Čelinac Челинац
Town and municipality
View on Čelinac
Flag Coat of arms
Location of Čelinac within Bosnia and Herzegovina
Coordinates: 44°43′30″N 17°19′48″E / 44.72500°N 17.33000°E / 44.72500; 17.33000
Country	Bosnia and Herzegovina
Entity	Republika Srpska
Government
• Municipal mayor	Vlado Gligorić (SNSD)
Area
• Total	361.81 km2 (139.70 sq mi)
Population  (2013 census)
• Total	15,548
• Density	43/km2 (110/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+1 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+2 (CEST)
Area code	051
Website	www.opstina-celinac.com

Čelinac (Serbian Cyrillic: Челинац) is a town and municipality in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. As of 2013, the municipality has a population of 15,548 inhabitants, while the town of Čelinac has a population of 5,097 inhabitants.

It is located along the Jošavka and Vrbanja rivers, between the municipalities of Laktaši and Prnjavor to the north, Teslić to the east, Kotor Varoš and Kneževo (formerly known as Skender Vakuf) to the south, and Banja Luka to the west.

The main initiator and leader of the persecution of the non-Serb population in the valley of the Vrbanja river and Bosanska Krajina, including Čelinac, was a member of the SDS — Radoslav Brđanin, a native of the nearby village of Popovac.

Brđanin was a leading political figure in the Autonomous Region of Krajina (ARK). During The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, he was in key positions at the municipal, regional and "republic" level. Among other things, he was the first vice president of the Assembly of the ARK, president of the ARK Crisis Staff and later as acting vice minister of production, minister of construction, traffic and utilities and acting deputy prime minister of Republika Srpska (RS). The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) condemned him for various crimes to 30 years in prison.^[1]

During the War in Bosnia, along with other generally known reprisals, the local authorities had introduced restrictions for Bosniaks and Croats, i.e. the non-Serb population. In addition to those who had experienced this, among other things, bears witness to the indictment against Radovan Karadžić before the Tribunal in The Hague. At the hearing in 2013, a witness, in response to Nikola Poplašen, stated:

"Since he stated that there was no ethnic discrimination in the Republika Srpska, the prosecutor presented the decision of the Čelinac municipality authorities from July 23, 1992, in which Croats and Muslims are prohibited from going out into the street from 4 p.m. till 6 a.m., bathing in the river, fishing, gathering in larger groups, and the only thing they are expressly allowed to do is - leave. And this only on the condition that the entire household leaves the municipality. According to Poplašen, with these restrictions, the municipal authorities wanted to "protect" the population and "save people's heads".^[2]

Aside from the town of Čelinac, the municipality includes the following settlements:

The following table gives a preview of the total number of registered employed people per their core activity (as of 2016):^[3]

• Municipalities of Republika Srpska

• Radoslav Brđanin, politician
• Rajko Kuzmanović, politician
• Željko Blagojević, ultra runner

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Čelinac.

• Official Municipality Web Page
• Čelinac on the Internet Archived 2005-11-27 at the Wayback Machine