A lawmaker in one of Bosnia’s two regions asked for an extraordinary Parliament session dedicated to the announcement that the other region, Republika Srpska (RS), wants to form a new police unit.
The Government of the RS, the semi-autonomous Serb-majority entity in Bosnia, adopted end of March changes to the law on police which introduced an auxiliary police unit in the entity. The draft was sent to the RS National Assembly for adoption.
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Nihad Colpa, the leader of the left-leaning Civic Alliance in the other semi-autonomous FBiH entity said he believes the additional RS police unit will, in fact, be an “RS infantry,” and its formation would breach the 1995 agreement which ended the Bosnian War and contains the country’s Constitution.
“The RS entity is, with the acquisition of arms for the police and the forming of a reserve unit, turning that police into a military formation and is in that way changing the balance in arms distribution in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is a direct breach of Annexe 1 of the Dayton Peace Agreement,” Colpa said.
He said that police in Republika Srpska have committed numerous war crimes, during the 1992-95 war, including genocide.
He also said that no state institutions are reacting to the forming of the unit, and that is why he called for an extraordinary session on the issue.
