When the Bosnian Army’s former commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, was acquitted on appeal in November of killing three Serb prisoners of war in 1992, his supporters celebrated outside the court in Sarajevo.
Scores of Oric’s Bosnian Army comrades attended the verdict to show support for their former commander, arriving at the Bosnian state court in a convoy of around ten buses.
They held up posters with a picture of Oric and the slogan: “A hero, not a criminal.” Many Bosniaks welcomed the verdict clearing Oric, who they regard as a hero for his defence of Srebrenica in the years before the 1995 massacres.
But in Bosnia’s Serb dominated-entity, Republika Srpska, the verdict was seen as proof that the state court is biased and anti-Serb.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina and its institutions, like the Bosnian court, are a bad place for Serbs,” the Serb chairman of the Bosnian presidency, Milorad Dodik, who is also the former president of Republika Srpska, told Sarajevo newspaper Oslobodjenje after the verdict.
Serbs wanted to see Oric punished, not only for the three murders of which he was acquitted, but for other crimes too.
Dodik alleged that no one was being held responsible for killing Serbs during the war, adding that he would like to see Serbs who are employed at the state court resign.
The situation was reserved when Atif Dudakovic, the Bosniak former commander of the Bosnian Army’s Fifth Corps, was charged alongside 16 subordinates in October with crimes including over 300 murders and the destruction of Serb Orthodox churches.
Dudakovic was arrested in April, sparking praise from Bosnian Serbs but condemnation from Bosniaks.
In the days after he was detained, Bosniaks staged several protests in towns in the Bosniak- and Croat-dominated Federation entity, supporting Dudakovic and his fellow solders by flying Bosnian Army flags and holding up signs and banners with the slogan “Heroes, not criminals”.
The main Bosniak political force, the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, argued that “the Bosnian Army systematically stopped and punished perpetrators of crimes in its own ranks”.
The SDA insisted that Bosnian Serb forces were the real wartime aggressors who “conducted the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina and systematically planned, organised, encouraged and committed crimes”.
But Dragan Cavic, the former president of Republika Srpska, said he hoped Dudakovic would be found guilty.
“That man was the key person, on the basis of his command responsibility, for war crimes against Serbs, as well as Bosniaks in the zone of responsibility of the Fifth Corps, particularly at the end of 1995. The day has finally come for him to be deprived of liberty, and that pleases me,” Cavic told Bosnian media.
Torture law sparks discrimination claims
Continuing post-war ethnic divisions between Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs were highlighted by many of the key events in the country in 2018.
In June, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska adopted legislation aimed at supporting wartime torture victims – the first law of this kind, and one which has not been adopted by the state-level authorities.
Nevertheless, the law’s adoption sparked fears that it might deepen ethnic discrimination.
The law will provide former detention camp prisoners and torture victims with a basic package of rights, including monthly benefit payments, largely free healthcare and guaranteed advantages when applying for public sector jobs – but only for those who live in Republika Srpska, not for people who were tortured there during wartime and have not returned to their homes in the entity since the conflict.
Murat Tahirovic, president of the Victims and Witnesses of Genocide association, said that only solution is to have a state-level law.
“Any law on the entity level, no matter if it’s Republika Srpska or the Federation, will always exclude some war victims, as only those who live in the entity itself can benefit, not those who left and have not returned, and that is why this is not good solution,” Tahirovic argued.
Croats mourn Herzeg-Bosnia criminal’s suicide
In August, Bosnian Croats officials, including Dragan Covic, head of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ party, marked the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the long-vanished Herzeg-Bosnia, an unrecognised wartime statelet backed only by Croatia.
Many analysts saw the anniversary tribute to Herzeg-Bosnia as part of a campaign for a third, Croat-dominated entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Those who are familiar with the HDZ will find nothing new here when it comes to the celebration of Herzeg-Bosnia, but these things are definitely adding a sense of a crisis to post-war relations in Bosnia,” said Sarajevo-based political analyst Zlatiborka Popov Momcinovic.
Meanwhile, the first anniversary of the dramatic courtroom suicide of one of the key wartime figures in Herzeg-Bosnia, Slobodan Praljak, was also commemorated.
In the town of Grude, where the Herzeg-Bosnia statelet and the Bosnian Croat wartime force, the Croatian Defence Council, were founded, a mass and prayers was held in Praljak’s honour at a Catholic church in November.
Praljak, the wartime commander of the Main Headquarters of the Croatian Defence Council, swallowed poison in the Hague Tribunal courtroom while the verdict finding him guilty of war crimes was being read out.
Disputed anniversaries, rival commemorations
Wartime anniversaries remain a source of contention, as this year’s celebrations of the disputed Day of Republika Srpska holiday showed yet again.
Policemen, firemen, prison guards, war veterans, athletes, students and even members of Republika Srpska’s Hunters’ Association marched through Banja Luka on January 9 to celebrate the Day of Republika Srpska – a controversial ‘statehood’ holiday that was banned by the state-level Constitutional Court as discriminatory against non-Serbs in the entity.
Banja Luka, the administrative centre of Republika Srpska, was festooned with Serb red, blue and white flags and billboards with slogans like “Think about the fatherland”, as the entity celebrated the anniversary of the creation of Republika Srpska in 1992 – an event which many Bosniaks see as the precursor to the outbreak of the war a few months later.
Meanwhile, like every year, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s official countrywide independence day on March 1 was not celebrated in Republika Srpska, where many people did not want to secede from Yugoslavia back in 1992.
