Activists of the citizens' Association "Eastern Alternative" placed stickers with the text "Peter Handke Street," written in Cyrillic and Latin letters, on about twenty buildings in Srebrenica, on Friday.

The president of this Association, Vojin Pavlovic, told reporters that they had submitted an initiative to the Municipal Assembly of Srebrenica to change the name of the street in this place and that they had not received any answer within 15 days.

“The silence or reluctance of the administration for us means they’d accepted our idea, and this is a warning to councillors and the assembly leadership that they must get serious because citizens cannot tolerate their reluctance and ignore the needs and initiatives,” he said.

Pavlovic noted that they will not wait forever for the assembly decision and that they want the citizens to see the new name of the street, which, he said, should have been changed a long time ago, because there is no Marshal Tito Street anywhere else in BiH, except in Srebrenica.

The controversial writer Peter Handke is known for supporting Slobodan Milosevic's regime during the wars in the former Yugoslavia and denying crimes such as the Srebrenica genocide. His recent visit to BiH provoked fierce reactions, as did the awarding of the Nobel Prize.

Bosniaks worried by such actions

Srebrenica Assembly Speaker Camil Durakovic, an ethnic Bosniak, told N1 that the Mayor, Mladen Grujicic, should react to this because he said he would not support such initiatives in this town.

“He should react promptly via police or utility inspectors to remove these stickers, considering that the Association didn’t even wait for the local community to discuss their initiative, but instead, they went along their illegal plans,” Durakovic said.

He added that the problem here is also the police for allowing “the ultra-nationalists to violate the political ambient in Srebrenica, regardless of how fragile it is.”

The stickers are said to have been removed in the afternoon by the utility inspection.