The complainants also single out the headline of one of Ceric’s texts, “Appeal of the day: let’s not wait for others to count our dead again,” which they say carries a hidden call for renewed armed conflict between the three peoples and two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They add that in the text Ceric urges members of his own nation to stay on alert, claiming there is an atmosphere in society similar to the one before the war, even though, in the complainants’ assessment, no such situation actually exists in the country.
The most contentious passage
Kojic and Vulic cite the following passage as the most dangerous part of the text:
“From Sarajevo to Novi Pazar, from Prizren to Zagreb, from Mostar and Tuzla to the European and American seats of our diaspora, a serious, responsible and lasting framework for consultation needs to be established. Not another photo-op gathering, not a new podium for party score-settling and not an assembly of groupthink, but a shared table of national responsibility. At that table a strategy of democratic, political, legal, diplomatic, economic and security protection of Bosniaks and Bosnia and Herzegovina must be shaped.”
The complainants read this passage as a nationwide call for Bosniaks to mobilize against what they describe as a fictitious Serb enemy, and as a denial of positions on the territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia. The complaint notes that Ceric describes such a gathering as a fight “against the possibility of crimes being repeated.”
Based on all of this, Kojic and Vulic asked the BiH Prosecutor’s Office to urgently examine whether there are grounds to suspect the criminal offense of inciting national, racial and religious hatred, discord and intolerance, and to open an investigation against Ceric, warning that if such writing turns into public speech it could lead to more serious criminal offenses. As of publication, Mustafa Ceric had not commented on the complaint or responded to the claims made by the complainants.
Why this matters for the region
Ceric, one of the most influential voices in Bosniak politics over the past three decades, has been at the center of disputes over how the Bosnian war and its death toll are interpreted before. The complaint comes as the Memorial Center of Republika Srpska steps up its “Get to Know the Serb Victims” campaign ahead of upcoming anniversaries of the killings, so each new accusation of this kind further strains relations between Banja Luka and Sarajevo. Belgrade is following the case as part of the broader question of recognizing Serb victims across the region, not least because the complaint leans on verdicts from the Hague tribunal and domestic courts as proof that those victims existed.
It is not yet known when the BiH Prosecutor’s Office will decide whether there are grounds to open an investigation, and no deadline for its response has been given in any statement so far.