered World War I.

The two-metre bronze statue of Gavrilo Princip, unveiled by the Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, underscored the gulf between Bosnia's Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks in how they view the assassination that lit the fuse for World War I.

The centenary fell on Saturday and was to be officially marked in Sarajevo with a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which leaders of Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs were boycotting.

Serbs see the 19-year-old assassin, a Bosnian Serb, as a heroic fighter for the freedom of all southern Slavs from centuries of imperial occupation over the Balkans. To others, he was a nationalist terrorist whose gunshot heralded four years of slaughter and suffering, as more than 10 million soldiers died and empires crumbled.

The centenary commemorations have, to a degree, been taken hostage by the wounds of a more recent war, when 100,000 people, mainly Bosniaks, were killed between 1992 and 1995 as Yugoslavia disintegrated.

"These fighters for freedom 100 years ago have given us the direction to follow for the next 100 years," said Nebojsa Radmanovic, a Serb who shares the Bosnian presidency with a Bosniak and a Croat, as he unveiled the statue in Serb-controlled East Sarajevo.


About 1000 people, including children, watched as a young man, acting the part of Princip, waved a gun and silenced the music of a waltz by Austrian composer Johann Strauss.

"Who wants to live should die, who wants to die should live," he shouted. A Serb folk dance ensued.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer was to be guest of honour at the Sarajevo concert, the centrepiece of a string of events to mark the anniversary.

Serbs were to hold their own events in the eastern town of Visegrad, where they were set to unveil a mosaic of Princip and re-enact the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie. The Belgrade Philharmonic were to play music by Vivaldi.

To many in the Balkans, Visegrad remains synonymous with a wave of brutal ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces in the first months of the 1992-95 war. To many Bosniaks, Princip was driven by the same nationalist, territorial ambitions.

Serbs are sensitive to what they see as attempts to link the wars that opened and closed the 20th century and to pin the blame on them.

"The Sarajevo politics is always aimed against the Serb Republic," said Jovan Mojisilovic, who played Princip in Friday's play, in reference to the autonomous Serb region in Bosnia formed after the war. "They are even bringing the Vienna Philharmonic – a pure provocation."

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who frequently threatens Serb secession from Bosnia, sponsored Friday's statue unveiling, an event some analysts saw as part of a political campaign before a parliamentary election in October.

The people of Bosnia "are still divided," Mr Dodik said. "With regards to the Sarajevo assassination, we think and work differently."