Vucic congratulated, and four countries and Kosovo created a scandal
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic sent congratulations to Austrian writer Peter Handke on receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm
“Serbia doesn’t just consider you a friend. I can say that we rejoice at your Nobel Prize, as if one of us had received it. Now, in addition to [Yugoslav playwright] Ivo Andric, we have another Nobel laureate,” Vucic’s official website quotes the message as saying.
In addition, the President of Serbia invited the Austrian writer to visit the country.
At the same time, the procedure for awarding Handke turned into a scandal. The ambassadors of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Albania and Turkey, as well as the “diplomatic representative” of the separatist-held Serbian province of Kosovo, boycotted the ceremony to protest the laureate’s support for the Serbian position in the Balkan conflicts in the 90s.
According to the Guardian, the protests are being organized by Bosnian Swedish writer Adnan Mahmutovic. He was supported by Peter Englund, a member of the Swedish Academy. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan opposed giving the prize to a person who “denies genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
Journalists from the American and British media launched a new campaign of harassment against the Nobel laureate.
Previously, for his position, Peter Handke has already been subjected to obstruction both in the world media and a number of supposedly human rights organizations. He also faces charges of violating Austrian citizenship law. The Austrian Ministry of the Interior opened a case after information emerged that Handke had received a Yugoslav passport in 1999. According to this media, the passport was presented on the initiative of the then President of the FRY Slobodan Milosevic. This could be grounds for depriving him of Austrian citizenship.
In the 1990s, Peter Handke condemned NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and supported Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Due to the risk of being condemned for his pro-Serbian position, Handke was forced to refuse the Heinrich Heine Prize in 2006. In the same year, Handke was awarded a prize of 50 euros for the play “Traces of the Lost,” Handke donated the prize to the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo. At Milosevic's funeral in Pozarevac, the hometown of the Serbian president, Handke gave a speech.
In Russia, Handke is known as the screenwriter of the cult film “Sky over Berlin.”
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.