The Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Federal Republic of Germany, Damir Arnaut, responded to what he said were intensified attacks by HDZ officials and the media, which took on racist connotations, regarding his reaction to the travel of state representative Darijana Filipović on behalf of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a passport of the Republic of Croatia. We are reporting his reaction in full.
“The Law on Travel Documents of BiH prohibits BiH citizens from crossing the border of BiH with passports of another country, with fines of 100 to 400 KM,” Arnaut reminds, adding: “Despite this explicit provision adopted by the state parliament, the representative in that same parliament, Darijana Filipović, indicated to the services of that parliament that she would travel to the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, as a representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a passport of the Republic of Croatia. These services, ignoring clear legal provisions, informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH and the Border Police of BiH about this. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH, ignoring the law, forwarded this to the Embassy of BiH in Berlin.”
“When I officially warned about this, a coordinated barrage of HDZ officials and portals followed, which was also directed at my family, using racist allegations in the best tradition of the founder of the party’s parent company, who once claimed that he was happy because his “wife is neither Serb nor Jewish”. Like insinuations about my wife’s ‘cultural context’ or the claim that our children ‘go to mass on Sundays.’ They don’t! These are children from a mixed marriage, who therefore do not have the right to run for members of the Presidency of BiH, unlike Dragan Čović, who has that right, but is afraid to run unless it is written in the BiH Election Law that he will be elected,” says Arnaut.
Ambassador Arnaut recalls that this legal provision began to be intensively implemented during the pandemic, when restrictions were introduced on the entry of foreign citizens into Bosnia and Herzegovina and entry with a BiH ID card. “Numerous of our people who have dual citizenship showed up at border crossings with foreign passports, along with other evidence of BiH citizenship. Our border police officers let them enter the homeland with this evidence, but they also regularly issued them misdemeanor warrants for using a foreign passport,” says Arnaut, illustrating this with numerous media articles from that period.
He adds that at the time, as a state parliamentarian, he asked the border police whether they were diligently applying this law to state officials, “specifically to the then Chief Prosecutor of BiH, now a blacklister, Gordana Tadić, whose crossing of the BiH border with a Croatian passport had been announced. The then director of the BiH Border Police, now a fugitive from the BiH judiciary, Zoran Galić, persistently evasively answered,” Arnaut emphasizes.
“This volley, therefore, was not suppressed because of the example in the attachment: a lady of Croatian nationality whose “daughter got married in Metković” and who received a misdemeanor order of 200 KM upon returning from the wedding. Especially it was not done because of a Bosniak from Sweden who was given the same fine. I fought for these people at the time, against Galić, Tadić and the rest of the HDZ machinery. This volley was suppressed because that machinery, today as then, believes that they are above the law. That the same rules do not apply to a state representative as to a lady who gets her daughter married,” says Arnaut and concludes:
“And while they believe that, and especially while the BiH MFA supports it by forwarding such letters, there is no hope that Borjana Krišto will respect the law and submit the appointment of Nebojša Vukanović. There is no hope that the BiH Border Police will stop other fugitives from the BiH judiciary in high positions. It is precisely because of the fear of the implementation of the law that the HDZ does not want Vukan as Minister of Security. Incidentally, Filipović himself gave the same warning before sent regarding the advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs who was announced on an official trip on behalf of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a Swedish passport. These are not national issues, but issues of the rule of law. Here are Vukan and I on one side, and the above on the other.”
