The Bosnian Serbs vote on Sunday in a referendum over a disputed national holiday, defying Bosnia's highest court and Western pressure to call off a process that risks stoking ethnic tensions in the divided Balkan country.
The referendum, on whether to mark Jan. 9 as „Republika Srpska Day“, will be the first since a 1992 plebiscite on secession from then-Yugoslavia that ignited three years war in which 100,000 were killed.
Polling stations across the Bosnian Serb-dominated region opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 7 p.m. Organizers said the first preliminary results were expected within 48 hours after the vote.
The Sarajevo-based Constitutional Court has ruled that the holiday would be illegal because it coincides with a Serbian Orthodox Christian holiday and so discriminates against Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats living in the Serb Republic. The court also banned the referendum.
