Bosnian mufti wants RS president declared persona non grata

Source: Tanjug

SARAJEVO, BANJA LUKA -- The Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina will propose Muslim countries' ambassadors to deny hospitality to Republic of Srpska (RS) President Milorad Dodik.

Milorad Dodik (FoNet, file)

The Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina will also ask the Muslim countries to declare Dodik persona non grata.
According to the announcement, the RS president has been continuously making chauvinistic, racist statements about Muslims that incite hatred and distort the facts.

Bosnia-Herzegovina Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Human Rights and Ethics Chairman Aleksandra Pandurović has stated that the Islamic Community’s release represents a terrifying hate speech and a reason for concern in the entire country.

“Chief Mufti (Mustafa) Cerić is through this release being promoted to an ayatollah and making himself equal with the Islamic Community and the Bosniak parties’ policy. No one in the RS has anything against Bosnian Muslim’s tradition and no one is afraid of radicalism that was imported here during the war and that has grown its roots,” she told Banja Luka-based daily Nezavisne novine.

The Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina said in the statement that “it is not a rare situation that Dodik treats Bosniaks as Bosnian Muslims or just as Muslims, which represents an impudent denial of their national identity”.

“Denial of one people’s national identity in fact represents renewal of defeated and rejected ideologies of apartheid and fascism,” it is said in the announcement.

The Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina pointed out that Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) and Bosnia-Herzegovina Council of Ministers Chairman Nikola Špirić was following in Dodik’s footsteps.

“Such policy is preparing a new genocide and persecution of Bosniaks just because they are Muslims, and all the UN member states are obligated to fight against genocide and everything that leads to it,” the release reads.

The Islamic Community expects all relevant political factors to recognize, condemn and stop “Dodik’s dangerous and anti-human policy”.