Cero: Schmidt's unexpected move as Republika Srpska registers state property to the entity, danger of 'Serbian world' realization grows

(Patria) - The introducer of today's Circle 99 session on the topic "Will genocide end with gruntocide?!" was Muharem Cero, a legal expert.

Speaking about state property, Cero emphasized that this story does not only date back to the Dayton Peace Agreement but also before the 1990s.

Cero notes that by harmonizing the Constitution of Republika Srpska with the Dayton Peace Agreement, the word "state" property was deleted, and it became RS property.

"This is a working agenda to integrate the RS entity into the capacity of a state, which is a prerequisite for its secession, whether through crude secession or preparations for dissolution," Cero states.

Although the issue of state property has gained momentum in recent years, it has not been resolved to this day.

"This dynamic that has re-actualized the issue of state property intends to resolve this issue.

Concurrently, ahead of the UN Security Council session, in his report, High Representative Christian Schmidt mentioned state property in a significant part and, unexpectedly for me, introduced some new premises for its resolution. The High Representative recognizes that one entity does not respect laws and, despite the BiH Constitutional Court's rulings that thwart laws concerning immovable property within the entity, it ignores, acts, and registers property. All property is registered with RUGIP under the RS title.

The High Representative, in a sophisticated elaboration, states that the Federation suffers due to the Law on the Prohibition of Disposal of State Property, and it would be necessary to relax this situation by ceasing to interpret nullity with the alibi of investments, highways, and public goods," Cero states.

He explains that the Law on the Prohibition of Disposal of State Property from 2005 was enacted as a guarantee for the implementation of succession.

"The intentions and goals are to encourage war agendas in a non-war manner and try to achieve them. Through parallel and special relations, RS and Serbia made an agreement in 2006 on the use of these relations, and this agreement includes succession, denationalization, and restitution, and rights belonging to Bosnia and Herzegovina have been consumed. By establishing parallel ties, these agreements contained elements of unconstitutionality that infringe upon the sovereignty and territorial integrity of BiH. Inaction has encouraged this whole narrative, which has escalated into the 'Serbian world.' The 'Serbian world' is nothing other than the expansion of Greater Serbia, which includes RS as a component. Those 47 points of the 'Serbian world' largely relate to BiH, and the actions of the international community and internal political players had to be more intensive in challenging its establishment. If it continues at this intensity, that project could yield results much sooner than we think," says Cero.

The president of Circle 99, Adil Kulenović, explained the term gruntocide in his introductory address.

"Mr. Cero has introduced the term gruntocide into public discourse, as far as I know, as the last act of genocide. Gruntocide is the final confirmation of committed and adjudicated genocide. No dusting of the eyes of the domestic and international public, as well as relevant political structures, will hide the real goal – to confirm the war aims of genocide through control over territory and property, i.e., by dividing and annexing parts of Bosnian territory to Serbia and Croatia. Any solution that would legalize seized land and property in favor of those who carried out genocide will and must face clear resistance. Especially since we have experienced the seizure and plunder of property in the last hundred years or more by various regimes that have successively changed but have not given up on gruntocide as an instrument of demographic and ethnic structural changes. And ethno-nationalist territorial expansion for the sake of Greater Serbia aspirations. Always, therefore, through brutal force and injustice, as is being done today," states Kulenović.

He points out that genocide was stopped – but not annulled. Nor have the political, institutional, and moral consequences of the crime been abolished.

"Its political goals wander in the peacetime guise of laws and administration. 'Gruntocide' is a term that painfully precisely describes this phenomenon: an attempt to achieve the dreams of war strategists and expansionist policies through papers and cadastres. Will they succeed? That depends on the resistance of society within BiH and the principled stance of the international community. With Schmidt's, and not just Schmidt's, yielding to secessionist blackmail, short-term interests of foreign corporations, and greed for minerals, it could happen that genocide is indeed confirmed by gruntocide. Silently, on land soaked in the blood of the innocent and discrimination against survivors. The policy of stabilocracy, preserving the status quo, cementing the policy of one state, two entities, three constituent peoples, as we heard at the last UN Security Council session in the speech of the US representative and some other important participants, does not give reason for optimism.

However, if civic and state-building forces, with the support of genuinely dedicated international actors, of which there are still some and they should be actively sought, persist in the rule of law, BiH can thwart this 'unfinished land war' against its statehood.

Our task is to prevent this from happening – for gruntocide to remain only a word of warning, not a verdict on our statehood.

In that case, gruntocide will remain only a warning from our public debate, not a dark reality of our future. Our task is to prevent this from happening. Bosnia and Herzegovina would thereby, symbolically speaking, gain or lose not only its birth certificate as a state but also the title deed to its territory – which belongs to it by both law and justice," emphasizes Kulenović.