Bosnia's ethnic Serbs have begun voting in a referendum over a disputed national holiday, defying a ban by the country's highest court and Western pressure to call off a process that risks stoking ethnic tensions in the divided Balkan country.
The referendum, on whether to mark January 9 as "Statehood Day" in the Serb Republic part of Bosnia, on Sunday is the first since a 1992 vote on secession from then-Yugoslavia that ignited three years of conflict in which 100,000 were killed. [...]
The Sarajevo-based Constitutional Court has ruled that the holiday would be illegal because it coincides with a Serbian Orthodox Christian holiday and so discriminates against Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats living in the Serb Republic. The court also banned the referendum.
January 9 is the date when Bosnian Serbs declared independence from Bosnia in 1992, precipitating the country's devastating war marked by mass killings and persecution of Bosniaks and Croats in Serbian territory. It was Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. [...]
The Serb region's administration has said it would comply with the court's ruling on the "Statehood Day" and make changes to its law on holidays to ensure it was not discriminating against other peoples - but only after the vote.
The Serbs celebrate the holiday by hanging out Serb flags and holding Orthodox Christian ceremonies in public institutions, which non-Serbs say is aimed at excluding them.
Western diplomats warn that the referendum violates the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian war.
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