Law on Serb (RS) Citizenship from December 1992
On 18 December 1992, a new citizenship law was passed in the Serb Republic. During this law procedure, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was in its eighth month and the Serb Republic has officially existed since August. Before August 1992, the unrecognized quasi-state of Republika Srpska was called the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The document can be read here and downloaded here. It has to be mentioned that the document is an unofficially translated consolidation. Since I have not been able to find the original document via Internet, I have contacted the relevant public agency, the Serb Republic’s Official Bulletin, for additional information to be provided.
In the following sections, I am writing why I find this document and law very interesting when it comes to creating the Serb Republic as an unrecognized quasi-state (UQS) and society.
Intro
As Yugoslavia was collapsing and disappearing as a federation, the newly recognized and unrecognized states were making laws regarding citizenship. This was also the case with Bosnia and Herzegovina as from May 1992. Despite never being recognized as a sovereign nation-state, and only being recognized as part of Bosnia and Herzegovina in accordance with the Dayton agreement from 1995, the Serb Republic as a UQS had its own citizenship law.
The entry of “Law on Serb Citizenship” in December 1992 meant that two laws officially stopped existing, although such laws were already non-existing and non-functional in practice. Partly it was the federal law “The Law on Citizenship of the SFRY” (Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia), and partly it was the republic (state) law “The Law on Citizenship of the SR BiH” (the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina).
For example, in Article 33 it was stated how the judicial transition and change of legislation was taking place, including the aspect of military personnel from the former Yugoslav People’s Army:
A person whose citizenship of People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was revoked by the Law on the Revocation of Citizenship: junior officers and officers of the former Yugoslav Army who do not intend to return to their fatherland, members of the armed forces who did not serve occupying forces but who fled abroad, as well as persons who fled after the liberation ("Official Gazette of the FNRY," number 86/46) and their children may acquire Serb citizenship if, within one year from the date of entry of this law into force, they submit a request for the acquisition of Serb citizenship to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republika Srpska.
By creating a citizenship law in the Serb Republic parliamentary assembly, one of its ideas was to legitimize the Serb Republic as a “real” state and society and use some of the contemporary international standards regarding aspects as constitution, citizenship, and governance.
Demands for citizenship in Republika Srpska
When reading the citizenship law document, one can recognize that some words, terms, and provisions are common even in democratic nations, such as for example, regarding birth, residency, and immigration. One such example is that the RS citizenship law was based on that citizenship could be acquired by birth and if the child’s parents already had Serb (RS) citizenship.
What is extra interesting is that the law included also demands acquiring RS citizenship as a foreigner and citizen of another sovereign nation. One demand was that the individual “has actually and continuously lived for at least five years on the territory of Republika Srpska before submitting the request”.
Another demand was knowing “Serbian language and the Cyrillic alphabet”. This is interesting partly because the language policy of the Serb Republic was to change the name of the Serbo-Croat language into the Serbian language, to use the standard dialect variant from Serbia (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) instead of the Bosnian standard dialect variant, and also to promote Cyrillic standard dialect variant as the more important one comparing to Latnic alphabet. In practice, it meant that someone who wanted to obtain RS citizenship had to learn how to read and write as in Serbia, which can be compared to demanding someone moving to the UK to read and write according to the American standard dialect.
One more example of demands connected to immigration and naturalization was that the individual’s “previous behavior demonstrates that he respects the legal order and customs of Republika Srpska and that he accepts Serbian culture”. The term culture is one of the most complex and difficult ones regarding the definition and practical usage because culture is basically all learned behaviors, set of ideas, and constructions we as humans do and believe in. But in practice, this provision meant that the individual had to accept the Serb Republic as it was at the moment - ethnocracy, organized crimes including crimes against humanity and human rights, high levels of corruption, absence of the rule of law, primitive and inhumane behaviors.
The termination of citizenship
The RS citizenship law also included aspects regarding termination of citizenship, as stated in Article 16:
Serb citizenship shall terminate:
1. by dismissal;
2. by renunciation;
3. by annulment;
4. by international agreement
Additional information regarding termination concerning children and young people can be seen in Article 19.
For me personally, the most interesting case of citizenship termination aspects is stated in Article 23, section 2. Because the law included references to “general principles of the United Nations and the General Declaration on Human Rights”.
This part of the law can be seen as cynical, absurd, and bizarre because the Serb Republic was created in 1992 on war crimes, crimes against humanity, human rights abuses, sexual violence, and other inhumane behaviors. This is an interesting case because there are examples of military volunteers from Russia, with a radical nationalist and Christianist agenda, coming to Bosnia to fight for the Serb Republic and receive citizenship.
The role of the RS Ministry of Internal Affairs
One institution that is mentioned several times in the document is the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Serb Republic. One of its main roles was to provide legal documents like IDs and passports to the population in the Serb Republic. This is interesting because the Serb Republic also attempted to create its own passport and get it internationally recognized. For example, in Article 31 it was stated that: “Serb citizenship is proved by an identification card or valid passport for a citizen of Republika Srpska.”
Ethnocracy in practice
The case of the Law on Serb (RS) Citizenship from December 1992 shows how an ethnocratic government and society was being developed in Bosnia during the beginning of the 1990s. By creating such a law, one of the ambitions of the Serb Republic was to establish itself as a political entity and to seek international recognition. It is interesting how RS was formally based on aspects as respect for human rights and democratic norms while at the same time being established as an ethnocracy with massive human rights abuses, war crimes against humanity, economic and social destruction.
In the future, I will try to compare the case of the Serb Republic with similar cases in Europe, such as with Transnistria in Moldova and the current “peoples’ republics” in Ukraine.
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