By Fedja Grulovic
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jan 9 (Reuters) – Bosnian Serbs marked their autonomous region’s statehood day on Friday in defiance of a top court ban, a day after their banned leader Milorad Dodik reaffirmed his commitment to taking his region out of Bosnia.
January 9 marks the date in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs declared independence as then-federal Yugoslavia broke up, triggering a 3-1/2-year war in which 100,000 people were killed and two million made homeless, most of them Muslim Bosniaks.
About 2,000 police officers, wartime veterans and civilians took part in a parade of special forces and armoured vehicles in the streets of the Bosnian Serbs’ de facto capital Banja Luka. Only a few hundred supporters turned out to watch in the freezing temperatures.
“They cannot ban this,” said Sladjana Bobic, a Banja Luka resident. “This just has to happen.”
Dodik’s Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation, linked via a weak central government, comprise the largely decentralised Bosnia which emerged from that conflict under the U.S.-brokered 1995 Dayton peace accords.
Bosnia’s Constitutional Court has twice ruled that the statehood day, which coincides with Serbian Orthodox Christian celebrations of Christmas, is illegal as it discriminates against the region’s Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks.
“Do they really think that we will obey them? Do they think that we are afraid? History does not belong to those who fear,” Dodik said at a gathering in Banja Luka on Thursday.
Dodik was removed as the region’s president for violating the rulings of the Constitutional Court and the international peace envoy for Bosnia.
But despite scrapping a series of separatist laws under Western pressure, Dodik has continued to advocate the Serb Republic’s secession from Bosnia.
“When we depart, we will take 49% of Bosnia with us,” he said.
(Reporting by Fedja Grulovic and Daria Sito-SucicEditing by Gareth Jones)
