Representative presence of the Republic of Srpska at the International Book Fair in Belgrade under the motto Let’s Read Together in Cyrillic was ceremonially opened yesterday.

The Minister of Education and Culture of the Republic of Srpska, Natalija Trivić, opened the presentation in the presence of the Minister of European Integration and International Cooperation, Zlatan Klokić, and members of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republic of Srpska and Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Trivić emphasized that throughout its existence, the Serbian people had been fighting to preserve its greatest values – language and alphabet, because that was what made it a people.

‘The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet is the foundation of our identity and therefore we must not allow it to be lost. The noblest thoughts, most beautiful feelings and most important laws are written in Cyrillic’, reminded Trivić.

She noted that today’s generations lived in the age of digitization and the era of new media, thus having a way of education completely different from that of our ancestors.

‘It is important to understand that the traditional and the modern are not mutually exclusive, but complementary. That is why the Ministry of Education and Culture engaged final year graphic design students to create Cyrillic fonts that can be used on the Internet’, Trivić emphasized.

The guests, the visitors and media representatives were greeted by the head of the Republic of Srpska Representative Office in Serbia, Mlađen Cicović, on behalf of the Representation of the Republic of Srpska in Serbia, and by the Assistant Minister for Contemporary Creativity, Radovan Jokić, on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and Information of Serbia.

Cicović pointed out that this year’s slogan Let’s Read Together in Cyrillic was chosen in order to draw the attention of the general public to the fact that we must all work together to preserve the Serbian national identity, language, script and our culture, tradition, Orthodox faith and customs.

‘If we thus preserve ourselves in this territory, we will surely have a certain future’, said Cicović.

Radovan Jokić stated that Serbia and Republic of Srpska had to be together in the fight to preserve the Serbian language and Cyrillic, because it was a substantial part of preserving our national identity.

‘We will continue together as before, because the Ministry of Culture and Information of Serbia continuously supports cultural activities of the institutions and associations in the Republic of Srpska and BiH as a whole, especially in the area of language and script’, said Jokić.

The ceremonial opening was followed by a panel on the Serbian language and script, with the participation of professors Veljko Brborić, Miloš Kovačević, Aleksandar Milanović, and representatives of culture ministries of Srpska and Serbia, Tanja Đaković and Mladen Vesković.

The panelists warned that a threat to Cyrillic was a direct threat to the entire Serbian nation, because Cyrillic was the basis of its existence. They also pointed out that digitization was an additional threat to our traditional alphabet, due to a much larger selection of Latin fonts.

After the ceremonial opening of the Republic of Srpska stand, the promotion program began with book presentations.

Source and photo: Republic of Srpska Representative Office in Serbia