Over the past few weeks the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina have been rallying against their municipal, cantonal, and federal governments. These protests were sparked by the decades of economic stagnation, social inequality, endemic corruption, domination of particracy, impotence of state institutions, and an ever greater distancing of the small ruling kleptocracy from the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Much like the Ukrainians at the EuroMaidan, the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina rose up against their corrupt officials and demanded bread, political agency, and freedom. They have realized that one does not apply for freedom, but fights for it. It is particularly encouraging to see that the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina have started dismantling false deities of national unifications that kept them apart and imprisoned for decades.

The citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina show on a daily bases that their protests transcend national, ethnic, and religious fault lines, while the corrupt political class tries to intimidate them back into submission by raising the spectre of national and ethnic divisions.

We believe the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina rebelling against the bureaucracy of a failed state whose only mechanism of survival is endemic corruption deserve our respect and support. We are happy to extend both in hope that our voices might help them stay the course.

Dr. Srdja Pavlović, University of Alberta
Dr. Wolfgang Petritsch, Harvard University
Prof. Charles Ingrao, Purdue University
Tatjana Alvadj, University of Alberta
Darka Pavlović, Athabasca University
Prof. Tom Priestly, University of Alberta, Emeritus
Goran Simić
Prof. E. D. Blodgett, FRCS, University of Alberta, Emeritus
Dr. Hariz Halilovich, Monash University
Prof. Ron Adams, Victoria University
Dubravka Babić
Dr. Peter Phipps, RMIT University
Vladimir Štaka
Mr. Adis Fejzić, Griffith University
Irena Blodgett
Dr. James E. Waller, Keen State College
Dr. Wladimir Fischer, University of Vienna
Bojan Korenić, MawEwan University
Chrystia Chomiak
Dr. Kenneth Morisson, De Montforth University
Dr. Tomislav Longinović, University of Madison, Wisconsin
Dr. Natalia Pylypiuk, University of Alberta
Andrej Korenić
Dr. Azra Hromadžić, Syracuse University

Peščanik.net, 15.02.2014.