Police Searching for Young Men Who Passed Through Doboj with the Flag of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Doboj police are checking reports about individuals who passed through Doboj displaying the flag of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, abolished in 1998 by a decision of the High Representative and replaced with the current flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

RTRS writes that this act has been characterized as inciting national and religious hatred, and upon the order of the District Public Prosecutor's Office, the police are taking measures and actions to determine the circumstances under which the alleged act was committed.

The photograph, published on social media, actually shows young men carrying the flag of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with six lilies, which was adopted on May 4, 1992, and first officially presented on May 22, 1992, in front of the UN building in New York.

Under this flag, Bosnia and Herzegovina became a member of the United Nations, thereby, as the successor of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), becoming a contracting party to all conventions and agreements that the SFRY had ratified up to that point.

It is unclear how the District Public Prosecutor's Office in the RS intends to link this flag with the flag of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is also recognized as a legitimate army of the internationally recognized Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A similar situation in the BiH entity of Republika Srpska was caused by the flag of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2015, when a group of young men displayed the flag during a wedding in Bosanska Gradiška.

The news that the police are looking for men who passed through Doboj with the flag of the RBiH has sparked an avalanche of criticism on social media. Among the comments, one can read the observation that the police reacted because of a flag that is internationally recognized, but is no longer in use only because it was replaced by another flag, while two days earlier, fans of the controversial Croatian singer Marko Perković Thompson wore Ustasha symbols, but there was no police reaction.

The same symbols were also displayed during Thompson's concert in Mostar, several weeks before the incident in Novi Travnik, NAP writes.