Contains controversial ethnicity, language, religion questions

(ANSAmed) – SARAJEVO – As scheduled, a troop of 18,879 government employees on Tuesday morning began knocking on Bosnian doors for the first population census since 1991, a year before the 1992-1995 war that tore the former Yugoslavia apart. The head count ends on October 15, with preliminary results to be made known within 90 days, officials said. The numbers will then be analyzed, with in-depth results to be published within a year.

The census remains controversial because it contains questions on ethnicity, language and religion. These were pushed for by Serbian nationalists and hotly contested by Bosnian Muslims, who said the census might turn into a legalization of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated against them during the 1992-1995 war.

Political and religious leaders have urged the country’s citizens to call themselves either ”Orthodox, Serbian-speaking Serbs”, ”Croatian-speaking Croatian Catholics” or ”Bosnian-speaking Bosnian Muslims”.

The country 22 years ago had a population of 4.38 million, with a majority of Bosnian Muslims at 43.5%, Serbs numbering 31.2% and Croatians making up 17.4%.

The new census is likely to confirm estimates that Bosnia now numbers 3.8 million people, and that the ethnic composition is no longer what it was prewar, analysts said. (ANSAmed).