Members of the Youth Forum, an organisation of Muslim war refugees who had returned to this southern town, recently removed a flag claiming that it was the flag of the former Croat Republic of Herceg-Bosna. This caused anger among the Croat residents of Stolac who insisted that it was the flag of the Croat people in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Forum leader Nerim Dizdar said on Monday he did not know who had burnt the two flags, adding that it had not been done by members of the Forum. He said that the burnt flags were "symbols of a quasi-state, the Croat Republic of Herceg-Bosna".
The public display of the flag of the State of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the flags of the country's ethnic communities has not yet been regulated by law.