An unprecedented situation has unfolded in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which risks turning into a wider conflict. Police from the Republika Srpska have evicted state police officers from a building in the region's main city of Banja Luka, a move aimed at enforcing separatist legislation passed by parliament and signed by leader Milorad Dodik.
A state court last week sentenced Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska, to a year in prison and banned him from politics for six years. He overturned the ruling, and the day after the ruling, the regional Serbian parliament passed legislation banning the national police and judiciary from the territory of Republika Srpska.
Dodik, a pro-Russian nationalist, signed the separatist laws on Wednesday evening. On Thursday, the state prosecutor's office said it was investigating what it described as a criminal act of an attack on the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Dodik called on Friday on all Serbs working in the State Information and Protection Agency (SIPA), the state court and prosecutor's office, as well as the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council to resign so that Republika Srpska can provide them with employment in its own institutions.
At a press conference on Friday with outgoing Prime Minister Miloš Vučević in Banja Luka, Dodik was asked about the Republika Srpska police raid on the SIPA building in the city.
"If the situation is as you say, it means that the laws adopted by Republika Srpska (Republika Srpska) are being implemented," he said.
Dodik says the state judiciary, prosecutors and police are unconstitutional because they were not provided for in the Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95 war between Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, in which 100,000 were killed. Republika Srpska police also entered the SIPA headquarters in the eastern city of Sarajevo, local media reported. Reuters could not independently verify the media reports. (A2 Televizion)
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