Thursday's celebration of the unconstitutional Day of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity was even not celebrated by the RS, said Serbian MP and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Cedomir Jovanovic, arguing that there can be no celebration as long as Bosniaks and Serbs return to their pre-war homes in this Serb-majority part of Bosnia.
“What kind of celebration is it, when even the RS won't celebrate it? Did anyone smile during the ceremony, there? Did you see joy? (Bosnian Serb leader Milorad) Dodik and all those who insist on celebrating this date will never find their fortune as long as Bosniaks and Croats live among them again,” Jovanovic said for N1. “It's not true that Bosnian Serb became protected after they adopted the declaration of January 9, 1992 (declaring the ‘Republic of the Serb People’). On the contrary, it pushed the nation into war, it disintegrated Bosnia, and it wasn't only Serbs that participated in this, We also got the Herzeg-Bosnia (the wartime unrecognised Bosnian Croat statelet). The three years of evil has destroyed us so much that not even our children can't live in peace, today.”
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On January 9, 1992, the assembly of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted the Declaration on the Proclamation of the Republic of the Serb People – today Republika Srpska – as a federal unit within the Republic of Yugoslavia.
But non-Serbs, most of all Bosniaks, perceive the holiday as a celebration of a policy that led to genocide. They argue the 1992 decision served as the basis for Bosnian Serb forces to expel, kill and put non-Serbs into concentration camps in order to create an ethnically pure Serb republic.
The Constitutional Court ruled that the RS Day celebration on January 9 was unconstitutional in 2015, based on an appeal submitted by the former Bosniak member of the tripartite Presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic.
Jovanovic also noted that Serbia is also the victim of Bosnia's Serb Presidency member Milorad Dodik.
