The leadership of the Serbian part of Bosnia showed strength with a paramilitary parade on the outskirts of Sarajevo. 2,000 paramilitaries, police officers and civil servants of the Serb Republic (RS) marched in East Sarajevo today in front of RS President Milorad Dodik and his guests. The parade was part of the RS Day celebrations. Several thousand Serbs lined the way and waved the flags of the RS and neighboring Serbia.
The Bosnian constitutional court had declared the annual march on January 9 to be unconstitutional. This year it was held for the first time in East Sarajevo, a small area on the eastern edge of the Bosnian capital that belongs to the RS. On January 9, 1992, the convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic founded the Bosnian Serb Republic with the support of the rest of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). In the ensuing war (1992-1995), the Yugoslav and Bosnian Serb military committed genocide, massacres and expelled the Bosniak and Croat population.
The US embassy in Sarajevo condemned the march and Dodik’s secession policy. “The Republic of Serbia will only destroy itself and those around it by chasing the will-o’-the-wisp of independence,” the embassy tweeted.
