Milorad Dodik’s links with Vladimir Putin worry NGOs, journalists and opponents, who are increasingly targeted by the government.
NGO leaders, journalists and human rights activists are increasingly targeted by the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this small territory of 1.3 million inhabitants, and by their sympathizers. Several violent incidents have been recorded in recent months, and in particular last March during a conference organized by LGBTQ+ activists in Banja Luka. That day, a group of hooligans attacked the organizers, and the police, present at the time of the attack, refused to intervene. A few days before, Milorad Dodik, the president of the Serbian Republic of Bonie, had opposed the event, presented as an “attack on family values”.
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Violence that occurs while this same president is accused of “Putinian drift” by some opponents. In power for nearly 20 years, this ultranationalist is used to provocations, and he often threatens to break up Bosnia-Herzegovina. But in recent weeks he has launched some particularly controversial bills: one to criminalize defamation, another to label NGOs as“foreign agents” and a third for “to forbid” to members of the LGBT community‘”approaching educational establishments”. All this while Milorad Dodik is one of the only European leaders to have visited Vladimir Putin since the start of the war in Ukraine. Ivana Korajic, director of Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina, an NGO which fights against corruption, is concerned about these “increasingly close ties” with the Russian President.
“It is clear that he is inspired by this model to develop a type of dictatorial regime that allows him to reign indefinitely, and to keep power as long as possible.”
Ivana Korajic, director of Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovinaat franceinfo
This proximity to Vladimir Putin worries many in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In a context of massive indebtedness and inflation, some experts believe that the current drift aims above all to hide the economic difficulties of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia, and to silence the growing opposition. But as war has returned to Europe, journalist Vajna Stokic worries about the dangerous game being played by the Bosnian Serb leader: “I fear that in the event of a conflict, people can be manipulated and they can go so far as to be killed thinking that they are fighting for a great cause, like the defense of their country. When in fact , they will only fight for the interests of one man.”
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By dividing Bosnian society a little more, Milorad Dodik plays, like his Bosnian and Croat ethnonationalist adversaries, with the resentment and badly healed wounds of the three million Bosnians. Ended 27 years ago, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina left more than 100,000 dead and two million displaced.