An association of exiled ethnic Croats from the Banja Luka area strongly condemned the statements the leader of the strongest Bosnian Croat ethnic party in the country, Dragan Covic, made recently in the parliament of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity, calling them “concerning.”

Covic, who is the leader of Bosnia’s Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH) and is considered the main political representative of ethnic Croats in the country, spoke at a special session of the National Assembly of RS entity on Tuesday. He urged RS representatives to end their boycott of state institutions arguing that this is the best way to defend the entity and oppose attempts to turn Bosnia into a “unitary” state.

“It should be said at the outset that Croats from the RS entity are not represented by any of the political representatives. There are ‘Croat representatives’ there, but they have done absolutely nothing for the interests and problems of Croats in RS. They have satisfied the rule that requires that all three ethnic groups have representatives in the RS government, and that is where their engagement ends,” said the association ‘Nazaret’.

In their statements, members of the association argued that “Dragan Covic is not interested in killed and massacred Croats in the RS entity, mined and demolished churches, houses, raped women and mistreated Croats, or prison camps for killing and torture.”

“He is not interested in years of fear and terror against the innocent Croat people. In the Banja Luka diocese alone, 1,054 people were killed, of which 614 were civilians, 144 of whom were women. We note that for the most part there were no wartime conflicts and most were killed on their doorstep just because they were Croats,” they stressed, adding that one of the largest execution sites of Croats in BiH is the village of Brisevo near Ljubija, where 67 Croats were massacred in one day.

They stressed that Covic does not represent all Croats in BiH as Croats in the RS never elected him.

“His statement that the RS represents a normal entity is an insult to common sense and salt to the wounds of all expelled and disenfranchised Croats from the RS,” they said, arguing that the phrase “Croats in BiH” seems to only refer to Croats in Bosnia’s Federation (FBiH) entity while the rest are “forgotten and written off.”

“It should be noted for the sake of the truth that the international community accepted that dirty game and allowed genocide committed by the Serb side, as well as ethnic cleansing, and rewarded it with the RS entity, thus violating all declarations of human rights and freedoms,” they said.

The association sent a strong message to Covic in the statement.

“You, Dragan Covic, sided with the aggressors in BiH and thus lost all credibility to represent anyone in BiH. The policy that cooperates with the aggressor and the destroyer of BiH will be a disaster for both BiH and the Republic of Croatia,” it said.