LiberPress Catalonia Award 2008

The LiberPress Catalonia Award will be given to politicians, institutions and associations that have distinguished themselves for their contribution to the coexistence of peoples, for defending and promoting the defence of human rights, justice, peace, harmony, cooperation and international understanding.

This award, unlike the others, will not necessarily be presented every year.

Haris Silajdžić, Bosnian academic and politician, was born in Sarajevo on 1 October 1945. He lectures in the Department of History in the Faculty of Philosophy, Sarajevo. He was the brains of Bosnian resistance as foreign minister, Bosnia’s Prime Minister and took part in negotiating the Dayton agreements. After the war, he severed his links with Izetbegovic’s Muslim nationalist party and ended up leaving politics for some years. Even then he was considered as the symbol of a secular, multi-ethnic and democratic Bosnia. But in 2006 he returned and was elected to the collegiate presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It is a rotating presidency and on 6 November, the date of the LiberPress Awards, Haris Silajdžić will hand over to the Serbian representative. He has defended the reunification of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would involve the merger of the two existing territories, in a single state. He has fought to recover the bodies and the memory of those who died and disappeared in the last genocide and, respecting the rights of minorities, has sought to ensure that coexistence between the different communities is as good as possible. He has demanded that Belgrade should unconditionally hand over all war criminals to the International Criminal Court.