A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Resisting Return

For four years following the Dayton peace agreement -- between 1996 and 2000 -- it proved impossible for Muslims to return to Srebrenica. On these pages we look at some of the obstacles: violence and intimidation, manipulation of local politics, arson, profiteering, and the ghosts of the 1995 massacre.

It started with outright violence. Srebrenica’s former inhabitants were liable to be intimidated and attacked if they so much as crossed the Inter-Entity Border Line (IEBL) that divided the two entities of Bosnia, the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

Serb nationalists also exploited electoral politics. After the war, municipal elections in Srebrenica were delayed until the fall of 1997, when Muslims, voting by absentee ballot, won a majority in the municipal council. The Serb members of the council responded by intimidation. They opened a session of the council in early 1998 by singing the nationalist hymn of the Republika Srpska (RS -- the Serb entity). The Muslim councilmen, interpreting this as a provocation, walked out of the meeting in protest. They did not return for over a year. The international community responded by imposing an aid blockade on Srebrenica. 


Photo credit: Peter Lippman
The Muslims withdrew from the Srebrenica Municipal Council in 1999 after the council secretary, a Muslim, was stabbed in the municipal building.

International sanctions on aid to Srebrenica kept economic development at a standstill in the municipality. Yet the local authorities preferred stagnation to sharing power with Muslims. This fitted into a larger trend throughout the eastern part of the Serb entity (the Republika Srpska). Nationalists were circling the wagons and opposing any re-integration of Bosnia. They were among the fiercest critics of Milorad Dodik, a slightly more moderate Serb who became prime minister of the Republika Srpska in early 1998 and tried to build cooperation with the international community.

The separatists who ruled in Srebrenica were the political heirs of those who had participated in atrocities against Muslims during the war. Their intention was to prevent the re-establishment of a multi-ethnic community in Srebrenica by any means possible. They were not to be deterred by international sanctions or hand-wringing.

1999 brought hopes of a change. Increasingly alarmed by the economic impact of isolation, Srebrenica’s local Serb officials agreed with elected Muslim representatives to inaugurate the municipal council. Meanwhile, the RS Prime Minister Dodik directed local authorities to replace the Srebrenica police chief, Milisav Gavric. Gavric had been a close subordinate to General Ratko Mladic during the fall of Srebrenica.

This tentative rapprochement then suffered a serious setback in late 1999, when an assassination attempt was carried out against Munib Hasanovic, a Muslim, who was secretary of the municipal council. Hasanovic was beaten, strangled, stabbed, and left for dead in a restroom right in the municipal building. Fortunately he survived, but his attackers were never arrested. Muslim councilmen boycotted sessions again for several months, calling for increased security measures.

The attack was meant to disrupt the functioning of the municipal council and it was clearly orchestrated by those who would stand to lose the most by a change in the ethnic makeup of Srebrenica. As Vesna Mustafic, an activist with the advocacy group Srebrenica 99, told a local paper: “This place is frequented by people who would be in big trouble when the displaced persons return.” (“Povratak,” August-September 1999)

Dragan Jevtic, the Serb deputy chairman of Srebrenica’s municipal council, gave the appearance of being cooperative and some refugee activists even described him as “reasonable.” When speaking with a member of the Advocacy Project in late 1999, Jevtic asserted that the assassination attempt on Hasanovic had been an “aberration.”

But Jevtic had little to say about the arson attacks on returning refugees, which were occurring on a regular basis. “I can completely understand the Srebrenicans in Sarajevo who do not want to return, because the conditions do not exist here for return,” he said. “If I were a Muslim in Sarajevo, I would not return.”


Photo credit: Adzer van der Molen & Erna Rijsdijk
Run-down: Nationalist politicians profited from Srebrenica’s stagnation between 1996 and 2000.

It was hard to tell whether this was an expression of sympathy or a warning against returns. Local human rights activists noted in this period that none of the Serbs in power in Srebrenica, like Jevtic, were from the municipality. Vesna Mustafic said, “Things will be normal in Srebrenica when the Serbs from Srebrenica are in power there. Those Serbs in power now are making problems for the rational ones. Jevtic has made promises. But ask him, what has he done in practice for return?”

One reason why Srebrenica has the slowest rate of return of any municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina is that the local economy was deliberately run into the ground between 1996 and 2000. The nationalists who ran Srebrenica were determined and persistent not simply because they preferred not to live with Muslims, but because they were able to profit from their grip on power.

Before the war, the municipality had one of the highest employment rates in Yugoslavia, profitable lead and zinc mines, and several factories. The hot springs were a major attraction for tourists.

