Hundreds of citizens are protesting in front of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Sarajevo. They called for “stopping the dismantling of the state”.
Addressing the citizens, the representative of “Restart”, Suad Đozić, said that if Schmidt imposes new decisions, it will mean that parties with a civic orientation will have to choose only one ethnic group.
According to him, if it is necessary to change the Constitution of the Federation of BiH, it should be done in a different way, and not by imposing the decisions of the high representative.
It is high time to stop any further cementing of the ethno-feudalization of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said Azra Zornić, the appellant before the Court of Human Rights, at today’s protest rally in front of the Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo.
She emphasized that the neighboring countries of Serbia, but above all Croatia, with the support of the USA and right-wing Europe, instrumentalized the Office of the High Representative.
“At the same time, some politicians who won the votes of these citizens in the last October elections betrayed that trust and supported the high representative to arbitrarily change the highest legal act – the Constitution of only one entity – in a secessionist, nationalist, segregationist, colonial and every other retrograde way. Such rape of the legal system of a European state, with a thousand-year duration, through the intervention of the international community with the help of domestic quislings, is inadmissible even in the most underdeveloped countries of the third world,” said Zornić.
He states that Bosnia and Herzegovina really needs an amendment to the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina following the verdict of the European Court of Human Rights in the Zornić case, and that everything that happened from October last year until now only proves that those who started early to say that this leads to in the direction of deepening discriminatory practices, even in the direction of apartheid, were unfortunately very right.
She said that those gathered demand that malicious politicians and diplomats, representatives of the international community, immediately stop interfering in the socio-political life of BiH, imposing standards that they would not have in their own country.
The protests were organized by the Association of Independent Intellectuals “Krug 99” and the informal group of citizens “ReSTART BiH”.
As they announced earlier, the organizers of the protest called for “stopping the further dismantling of the state, that is, cementing the ethno-feudal concept of organizing BiH society into three ethnic circles”.
The organizers of today’s peaceful protests also published a list of basic positions and demands of today’s gathering, in which they said that they would not give up the sovereignty, territorial integrity and democracy of BiH and that they would not allow the suspension and denial of human rights by the OHR and some foreign embassies.
Demonstrators, among other things, demand the implementation of all judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and that the OHR stop hindering the processes of EU integration with its undemocratic decisions.
“We demand the resignation of Christian Schmidt, who has proven himself to be unworthy of the position of High Representative. We demand full democracy, full protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, even if that means a complete change of the Dayton Agreement,” states the list of key positions and demands that the organizers published before the start of the protest .
Traffic in the vicinity of the OHR building in Sarajevo was completely stopped, and the police said that the end of the protest was announced at 4 p.m.