Some 2,000 Bosnian Serb paramilitaries and policemen parade through Sarajevo in an illegal celebration

SARAJEVO, 9 Jan. (DPA/EP) –

Some 2,000 paramilitaries, police officers and officials from the Serb Republic of Bosnia or Republika Srpska marched east of Sarajevo on Monday to commemorate Republika Srpska Day, a holiday prohibited by the Bosnian authorities.

The parade took place in the presence of the President of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, and the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ivica Dacic, and with thousands of Serbs who attended waving the flags of Serbia and the Bosnian Serb Republic.

The Bosnian Constitutional Court has declared this annual march to commemorate the founding of the Bosnian Serb entity led by convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzidc on 9 January 1992 unconstitutional.

This year and for the first time the ceremony has taken place in the capital, Sarajevo, in a small area of ​​the city that is under the jurisdiction of the Republika Srpska.

In the 1995 Bosnian War, Serb militias perpetrated genocide and massacres against the Bosniak and Croat population of Bosnia and Herzegovina and besieged Sarajevo for three years precisely from the city’s eastern hills.

Now Dodik defends the secession of the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina, formed by the Republika Srpska itself and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for which the Bosniak majority of Sarajevo has seen the parade as a provocation. Dodik has taken part in a speech in which he has praised the Republika Srpska as a “republic of peace and freedom”.

On Sunday, Dodik awarded the Order of the Republika Srpska to Russian President Vladimir Putin, announcing that he would later present the award in person.