Our request is not to abolish the name "Republika Srpska" (RS), but to add the other two peoples into it, Bosniak leader and head of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) Bakir Izetbegovic said, explaining his party’s announcement to challenge the Serb-dominated entity’s name before the Constitutional Court.
“There’s no doubt that Bosniaks and Croats and fourth-grade citizens in the RS, that they can’t be employed in the RS institutions, that they can’t have what belongs to them. Returnees to the RS and our religious elders are insulted there, and the entity is called the second Serb state in the Balkans and the name ‘Republika Srpska’ is instrumental in all of this,” Izetbegovic said.
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On Wednesday, the SDA said they would initiate proceedings before the Constitutional Court to challenge the name of the RS, citing discrimination against Bosniaks and Croats living there.
He added that the original Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia which is written in English, stipulates that the name is ‘Republika Srpska,’ and that it does not mean anything in that language, but when translated into Serbian language, the name gets an entirely different meaning – the “Serb Republic.”
When asked why start this now, he said they had to make their move because attacks against Bosnia and its NATO integration process have intensified and because the RS is increasingly linked to the status of Kosovo.
The RS does not only belong to Serbs but Bosniaks and Croats as well as all other people living there.
“We will ask that Bosniaks and Croats be added into the entity name and the ‘RS Day.’ It’s time we say – enough. We accepted the name Republika Srpska because we wanted peace, but we never accepted that it would be an entity where we’d be humiliated. We will give them (the RS government) a deadline and a chance to make things right,” Izetbegovic said.
