Sarajevo Canton

Families of victims, Bosnian politicians and ordinary Sarajevans gathered to lay flowers and pay tributes on Wednesday at the site of the Markale market shelling on the 26th anniversary of the deadly attack during the siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces.

The Swedish embassy to Bosnia, a long-time advocate of tougher air pollution action in the country, tweeted that Sarajevo was "in a category of its own" as the air pollution levels on Saturday were so high that categorizing the health hazard level made no sense. It called for urgent action.

Courts in the towns of Doboj and Sokolac have rejected requests to ban 16 associations whose titles contain the words 'Chetnik Movement' or 'Ravna Gora Movement', while three more courts in Bosnia's Serb-majority Republika Srpska entity are still considering requests to ban the associations, BIRN has learned.

The Bosnian state prosecution opened a case on Wednesday to investigate whether Bosniaks who returned to the Srebrenica, Visegrad and Bratunac areas after fleeing during the 1990s war were intimidated by noisy celebrations by Serbs on Orthodox Christmas Eve on Monday.

The case will also examine whether the celebrations provoked ethnic and religious hatred and intolerance.

The protesters were incensed by images revealed at a news conference a day earlier by Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina lawmaker Sabina Cudic, which appeared to show children at a care facility in the village of Pazaric tied to beds and other furniture.

Damir Marjanovic, a member of the Sarajevo Canton parliament from the liberal, multi-ethnic Nasa Stranka (Our Party), told BIRN that he has filed the proposal for new legislation to the Cantonal Assembly because there is a real need for a clear and precise law that will enable people to be sanctioned for hate speech.

Sarajevo is getting ready to host its first Pride parade on Sunday, aimed at supporting protection of the rights of the LGBTIQ community, which some 500 people are expected to join. However, the march will be matched by counter-marches held both the day before and on the same day as the Pride event.

Sarajevo, which withstood a bloody siege by Bosnian Serb forces for 1,425 days during the 1992-95 war, has long been viewed as a city of tolerance, a cultural capital and a city that exudes resilience.

Concrete stumbling blocks?

In a television appearance earlier this week, Sarajevo's cantonal minister of interior affairs, Admir Katica, stated that "additional requests have been made" to purchase concrete barriers to be placed in side streets along the proposed route of the march, increasing the security of the participants.

Vasvija Vidovic, a lawyer who has represented former Bosnian Army soldiers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Bosnian state court, argued that defendants find themselves difficult financial situations because trials are long-running and very expensive.