Defiant Bosnian Serbs Celebrate Their Controversial Holiday

Bosnian Serbs are celebrating a contentious holiday in defiance of the country's other ethnic groups, its constitutional court and the international community.

The Jan. 9 holiday commemorates the date in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs declared the creation of their own state in Bosnia, igniting the country's devastating four-year war.

Bosnian Serb police officers, firefighters and folklore groups paraded through the streets of Banja Luka, the de-facto capital of the Serb-run part of the country.

Although Serb leaders insisted that Monday's celebrations would be a secular holiday, they participated in religious ceremonies in the city's main church. That was broadcast live on local television, along with interviews with Bosnian Serb war-time military and political leaders who had been sentenced for crimes against humanity by a U.N war crimes court.

During the war that killed 100,000 people and turned half of the country's population into refugees, Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats were persecuted and almost completely expelled from Republika Srpska territory.

After the war, Republika Srpska became a semi-autonomous region of Bosnia. Bosniaks and Croats who returned there view the holiday as a celebration of their expulsion.

holiday was banned last year by Bosnia's top court. It ruled that the date, which falls on a Serb Christian Orthodox religious holiday, discriminated against the country's other ethnic groups.

The continued celebration was repeatedly condemned by the top European Union and the U.S diplomats in Bosnia who urged Bosnian Serbs to stop defying the country's top court.