The Tuzla canton is the first in Bosnia and Herzegovina to adopt a new transitional government, as people sense the danger of the plenums being faulted by the bourgeois democracy, counter-revolutionary international community, and internal ruling classes.

In Sarajevo, the state has already started to blockade people’s attempts to discuss their demands in public assemblies, as state repression intensifies.

Now in Sarajevo, the Canton government is stepping up attempts to block the people’s assembly, which took place for the first time on February 12th (you can see it here, subtitles are in English and German).

The state has denied people the right to use the Hall of Youth (Dom Mladih) Skenderija, a public space in which for over a month an open debate about matters of public and general interest has taken place [as part of Plenum]. They consider this absurd: ”This gesture is a clear message to all of just how seriously the government takes the citizens of Sarajevo and their demands. It appears that Sarajevo Canton (SK) government is feeling sufficiently secure that they can return to their usual way of governing. They are feeling powerful enough to continue, as they have done for the past twenty years, to ignore their citizens.”

“As they believe to be the absolute rulers of thought, feeling, and even, as we have seen in the case of crises of JMBG [UMCN] of lives of their citizens, the political top of SK government in their ruling arrogance considers itself an absolute owner of public space. After they have taken captive our companies and public institutions, now they openly re-possess the only thing left to citizens, and that is the public space. No wonder, as that public space has for decades served them as an important power lever, a precious instrument for manipulating the sentiments of oppressed citizenry, for dumbing down and pre-election bootlicking, so the last thing they want is to open it for the citizen’s dialogue and critical questioning of their power. It is necessary to suppress by any means all free expression of thought and demands of the citizens. It is necessary to return the citizenry into the discipline of collective nationalist fear. It is necessary to buy rubber bullets, and to proclaim dissatisfied citizens vandals and terrorists. It is necessary is for the six leaders to be front page news again and everything will be back to normal. This shall no longer pass.”“We call on the government to return to the citizens of Sarajevo that which belongs to them – the public space of the Hall of Youth Skenderija. We believe it is high time for them to come out in front of Plenum and report on what they have done regarding the citizen’s demands addressed to them. We call on all members of the Canton Sarajevo Council to face up to the reality in which they haven’t resided for a while. Return what’s ours!”