Now the main hotel, Domavia, is half-ruined and used as a collective center. The lead and zinc mines, operating since Roman times, were closed at the end of 2001. The spas around the hot springs have been run down, and none of the factories are working. Few people have jobs.

This means that it is mainly older people with pensions who are returning to Srebrenica. They find that the tap water is not drinkable. (Money has been donated to repair the water system, but apparently this money has disappeared.) The roads range from bad to disastrous. Most villages lack electricity. The telephone system functions, but not well enough to support internet traffic.

It is widely assumed in the region that much of this is deliberate -- and that the government of the Republika Srpska intentionally closed down the mine and kept other state-owned companies in Srebrenica dormant. Ibrahim Hadzic noted that the machinery in the mines has not been maintained. “It is probably so that they can buy the mines cheaply,” he observed. “The local government writes letters that no one answers. Directors are appointed from Banja Luka. Even that portion of income that should return to Srebrenica does not. So the Banja Luka government is doing all it can to impoverish Srebrenica.”


Photo credit: Peter Lippman
Nationalists and profiteers ran down Srebrenica’s economy between 1996 and 2000.

This is consistent with the Bosnia-wide policy of running industry into the ground in preparation for privatization. When they are finally sold off to private owners, the various industries will be so cheap that the politicians and former managers will be able to buy them easily. Meanwhile, most of the factories around here are rotting, and will never be usable again.

The practice has become so blatant that the former UN Human Rights Rapporteur, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, recently commented that in Srebrenica, the word “privatization” means criminalization. 

By 1999, Srebrenica’s former inhabitants were entitled to reclaim their property -- at least in theory. Standardized laws were in place throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they required that people occupying the homes of displaced persons were to be evicted. If their own homes were destroyed, and they could not afford to rent housing, they were to be provided with alternative accommodations.

But these property laws were blocked in Srebrenica, and few Muslim homes were freed up. Where evictions did take place, it was very common for those evicted to strip the apartment in which they had been living, down to the bare walls. Often, doors, windows, electrical fixtures, and even wiring and parquet floors were taken away. This made the repair process that much more expensive at a time when funds for housing reconstruction were in short supply.

It was during this early period of return that a rash of arsons took place. By the fifth anniversary of the massacre, in July 2000, around 15 Muslim homes had been torched. Srebrenica 99 released a statement accusing hard-line Serb politicians of fomenting the violence: “We have information that the local SDS [Serb Democratic Party] leader, Momcilo Cvijetinovic, and the Srebrenica municipal council deputy chairman, Dragan Jevtic, are behind the latest incidents in Srebrenica. It is interesting that after the fires, the reconstruction of the demolished houses is being performed by Cvijetinovic’s and Jevtic’s companies.” (“Oslobodjenje,” July 24, 2000)

When one international official in Srebrenica was asked about four arsons that had taken place during the month of the anniversary, he told The Advocacy Project that one house had been hit by lightning, and that a pattern of arson could not be established by the other three.

While obstruction and violence confronted returning Muslims, Serbs who were sympathetic to their cause were also subject to harassment. The movement to make Srebrenica a peaceful, multi-cultural town was, after all, two-directional; it was promoted not only by Muslims but also by Serbs who were native to the town. Serbs who had any contact with Muslims were labeled “traitors.”


Photo credit: Peter Lippman
Victim of arson: 15 rebuilt houses were torched in the summer of 2000 to deter returning refugees.

They were in an difficult position. As one Muslim activist said, “These people want us to return, but they cannot speak about this publicly in the Republika Srpska. If our friends talk publicly, there can be problems for them.” One Serb was removed from her job in Srebrenica in 1998, for daring to travel to Tuzla to visit Muslim friends.

Early efforts at return were overshadowed by Srebrenica's terrible past. Almost 5,000 corpses of massacred Srebrenicans had been exhumed from mass graves between Srebrenica and the town of Zvornik, and they lay unidentified in Tuzla storage locations. The failure to identify, let alone bury the dead has proved devastating to the survivors or Srebrenica and one of the main reasons for their unwillingness to return.

Organizations of Srebrenican widows were insisting that before they would be willing to return, the remains should be buried and a memorial center established in Potocari -- the Srebrenican suburb where Mladic’s forces had begun separating men out from the fleeing population of Srebrenica. But whenever the subject of the memorial at Potocari came up at a municipal council session, Serb councilors would walk out of the room.

Photo credit: Associated Press

“Serb friends of mine in Srebrenica tell me to be careful,” said Ibrahim Hadzic in late 1999, “and they know. No one has answered for the war crimes yet. So many people were killed, and the criminals are walking free. There are unburied skeletons in the woods around Srebrenica, and the people there know this.”