Only one half of Bosnia and Herzegovina will celebrate the country’s Independence Day on Friday, as the holiday is celebrated mainly by ethnic Bosniaks and Croats and their administrative half of the country. In the other, Serb-dominated half, March 1 is just a regular working day.
Almost three decades after after Bosnia’s 1992 independence referendum, which was followed by the devastating 1992-95 Bosnian War, views about the holiday’s significance are still vastly different in the the country’s two ethnic-based semi-autonomous entities which split the country in half – the Bosniak and Croat majority populated Federation (FBiH) and the Serb-majority Republika Srpska (RS).
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While streets and squares in towns across the Federation’s half of the country were decorated on Thursday with Bosnian flags and banners, the Republika Srpska half of the country does not recognise or officially marks the date, which is the anniversary of the indepenedence referendum in which Bosnians voted to secede from Yugoslavia, the third socialist republic of the former Yugoslavia to do so after Slovenia and Croatia.
Although the turnout was more than 63 percent, with more than 99 percent of the two million votes cast supporting independence, the move was objected by Bosnian Serbs who opposed Bosnia’s secession from what was then Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, and boycotted the vote, which took place on February 1992.
The question printed presented on ballots asked voters if they agreed for Bosnia and Herzegovina to become a sovereign multi-ethnic country.
“Are you in favour of a sovereign and independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, a state of equal citizens, peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina – Muslims, Serbs, Croats and members of other peoples who live there?” the referenendum asked.
When votes were counted, Bosnian Serbs rebelled against the decision to secede, which in turn triggered a war that took some 100,000 lives and ended almost four years later with a peace agreement which internally divided the country into two ethnic-based administrative regions loosely linked by a central government in Sarajevo, each covering about half of the country’s territory.
Ever since, the Federation half of the country celebrates March 1 as Independence Day, while the RS half celebrates January 9, the Day of Republika Srpska, the anniversary of the day in 1992 when Bosnian Serb leaders declared the establishment of the so-called Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that later became Republika Srpska, which was meant to secede from Bosnia in order to join neighbouring Serbia.
As a result, state officials in the two entities do not recognise each other’s holidays and do not attend each other’s celebrations.
The traditional celebration reception held every year the day before Independence Day was again hosted only by the Bosniak and the Croat members of the country’s three-member Presidency, while the Serb member chose to spend the evening in Belgrade, where he marked the day when the Serb part of the country had adopted its first constitution.
Bosnia’s Prime Minister, Denis Zvizdic, an ethnic Bosniak, congratulated Independence Day to citizens, saying that “27 years ago we decided that our only country is sovereign and independent.”
“Our values and goals remain unchanged – Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign and independent country, in which all citizens enjoy equal rights and freedoms,” Zvizdic said in a press statement on Thursday.
The Bosniak member of the country’s tripartite Presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic, told the Fena news agency that Bosnia was recognised as an independent state by all countries in the world and that it became a member of the UN in May 1992.
“This is a state holiday. There is Law on Independence Day, and everyone who disputes March 1 is actually disrespecting the law,” he said.
At the same time, most Bosnian Serb politicians claim that due to the boycott Bosnia’s Independence Day does not reflect the will of all ethnic groups in Bosnia, and that there is no law on state holidays adopted via consensus. Most of them also claim that the 1992 referendum was illegal.
But wartime member of the Bosnian Presidency, Ejup Ganic, remembers how the decision was made.
He told N1 that he had presented what the situation in Bosnia was like to representatives of the international community only two days before the decision to call the referendum was made.
“And they said that there was no other option than ask the citizens what to do, and that meant holding a referendum. Those who believe today that we had made a mistake should tell us what other path was there to take?” Ganic said.
European countries and the US recognised Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1992, and on May 22, 1992, the country became a member of the United Nations.
Three years after the referendum, in February 1995, Bosnia’s Parliament passed a decision that March 1 should be celebrated as the country’s Independence Day.
The ethnic Bosniak Vice-President of the Bosnian Serb entity, Ramiz Salkic, said that in Republika Srpska only a handful of towns with a significant Bosniak population, such as Prijedor, Srebrenica, and Zvornik, are marking the holiday.
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