Serb Leaders to Open ‘Andricgrad’ for WWI Centenary

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik will attend the opening on Saturday of the newly-built mini-town of Andricgrad in eastern Bosnia at an event to mark the centenary of the start of World War I.

At the event, a tribute will also be unveiled to Gavrilo Princip, the assassin who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 – the killing that helped to trigger the conflict.

“On St Vitus Day, June 28, Serb people from both sides of [the River] Drina, the state heads of Republika Srpska and Serbia, and thousands of prominent attendees from all over the world will mark the centenary of the start of the Great War at this place,” the Andricgrad management said in a statement on Wednesday. 

It said that “the most important aspect of the opening of Andricgrad” would be the unveiling of a large mosaic featuring Princip, who it described as a hero.

Kusturica, who initiated the building of the mini-town, has said that Princip’s assassination of Franz Ferdinand had positive effects, leading to the end of Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia.

“The bullet that was fired which killed a man has its social dimension and it was the start of the liberation of the people who lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina from serfdom or from slavery,” the film director said at a press conference with Serbian premier Vucic earlier this month.

While many Serbs see Princip as a hero, many Croats and Bosniaks consider him a as a terrorist, and schools in former Yugoslav countries teach different histories about the causes of the 1914-18 war, reflecting more recent conflicts in the region, as a recent BIRN investigation showed.

Andricgrad, a joint project by Kusturica and the...