Austria and Germany have imposed sanctions on the President of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, the foreign ministers of both countries announced on Thursday. The measures, which were issued without a court hearing, include a ban on Dodik’s entry into the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria.
The sanctions were justified as a response to Dodik’s alleged disregard for the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which the Republika Srpska is a part. Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl Reisinger stated, “Milorad Dodik has taken his secessionist provocations and actions to a new level and has clearly crossed legal red lines. By doing so, Dodik endangers the security, stability, constitutional order and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
Dodik has been in the international spotlight recently due to an Interpol arrest warrant issued against him and other politicians of the Republika Srpska, at the request of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A court in Sarajevo had previously sentenced him to one year in prison for hindering decisions of the Bosnian Constitutional Court and for disregarding the authority of the international High Representative, Christian Schmidt.
Russia has criticized the verdict, calling it an “absolutely political” decision by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian judiciary, based on a “pseudo-law” pushed through by Schmidt.
The background to the situation is two laws signed by Dodik, which suspend the judgments of the Constitutional Court in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Republika Srpska and declare the decisions of High Representative Schmidt invalid. Both laws were later revoked by Schmidt.
The Republika Srpska, which is predominantly inhabited by Serbs, has existed since the Bosnian War in the 1990s. Since the 1995 Dayton Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had separated from Yugoslavia and gained international recognition, has been divided into the Republika Srpska and the Croat-Muslim Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The two semi-autonomous entities are connected through a weak central government. The Serbs have been seeking the unification of the Republika Srpska with Serbia, but the selective application of the right to self-determination of peoples by the EU and its member states has so far prevented the implementation of this goal.