Some 2,000 paramilitary, police and civil servants from the Bosnian Serb republic or Republika Srpska paraded in eastern Sarajevo on Monday to mark Republika Srpska Day, a holiday banned by Bosnian authorities.
The parade took place in the presence of Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik and Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, with thousands of Serbs waving Serbian and Bosnian Serb flags in attendance.
The Bosnian Constitutional Court has declared unconstitutional this annual march that recalls the founding of the Bosnian Serb entity with the convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzidc at the head on January 9, 1992.
This year and for the first time the ceremony took place in the capital, Sarajevo, in a small area of the city under Republika Srpska jurisdiction.
In the 1995 Bosnian war, Serb militias perpetrated genocide and massacres against the Bosniac and Croat population of Bosnia and Herzegovina and besieged Sarajevo for three years precisely from the hills east of the city.
Now Dodik advocates the secession of Republika Srpska from the Bosnia and Herzegovina, formed by Republika Srpska itself and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, so the Bosniac majority in Sarajevo has seen the parade as a provocation. Dodik has intervened in a speech in which he praised the Republika Srpska as a «republic of peace and freedom».
On Sunday Dodik awarded the Order of Republika Srpska to Russian President Vladimir Putin and announced that he would present the award to him later in person.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
