On Wednesday, a commemoration was held in the Bansko dvor in Banja Luka for Biljana Plavšić, the former president of Republika Srpska, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The commemoration began with a minute of silence, and before that the host of the program said that Plavšić was written down in history as a person who dedicated his life to the Serbian people.
The former president of the Republika Srpska, Dragan Čavić, said that Plavšić, as a prominent and internationally recognized scientist, gave weight to the search for a Serbian answer in a challenging time in which Bosnia and Herzegovina followed the same path as its western neighbors.
He stated that the case of Biljana Plavšić does not mean only the death of one woman, but also the end of a life inextricably linked to the most difficult years that the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina lived through at the end of the 20th century.
“Plavšić was among the brave individuals who, in turbulent times, took responsibility for the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Čavić, speaking at the commemoration.
The president of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats and former president of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik stated that he often visited Plavšić and spent hours with her in The Hague and then in Swedish prisons and that he knew how difficult it was for her.
“Biljana provided an opportunity to others and sacrificed the comfort she enjoyed as a prominent intellectual for the sake of the political struggle for the Republika Srpska. She was a politician and a good person, and history will record that she was convicted even though she never committed a murder or organized anything,” said Dodik.
Among the dignitaries at the commemoration were Nenad Stevandić, President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska, former RS Minister of Internal Affairs Dragan Lukač, former head of SDB Centar Banjaluka, former head of Prijedor Municipality Marko Pavić and former chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina Svetozar Mihajlović.
After the commemoration, Plavšić was buried at the cemetery in Banja Luka.
According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Biljana Plavšić was a leading Bosnian Serb political figure and held a high position before, during and after the 1992-1995 conflict. year.
“She participated in the persecution of Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and other non-Serb population in 37 municipalities. She supported a campaign of ethnic separation that resulted in the death of thousands of civilians and the expulsion of thousands and thousands of people from municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina in very brutal conditions, by calling on paramilitary forces from Serbia to help the Bosnian Serb forces achieve the goal of separating ethnic groups through the use of force. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison,” the ICTY stated.
During her academic career in Sarajevo, she served as a biology professor, Head of the Department of Biology, and Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Sarajevo.
From 1990 to 1992, she was a member of the Presidency of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina; following the outbreak of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the proclamation of Republika Srpska, she became Vice-President (1992–1996) and subsequently the second President of Republika Srpska, serving from July 19, 1996, to July 4, 1998.
The prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague charged her with war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious violations of the laws and customs of war; following her trial, she was convicted (though she was acquitted of the genocide charge as a result of a plea agreement with the prosecution). She was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
After serving the majority of her sentence in a Swedish prison, she was released on October 27, 2009, AA writes.
