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SARAJEVO, April 19 (FENA) - Working Group for Bosnia and Herzegovina, which brings together BiH and international intellectuals, sent a letter to US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken expressing concern over recent statements by Gabriel Escobar, the US Special Envoy to the Western Balkans, regarding electoral and constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to them, Escobar essentially condemned the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the future of ethnic divisions, discrimination, persecution and disrespect for human rights, proposing that Bosnia and Herzegovina give up any attempts at significant constitutional reform before joining the European Union.
They believe that this would preserve a system of ethnic divisions of that gives priority to the constituent peoples introduced by the Dayton Peace Agreement, a modality in the 2009 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments in the 2009 Sejdić-Finci case and the 2014 Zornić case that was consistently labeled as discriminatory.
"These judgments in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina to stop discriminating against its own citizens who are either not eligible to run for high political positions because of their status as excluded minorities or because they do not want to express their affiliation with one of the constituent peoples," the group said.
They believe that the comments by Special Envoy Escobar on Bosnia and Herzegovina's accession to the European Union without fundamental electoral reform are in total contrast with the European Union's expectations of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
They remind that in its "Opinion on Bosnia and Herzegovina's application for membership in the European Union", the Commission just stated that the ethnically based electoral privileges of the constituent peoples in its Constitution "are not in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights."
The statement said that "significant additional reforms are therefore needed to ensure that all citizens can exercise their political rights, in line with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the Sejdić-Finci case".
In the letter to Blinken, they also warned of the continuous destabilizing actions of the representatives of the authorities of the entity of Republika Srpska, especially recalling the recent vote on the decision to establish its own judiciary and army.
"Protected by the Dayton structure, discrimination has become the norm in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is why corruption is so widespread. These threats of nationalists should be a priority in the US foreign policy in BiH and they should be prevented by fundamental changes to the Constitution as ordered by the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights," the letter states.
In the end, they appealed to the Secretary of State to correct the course of the US foreign policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina in support of democratic values and human rights, it is said in the letter signed by Prof. Dr. David Pettigrew, Professor of Philosophy and Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Southern Connecticut State University and others American and BiH intellectuals.
The letter was also sent to Gabriel Escobar, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office for European and Eurasian Affairs, and US Ambassador to BiH Michael Murphy.
(FENA) S. R.
