BiH'a SDA party says Zagreb conference revives dangerous partition narratives

In a statement, SDA said the conference — and what it described as plans to present a “memorandum on a Croatian entity” in Bosnia and Herzegovina — recalled the maps and political ideas promoted before the 1992–95 war in Bosnia.

“These kinds of constructions irresistibly recall the maps that were drawn in the early 1990s,” the party said.

According to SDA, those maps were not harmless political speculation but part of projects that later fed into wartime policies and crimes prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The party said any renewed attempt to redraw ethnic boundaries in Bosnia and Herzegovina sends “a dangerous political message”, directly challenges the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and insults the victims of wartime projects that sought to impose such divisions.

SDA said Bosnia and Herzegovina “is nobody’s space for ideological experiments, geopolitical projections or neighbouring fantasies of rearrangement”.

It added that any discussion of the country’s internal constitutional structure can take place only within Bosnia’s own institutions and in line with its constitution, laws and the democratic will of its citizens and constituent peoples.

The party also criticised Croatia, saying that as a member of the European Union and NATO it has a special responsibility to respect Bosnia’s sovereignty.

“You cannot speak about friendship, a European future and good-neighbourly cooperation while at the same time hosting events where Bosnia’s sovereignty is questioned and new ethnic divisions are promoted,” SDA said.

SDA also expressed concern over what it called the lack of any response from Bosnia’s state institutions.

It said the silence of officials - particularly those from pro-Bosnian parties - represented a serious political and diplomatic failure.

A leadership that remains silent while “new maps of division” are discussed in a neighbouring country, SDA said, is failing to consistently defend the interests of the state.