SARAJEVO: Bosnia braced yesterday for fresh protests amid warnings the country could face a “tsunami” of popular anger over its dire economy after days of riots left several hundred people injured.
The acrid smell of smoke hung over the capital Sarajevo where firemen spent the night dousing flames after protesters set fire to government buildings in scenes repeated in cities throughout the country.
The protests are the Balkan country’s worst unrest since the 1992-1995 war and reflect growing despair over the state of the economy in a nation where unemployment stands at 44 percent and where one in five lives below the poverty line.
Police have used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters, leaving around 300 people injured since the demonstrations erupted on Wednesday. “This is a state of war,” warned the front page of the Oslobodjenje daily.
Bosnia’s interior minister warned that government inaction could spark more popular anger, saying authorities had to launch an “anti-graft tsunami.”
“If this does not happen, we will have a ‘citizens’ tsunami’,” Fahrudin Radoncic said in a TV interview on Friday.
The protesters are demanding the resignation of local and regional officials, whom they blame for two decades of political stalemate that has left the economy in dire straits.
Several senior officials in regional administrations in the southern town of Tuzla and the central town of Zenica resigned late on Friday under the pressure, local media reported. AFP
