Bosnia-Herzegovina
Report #3 – Sarajevo, continued By Peter Lippman
July, 2013
2013 Report index
Report 1: Kosovo, mid-July, 2013 Report 2: Sarajevo, July 2013 Report 3: Sarajevo, continued July 2013 Report 4: Tuzla, July 2013 Report 5: Mostar, July 2013 Report 6: Srebrenica, August 2013 Report 7: Srebrenica, continued, August 2013
Report 8: Prijedor and vicinity, August
2013
Report 9: Prijedor and vicinity,
part two, August
2013
Report 10:
Tomašica,
December 2013
To contact Peter
in response to these reports or any of his articles,
It was mid-summer when I arrived in Bosnia. Temperatures were
pushing 35 C. (in the 90s), sometimes up to 40. You had to drink
plenty of water and try to walk in the shade.
And it was Ramadan. This didn't mean so much in some places I
visited, but it meant more in Sarajevo, Srebrenica, and Kozarac.
Fewer people were out and around midday in any case, because of the
heat, and still fewer were out to eat or drink coffee at the kafanas.
Some of these places did not serve alcohol for the duration of the
holy month.
During the hot period it seems that only the people who are doing
their jobs are out there in the blazing sun. Some workers, and
tourists with their maps and cameras.
Iftar, the fast-breaking meal, came at sundown. A cannon goes off at
the exact moment that people are permitted to eat. There's a boom;
birds fly off of their roosts; and then a one-off display of
fireworks.
After Iftar the temperature gets pleasant and the Sarajlije (Sarajevans)
come out in droves on Ferhadija, the pedestrian zone. Sometimes it
gets so crowded you simply can't pass through the crush at your own
tempo.
Not all the crowd is local. Besides the tourists, there are the
dijasporci, the members of the Bosnian-Herzegovinan diaspora who
are coming back from Holland, the US, Germany, Switzerland, Austria,
and many other countries, for a visit. Back to “recharge their
batteries,” to experience nostalgia, to visit relatives, to eat
čevapčići and drink coffee at the kafanas...and to take it easy.
These people spend millions of euros each year and provide a
significant boost to the economy.
From the minarets of different nearby mosques five muezzin sound off
at once, calling to prayer. After the prayer you see people leaving
the mosques, all dressed up. Women in their finest scarves. Others,
who have not gone to prayer, are wearing mini-skirts and other
provocative dress. One man wears a t-shirt that reads, “Sorry about
last night.”
There were a couple of incidents where militantly religious people
harassed women in mini-skirts, saying that they should be ashamed of
themselves for their sacriligious dress during the sacred month.
Officials from the organized Islamic community apologized for these
verbal attacks.
*
I sat and talked to Fata during breakfast – I ate, she fasted. I
told her that a friend of mine had become religious and had grown a
beard, but that he was still the same friend, a very thoughtful,
mild, and intelligent person. Fata said, “I don't like the beards.
That's not Islam. The Wahhabis [militant Islamic activists] have
beards, and they cut people's throats.”
“The Koran says that the greatest value is to be modest,” she
continued. “One should not ask for too much...When they indicted
Bičakčić
[former prime minister of the Federation and a notorious operator,
indicted more than once]
for corruption, he said, 'I am not worried for my livelihood. I know
how to take care of sheep.' And he bought some land for a shepherd,
and gave him some sheep as well. He was honest. He stole, but he
gave some of it away.”
This reminds me of a popular t-shirt that you can see around Bosnia
which reads, “Comrade Tito, come back. Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks
love you. You stole, but you gave us something. These (contemporary
corrupt officials) steal, but they don't give anything.”
Apparently honesty is a relative thing.
The subject of life during the war still comes up. Fata's sister
Amina visited and told me that during the war, she had lived on a
hill in the Mejtaš neighborhood. “There was plenty of bombing there.
Dragan Vikic’s headquarters were there. There were many civilians
who were killed...We smoked a carton of cigarettes every day during
the war.”
VICTORY IN HASAN NUHANOVIĆ'S LAWSUIT
Thursday after I arrived in Sarajevo I spoke on a panel for grad
students in a summer school program organized by CESI, the Center
for Refugee and IDP Studies under the auspices of the University of
Sarajevo Political Science Department. The subject of the panel was
Srebrenica, and I spoke about refugee return to Srebrenica, which
took place mostly from 2000 on, for a few years. I had been there to
witness much of that return.
I spoke about the atmosphere in Srebrenica on the eve of return in
the late 1990s, and quoted some of what I had heard from the first
returnees. I had accompanied Hakija Meholjić and Zulfo Salihović in
2000 when they were leading return to the village of Sućeska up in
the hills, so I described that project. I talked about the
obstruction to return, the torchings of rebuilt houses, the
harassment, and the eventual limited success of return – to the tune
of about three or four thousand Bosniaks, and a similar number of
local Serbs. The establishment of a UN SFOR base on the route to
Srebrenica in 2001 helped gave people faith in their security and
encouraged them to return. Evictions of post-war squatters from
displaced people's houses and apartments helped make return
logistically possible. I also talked a bit about the present, how
there is a generation of young people, positive thinkers, who are
acting together – across ethnic lines – to give new life to
Srebrenica. Life is difficult there, but not impossible. (Click
here for some
of my early writings on return to Srebrenica.)
Hasan Nuhanović was the main speaker at the event. You'll remember
that Hasan
had been interpreter for Dutchbat in Srebrenica during the war, and
as the enclave fell in July 1995, the Dutch allowed his father,
mother, and brother to be taken away. They were killed by Mladić's
forces and their remains were not found for many years. Hasan wrote
a book about Dutchbat in Srebrenica called Under the UN Flag,
which I have recommended before. (For information that I wrote on
this case and Hasan's book in 2008, read
this.)
Over
the years Hasan has fought steadily for justice for the Srebrenica
survivors. Some ten years ago he filed a lawsuit, together with the
family of Rizo Mustafić (a Srebrenican who had worked as an
electrician for Dutchbat), against the Netherlands for that state’s
responsibility in the deaths of Mustafić and Hasan’s family.
Mustafić and Hasan’s father had been engaged by Dutchbat and
Dutchbat expelled the two of them from the Dutch base, together with
Hasan’s brother, as Serb forces were separating Bosniak men from
their families and taking them away to be killed.
Hasan argued that since the Netherlands had significant control over
the actions of Dutchbat in Srebrenica – even though that battalion
was under the command of the United Nations – the state was
responsible for Mustafić and his family being wrongfully excluded
from protection by Dutchbat as the enclave fell.
Hasan filed the lawsuit in the Dutch district court. In response,
the Dutch claimed “lack of jurisdiction” over the case and the court
rejected it. Hasan appealed and the appeal was approved in the high
court. The case was returned to the district court.
In 2008 the court decided that the Netherlands was not responsible
for the deaths. But Hasan appealed again and won the case in 2011.
The Netherlands was deemed responsible for the deaths of his father
and brother, but not his mother. The Dutch state then filed an
appeal with the Supreme Court, and the judgment was to be handed
down in September.
Here’s a very brief outline of Hasan’s presentation, given somewhat
more than a month before the case was to be settled. He noted that
at the beginning of the war, around 100,000 Bosniaks were trapped in
Podrinje, the eastern part of Bosnia along the Drina River. These
were people from Vlasenica, Žepa, Srebrenica, Zvornik, and other
towns and villages. Many of them fled to the Srebrenica enclave as
Serb forces consolidated their hold on ever more territory in the
region in just the first few months of the war.
The UN formed the “safe area” enclave in Srebrenica in early 1993,
and Hasan says that the “genocide was frozen” at that time. The
first UNPROFOR battalion in the Srebrenica enclave was Canadian,
with a couple hundred soldiers. The second and third battalions were
Dutch, with about 600 soldiers.
When the enclave fell, around twelve to fifteen thousand people,
mostly men and some boys, marched out on the escape route, and
around 25,000 went to Potočari to look for safety at the Dutchbat
base. Ultimately at least eight thousand people were killed,
including more than five hundred boys under 18, and seventy or
eighty women, including Hasan’s mother.
Hasan exhibited documents from the international community that
revealed communications among officials of the UN, e.g., from
Yasushi Akashi to Kofi Annan (at the time both were UN diplomats
concerned with the Yugoslav wars), and another internal one when
Srebrenica was falling. The documents expressed concern about the
“PR dilemma” resulting from the impending fall of the enclave.
Discussing the lawsuit, Hasan noted that the Dutch court found The
Netherlands responsible for the deaths of his father and brother,
but not his mother, because “Dutchbat should have known that the men
were in danger of being killed, but they couldn’t have known that
the women were in danger.” They excluded the women because Hasan had
not been able to make a case that there was demonstrable knowledge
that women would be killed, while it was “clear that the men would
be killed.” “The Dutch did everything they could to narrow the
case,” Hasan said, “but there was indisputable evidence of the
danger to the men; Dutch soldiers had witnessed men being killed
near their base.”
On the upcoming decision, Hasan said that if he won the case in the
Supreme Court, the Dutch would not be able to appeal. If he lost, he
could appeal to the EU court of human rights at Strasbourg. “
One of the students asked Hasan what he thought about the
possibility for reconciliation between Serbs and Bosniaks in Bosnia,
and between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. Relevant to this, a
couple of months earlier Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić
had rhetorically
“gotten down on his knees” and apologized for the Srebrenica
massacre. Hasan commented, “It’s one thing to say you’re sorry, and
I accept Nikolić’s
apology, but so what? Serbia should send a thousand Serbs to rebuild
Bosniak houses in Bosnia, and they should pay for the
reconstruction.”
