“SERBS BOYCOTT WWI CENTENARY” (June 28, 2014)
Thus The Guardian today. “Serbian leaders and Bosnian Serbs stay away from Sarajevo ceremony to mark the hundredth anniversary of assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand,” explains the newspaper. They see Gavrilo Princip, the archduke’s assassin, as a hero. Together with him and his five accomplices, they see the Habsburg dynasty as occupiers. The centerpiece of the commemorations will be a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra, and Bosnian Serbs will boycott it. Yesterday, they unveiled a tall bronze statue of Princip in eastern Sarajevo, and they will re-enact the shooting and Princip’s trial in Visegrad on the Drina river. The representatives of the Vienna orchestra say that they want to provide a vision of a common future in peace. Bosnian Serbs see it differently, it appears. World War I is far from over for them. Commemorating its beginning is only a beginning. And who is to tell them that they are wrong. World War II is not yet over, either. And World War III may also have begun in the long-forgotten past—say, a century ago.