553 Serbs dismissed from army for refusal to swear allegiance to "The Bosnian Army"!!
Recruits sacked for refusing Bosnia oath
June 09, 2005
MANJACA, Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Bosnian Serb army has dismissed 553 conscripts for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Bosnian central state.
The recruits were the first since the 1992-95 civil war to be asked to take an oath to the Bosnian state, which includes a semi-independent Serb unit, the Republika Srpska, and a Muslim-Croat Federation.
As part of the international community's efforts to build up Bosnia's central institutions, NATO has insisted that army recruits recognise the state, rather than their own region.
The recruits, in the Manjaca barracks near Banja Luka, refused to do so during April's ceremony and instead swore loyalty to the Republika Srpska, leading the international peacekeeping mission in the country to dismiss Bosnian Serb army chief Novak Djukic and suspend several senior officers.
The international peacekeeping mission also ordered that the conscripts involved in the incident be dismissed.
"It is considered that these conscripts have not served compulsory military service," a source at the Bosnian Serb military headquarters said, meaning that they faced being conscripted again and ordered once more to swear loyalty to the central state.
The dismissed conscripts make 40 per cent of current Bosnian Serb recruits.
Bosnian and international officials were shocked by TV images of the recruits swearing allegiance to the Republika Srpska during a passing-in ceremony, despite the fact that a senior officer administering the oath distinctly said Bosnia-Herzegovina. Several hundred family members screamed and applauded, and also booed the Bosnian national anthem.
"I've been in the army for 84 days. I am glad to go home, but it is not nice that it ended like this," said Dejan Miljic, 19.
The Manjaca recruits, who had served almost three months of their four-month compulsory military service, left the barracks yesterday wearing civilian clothes.
Both Bosnian entities, linked by weak central institutions, have their own parliament, government, army, police, national anthem, coat of arms and flag.
