The Vice-President of Bosnia’s Serb-majority region of Republika Srpska (RS) called upon leadership in the RS on Wednesday to retract the honours the entity government awarded to Bosnian Serb war criminals, specifically, Radovan Karadzic.

Serb Presidency member Milorad Dodik, who leads the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) which is in power in the RS, opened a student’s home named after Karadzic in 2016.

Karadzic was sentenced to life in prison for genocide and other war crimes he had committed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia by a UN court.

“I call upon Dodik to order the Government of the RS entity, where the SNSD is in power, to change the name of the student’s home in Pale, which was named after the war criminal Radovan Karadzic who was sentenced for the genocide committed against Bosniaks and other grave war crimes,” said said RS Vice-President Ramiz Salkic.

The statement came after Dodik spoke at an event marking the anniversary of the WWII massacre of ethnic Serbs in Garavice, near the northwestern town of Bihac, on Wednesday.

The Bosnian Serb leader said that history and courts should not spare anyone who committed a crime, regardless of whether that person is a Serb, a Bosniak or a Croat.

“I renounce any Serb who committed a crime in the name of any idea against other people who are different from us,” Dodik said, among other things.

Dodik would prove that those words are honest if he would call upon the RS Government to change the name of the student's home, Salkic said.