The Republic of Srpska

Today, the Republic of Srpska Minister of the Interior, Mr. Dragan Lukač, visited Banja Luka Journalists’ Club. Representatives of the Club informed the Minister about their initiative to introduce a provision to the new version of Criminal Code of the Republic of Srpska. According to this provision, an attack on a journalist who is performing their task shall be treated as an attack on an official person. Minister Lukač invited the Journalists’ Club address the initiative directly to the proposer of the Code, so that the situations which the articles of the Code would apply to could be defined precisely. Furthermore, the Club’s President, Mr. Siniša Vukelić, introduced the Minister with the details of the initiative, which they presented at the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Srpska together with Transparency International BIH in order to obtain constitutionality assessment of certain articles from the Law on public peace and order, and which has still not been on the agenda to be considered. Additionally, the representatives of the Journalists’ Club Banja Luka and the Minister discussed reporting on certain topics, such as domestic violence, cybercrime and terrorism. They agreed the representatives of the Ministry and the Club should organize a debate where they could consider these topics so the journalists could inform the public professionally and have better cooperation and access to the information from the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior.