The issue of national identity is taken seriously by Balkan people – including the least serious among them.
Bosnian Serbs Spent €5 Million on Lobbyists
Sarajevo | 11 November 2009 |
The Bosnian Serb government has “issued another set of spurious and baseless accusations,” the Office of the High Representative, OHR, said in a statement.
Instead of completing conditions for the closure of the OHR, Bosnia’s Serb-dominated part Republika Srpska “has spent more than 10 million convertible marks (some 5 million euros) of its taxpayers’ money on lobbyists and lawyers trying to undermine the OHR and prevent it from carrying out its mandate,” it added.
The reaction followed a report adopted by the Bosnian Serb government on Monday in which it accused the Deputy High Representative to Bosnia, US diplomat Raffi Gregorian and a number of other people – including state prosecutors, judges and journalists – of conspiring against the entity with the aim to portray it “as a safe heaven for criminals and to scare away foreign investors.”
Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, which had also been named among the conspirators, said the report was a continuation of the Bosnian Serb government’s practice “to invent internal and external enemies, which is characteristic of authoritarian regimes and creates an atmosphere of a lynch (mob).”
“Freedom of speech and thought present basic human rights and fundamental principles that contemporary democracies were founded on, and through these kinds of actions the Government of the RS most directly endangers these human rights,” the organisation said in a statement.
The anti-corruption watchdog was forced to temporarily suspend its operations in Republika Srpska in July 2008 over concerns for its staff, after Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik accused them of racketeering and extortion, calling on citizens to come forward with evidence of the organisation’s alleged unlawful activities.
Describing the government report as a “stupidity,” an independent economic analyst Svjetlana Cenic said that Bosnian Serbs could soon expect a referendum to be organised to ask them “are they with Milorad Dodik or against him.”
Cenic, who was also among the accused, told the Oslobodjenje daily that all those who chose to oppose Dodik “could expect to be transferred to the eastern part of Republika Srpska and surrounded with barbed wire.”
“If you satanize nine people without a single piece of evidence, accusing them of all the problems in Republika Srpska, it is the same as taking them before a firing squad,” another of the accused, journalist Slobodan Vaskovic told Oslobodjenje.
All the accused are openly critical of the Bosnian Serb government’s and Dodik’s perceived political radicalisation, lack of transparency and possible corruption in some privatisation and development projects.
However, the Bosnian Serb leaders appeared undeterred by the strong reaction to their report and insisted that their accusations against the group of “conspirators”, led by Raffi Gregorian, had to be investigated by Bosnia’s state prosecutors.
The government pressed charges against the group in November last year, but state prosecutors have at the time dismissed the case as “groundless.”
“The decision by the Prosecutors of Bosnia and Herzegovina to reject criminal charges…proves that this institution has not even tried to find evidence,” Dodik told journalists on Wednesday.
“It shows that the prosecutors are politically motivated…(as) the intention (of the accused) to portray the Bosnian Serb government as criminal is obvious,” he added.
Dodik said that Gregorian already had many problems and that the refusal to investigate charges against him was clearly an attempt “to save private Gregorian.”
The statement was apparently in reference to the accusations against Gregorian voiced last week by Bosnia’s Islamic community and a powerful newspaper publisher Fahrudin Radoncic.
The Islamic community and Radoncic accused Gregorian of anti-Muslim conspiracy for allegedly preparing and distributing to international diplomats on behalf of the OHR a criminal network diagram and a report mentioning most of Bosnia’s Bosniak political, religious, business and media leaders.
However, the strongest Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) parliamentary Party of Democratic Action, SDA, and several Bosnian labor unions, including unions of agricultural, tobacco industry, food, tourism and trade workers, were quick to side with Gregorian and condemn the accusations against him.
Accusations against Gregorian have been stepped up just days before the Peace Implementation Council, PIC, a group of 55 countries and international organisations that sponsor and direct the peace process in Bosnia, is to meet in Sarajevo.
At the meeting set for November 18, the PIC is expected to discuss the situation in Bosnia, including the future of the OHR.
The OHR was due to be phased out in 2007 but the mandate was extended because of political instability and the failure of local politicians to pass reforms.
Bosnian Serbs oppose the OHR’s continued presence in the country and accuse the top international envoy, currently Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko, of abusing his powers.
On the other hand, Bosniaks and Croats insist that the country is still not ready to stand on its own feet and want the OHR to stay.
