In the Republika Srpska, the First of March, the Independence Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is not marked or celebrated. To political and institutional representatives, this date represents the announcement of war and all the paradoxes of existence, as they state, and that of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They also said that the first of March will never be celebrated as Independence Day in this entity, BHRT writes.
The President of the RS, Milorad Dodik, said that March 1 is not and cannot be a holiday of the Serbian people, neither in the RS, nor in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The reasons, he says, are known to everyone.
“It is a date that carries two difficult facts for the Serbian people – the killing of the Serbian wedding party in Sarajevo and the fact that the Serbian people were outvoted in the so-called referendum. March 1 cannot be a holiday for us, but it is a signpost of where we would end up as a nation if it wasn’t for January 9,” Dodik claims.
Republika Srpska celebrates the day when peace was established, which is November 21, not the day when the war began, said the Center for Research on War and War Crimes of the RS.
“We cannot accept the fact that the beginning of the war and the events of the war can mean any reason for celebration, if after that there was a bloodshed, and if we do not look only from the Serbian side, there was a general bloodshed in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” says Viktor Nuždić from the Center for War Research.
Former Serbian member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mladen Ivanić, says that this date should not be glorified, not only because it marked the beginning of the war, but also because according to the law of the time, the referendum could be valid if 66 percent of the citizens voted for it, which, he points out, was not the case.
“First of all, the decision on the referendum was made without representatives of the Serbian people at the time, and I think it was one of the first examples of over-voting, and everything that is passed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in such a way can only have negative consequences and it led to this,” he said.
March 1 cannot be Independence Day, they point out in the Republika Srpska, not only because the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not adopt the Law on Holidays, but also because half of the country does not recognize it and does not celebrate it, but, they say, only half of the cantons celebrate it in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
