Bosnia Marks World War One Centennial

The concert by the Vienna Philharmonic in the recently re-opened Vijecnica, the historic Sarajevo City Hall, was the central event to mark the centenary of the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914.

Few hundred people could follow the the concert in a plateau on the other side of the river of Miljacka.

A few dozen citizens went out with banners and masks of Gavrilo Princip with a message that “we are still occupied”, as they said, with nationalism, financial institutions and the international community.

The Sarajevo Assassination was seen as a key trigger of the World War I a hundred years ago.

Bosnia was then a part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Opinions about Gavrilo Princip's shot are divided with some condemning the act and others considering him a hero.

Bosnia Serb politicians and officials of Serbia marked the Sarajevo assassination in a separate set of events in Visegrad in east Bosnia.

The central event which was held in Andricgrad, the mini-town within Visegrad created by film-maker Emir Kusturica, was unveiling of a mosaic celebrating Princip, who the organisers describe as a hero of St Vitus Day, an Orthodox holiday.

In the town of Grahovo in north-west Bosnia, Princip’s birthplace, the Serb authorities opened his reconstructed family house, after a new statue of Princip was unveiled in East Sarajevo on Friday.

Many other events were held in Sarajevo to mark the historic gunshot. Alongside many exhibitions which dealt with the period of 1914, a 'message of peace' from Sarajevo was sent in a musical-stage performance set on the Latin bridge or the so-called Princip bridge meters from where the assassination took...