The President of the Republika Srpska entity, Milorad Dodik, addressed the public following a meeting of the governing coalition in RS on Monday, delivering a speech filled with offensive, inflammatory, and historically unfounded statements that have drawn strong reactions both within Bosnia and Herzegovina and across the region.
In his address, Dodik declared that Bosnia and Herzegovina is “disintegrating” and claimed that its legacy “reeks of inhumanity.” He once again denied the legitimacy of the international community’s presence in the country, referring to High Representative Christian Schmidt as “illegitimate.” He further asserted that “Muslims”—a term he persistently uses in place of “Bosniaks”—accept Schmidt’s decisions while “waiting for the second half of the game.”
One of the most disturbing parts of his statement was a direct appeal for Bosniaks to “return to the Orthodox religion,” claiming that such a conversion would make Bosnia and Herzegovina a “majority Serbian” state. “The solution for Bosnia is this: for Muslims to return to their old Orthodox religion. We are offering constructive proposals. There is evidence that our ancestors converted to Islam under Ottoman coercion. Therefore, for me, this is the correct solution,” Dodik said. He added, “Bosnians should return to the religion of their ancestors, and thus Bosnia would be majority Serb,” according to reporting by Klix.ba.
Dodik concluded his address by openly expressing satisfaction at the prospect of the state’s collapse: “Bosnia and Herzegovina is not what it claims to be. It will disintegrate. And I am happy about that.”
CIVIL MEDIA sought comment from political analyst Harun Cero, who strongly condemned Dodik’s remarks.
“Milorad Dodik’s statement suggesting that Bosniaks should ‘return to their old Orthodox faith’ is not only a grotesque manipulation of history, but also a dangerous attack on religious freedom and the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Cero in a statement for CIVIL MEDIA. “It strikes at the very heart of the country’s multiethnic foundation and democratic values.”
“These are not ‘constructive proposals’ as Dodik claims,” Cero continued. “They are blatant, chauvinistic provocations rooted in ethnic supremacy and historical revisionism. Demanding that an entire people abandon their faith to satisfy a nationalist vision of a ‘Serb-majority’ state is deeply offensive and dangerously reminiscent of ideologies that fueled ethnic cleansing and genocide in the 1990s,” he said in his statement to CIVIL MEDIA.
Furthermore, Cero says that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a sovereign, multiethnic state—“not the property of any one ethnic or religious group.” He emphasized that the country is founded on principles of equality, coexistence, and international law, and that no political leader has the right to rewrite history or deny the identities of entire communities.
“Dodik’s rhetoric does not reflect the will of Bosnia’s citizens,” Cero added. “It reflects an outdated and regressive agenda rooted in division, isolation, and authoritarianism—an agenda with no place in a democratic society,” said Cero for CIVIL MEDIA.
Most disturbingly, Cero pointed out the lack of a strong response to such inflammatory speech. “It is both shocking and unacceptable that such overtly fascist and sectarian statements have been met with silence—or at best, timid reactions—by both domestic institutions and the international community,” he said.
“This is not just an insult—it is a thinly veiled call for the erasure of an entire people’s identity and existence,” Cero concluded in his remarks for CIVIL MEDIA.
Xh. Deralla
