Serb Nationalist Chetnik Rally Postponed due to Coronavirus

The controversial Chetnik rally in Visegrad has been cancelled after the Interior Ministry in Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity on Wednesday issued a ban on all public gatherings until March 30 in an attempt to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Dusan Sladojevic, the president of the Republika Srpska Ravna Gora Movement, confirmed to BIRN that the gathering of supporters of the Chetnik movement was likely to be postponed.

The rally is held every year to commemorate the anniversary of the day when Dragoljub Mihailovic, the leader of the Chetnik movement in World War II, was caught by the Yugoslav Communist authorities in 1946.

Campaign group TRIAL International had called for the Chetnik gathering to be banned, arguing that it "incites hatred and causes fear".

A local group called the All for Better Visegrad Association had also called for the banning of the gathering and the Ravna Gora Movement.

"We have called on everyone to take action within their jurisdiction - the Bosnian presidency, Security Ministry, Bosniak representatives in Republika Srpska - to ban the activities of the Ravna Gora Movement," Suljo Fejzic, a representative of the association, told BIRN.

The Union of Anti-Fascists and Fighters of the National Liberation War, an organisation representing veterans of WWII Partisan forces in Bosnia, called the Chetnik gathering "a disgrace to the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also a slap in the face to the anti-fascism tradition in Europe".

After the Chetnik rally last year in Visegrad, the Ministry of Justice and Administration of the Sarajevo Canton filed requests to ban 16 associations that have the designation 'Ravna Gora' or 'Chetnik' in their name, on the grounds that they provoke...