SARAJEVO — Bosnian Serbs are closely watching Scotland’s independence referendum, hoping if Scots vote to break away from Britain it would set a precedent that could boost their own chances of proclaiming a separate state.
After Crimea split from Ukraine and joined Russia following a disputed referendum in March, and with Scotland eyeing independence in Thursday’s referendum, the president of Bosnia’s Serb-run entity Republika Srpska (RS) has not hesitated to evoke the specter of separation.
“We are following what is going on in Italy (South Tyrol), in Scotland and even in Catalonia. These are crucial experiences for the RS,” Milorad Dodik said recently.
In multi-ethnic Bosnia, however, with the bloody legacy of its 1992-1995 war during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, observers say talk of independence also raises the danger of a new armed conflict.
The Dayton peace accord that ended Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war created two almost equal and highly autonomous entities, Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation, linked by a loose central government in charge of foreign matters, finance and defense.
The Serbs had boycotted Bosnia’s 1991 referendum to break away from Yugoslavia that was successful thanks to the votes of Muslims and Croats.
But Bosnia’s proclamation of independence in 1992 came at the price of a brutal war pitting Serbs against Muslims and Croats that claimed more than 100,000 lives.
To this day many Serbs have never really accepted the new post-war Bosnian state, despite the level of autonomy they have in Republika Srpska.
“If a referendum was organized tomorrow, most of the Serbs would be in favor of independence,” said Milos Solaja, professor of international relations at the University of Banja Luka in the Bosnian Serb entity’s capital.
“Republika Srpska has gradually become a solid political entity that most of its inhabitants, Serbs, identify with,” Solaja said.
While he thinks secession “is not realistic at this moment,” he added that “Republika Srpska is de facto already a state given its huge statehood attributes.”(Rusmir Smajlovic for www.chinapost.com.tw)
