Hooligan Attack Raises Ethnic Tensions in Bosnia

The Siroki Brijeg team bus after the incident. Photo: FK Siroki Brijeg.

Ethnic tensions escalated in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the weekend after the junior players from the southern town of Siroki Brijeg were assaulted by a group of football hooligans in Sarajevo.

The incident took place on Saturday afternoon, when the youth-team players from Siroki Brijeg boarded their bus to go home after matches against Sarajevo’s FK Zeljeznicar.

The players from Siroki Brijeg told local media that they were approached by a group of hooligans who came out of a nearby café. The hooligans first called them derogatory names sometimes used to insult Bosnian Croats, then attacked them with baseball bats and iron bars. One of the Zeljeznicar players tried but failed to protect them, they said.

Five players suffered minor injuries and the bus was slightly damaged, the Siroki Brijeg club said in a statement on its official website. No arrests have been made so far.

Both teams said the attack was unacceptable.

“Siroki Brijeg football club strongly condemns this incident in Sarajevo, expresses displeasure about the fact that the health and security of our youngsters was jeopardised, and demands the swift identification and punishment of the perpetrators,” the club’s statement said.

“We strongly condemn such acts … and we clearly state that we stand against any violence on the streets,” said FK Zeljeznicar in a statement on its website.

As a precaution after the attack, Zeljeznicar fans from Sarajevo were not allowed to attend a league match between the first teams from the two clubs in Siroki Brijeg on Sunday. No major incidents were reported during the game.

In a separate incident in the Serb-dominated town of Doboj over the weekend, unknown persons sprayed graffiti saying “Slaughter Balije [a derogatory term used for Muslims], both young and old”, local media reported on Monday. The graffiti was signed by “Vojvode [Dukes] 1990” – a fan group from the local football team FK Sloga Doboj.

Fights among football hooligans are not rare in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in a number of cases, such violence was directly caused by the ethnic tensions that still persist in Bosnia, almost two decades after the end of the war. For this reason country’s Football Union has on several occasions penalised teams by ordering them to play in empty stadiums.

One of the worst such examples in the last few years was a clash between hooligans in Siroki Brijeg in October 2009, when a FK Zeljeznicar fan, Vedran Puljic, was shot and killed and several other people were injured.

To underline the absurdity of this situation, Puljic himself was a Bosnian Croat who was rooting for the Sarajevo team.

His killer was identified and detained, but was then allowed to leave custody and escape to Croatia, where the authorities pressed charges against him a few weeks ago.