After the panel discussion,
Hasan invited me to come to Iftar with him. We drove out to the
Sarajevo suburb Vogošća, where many displaced people from Podrinje
live, to a big hall where a public Iftar was taking place. It was a
catered event with a couple hundred people sitting at tables. A
large SDA flag was mounted on the wall. The food was very good. We
sat with two young women whose families had been displaced from
Bratunac.
Hasan and I expected political speeches from SDA functionaries, but
there were none. After the eating, the event was over. We drove back
into town, talking about religion, the names of God, pi, and natural
mysteries such as the Fibonacci numbers and the big bang theory.
*
The
Dutch Supreme Court decision in the
Nuhanović and Mustafić lawsuit came down on September 6th. To the
joy of the Srebrenica survivors, the Court found in favor of the
plaintiffs, determining that the Dutch state was indeed responsible
for the deaths of their family members whom Dutchbat had failed to
protect, and dismissing the Dutch appeal of the earlier decision to
the same effect. The Supreme Court agreed that the Dutch state had
“effective control”
over Dutchbat.
An earlier lawsuit by survivors against the United Nations over the
genocide had been dismissed some years ago on the grounds that the
UN has immunity for its actions. The recent verdict makes it more
difficult for any international actor to “hide behind the UN,” as
one analyst commented.
After the verdict, Hasan expressed the hope that it would prevent
similar acts of negligence in the future, in peace missions around
the world. Other commentators have suggested that the decision, and
the liability that it implies, may make states more hesitant to
participate in such missions.
KARADŽIĆ
AND GENOCIDE
Just a couple of weeks before I arrived in Bosnia, the eighteenth
anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre had passed, on July 11th. On
that date, as is customary every year, a funeral was held at the
memorial cemetery at Potočari. This time, the remains of 409
identified victims, exhumed from mass graves, were reburied. The
oldest was a man born in 1919. The youngest was born at Potočari
after the fall of Srebrenica, to Hava Muhić, who had come to the
Dutchbat base along with thousands of other refugees. The baby
needed medical attention that was not available in the chaos. She
died and was buried by Dutch soldiers in a small collective grave
near the base, only to be found and exhumed this year.
This burial brought the number of reburied victims up over 6,150,
with more than 2,000 still missing. This number of missing includes
remains that have been exhumed but not yet identified. (The number
of burials is different from the number of identified remains, as
there are cases where only part of a body has been recovered, and
the family has the option of waiting for more to be found. At
present identifications are up around 7,000.)
There have been important legal developments in cases pertaining to
Srebrenica and other war crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina over
the years, including some things that happened just since the
beginning of this year. First of all, there have been numerous
convictions for the crimes in Srebrenica, starting with the
conviction of the minor participant Dražen Erdemović in 1996.
General Radislav Krstić was the first person sentenced for genocide
in the Srebrenica case, in 2001, and there was the case of Popović
et al, which resulted in the 2010 conviction of Vujadin Popović and
Ljubiša Beara for genocide at Srebrenica.
Currently the biggest cases on trial at The Hague are those of
Radovan Karadžić, former president of the Republika Srpska, and
Ratko Mladić, former commander of the Army of the Republika Srpska.
Karadžić's trial, underway since 2009, is in the defense phase,
while Mladić's, underway since 2012, is still in the prosecution
phase.
Both men are charged with genocide – not only in Srebrenica, but
also in other parts of Bosnia. This is a critical fact, because so
far, the only convictions for genocide have been in the cases
related to Srebrenica, and it is arguable that genocide was carried
out in other parts of the country.
I find it worthwhile to remind myself periodically of the content of
the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, which I'll excerpt here:
[Genocide is defined as] any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This is not a complicated definition. The element that complicates
the judicial process and makes it difficult to determine guilt for
genocide is that one word, “intent.”
The political and military figures who planned the mass killing in
many parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, from Milosevic on down, covered
their trail pretty well. It is one thing intuitively to “know” that
genocide was committed, and another to see that proven in court –
and we are concerned with court proceedings here, as they establish
a public record of personal responsibility for the crimes.
I can’t go deeply into the discussion of genocide and its
problematic treatment in the courts, but genocide is a matter of
great confusion. On one hand, it is difficult for many people to
think of the issue in clear legal terms. Rather, to some it simply
means “the worst thing that can happen,” and justice is best served
by finding the perpetrators of a given crime guilty of genocide. But
courts don’t work that way. I have the impression that the courts
are still struggling to find the way to treat genocide themselves,
with varying and unsettling results – more about this below. (For
more on this subject, see “Analysis:
Defining Genocide,” August 27, 2010.)
In the court cases before the International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, it is customary to have a
special session between the prosecutorial phase and the defense
phase. During that session, under “Rule 98 bis,” evidence presented
so far is assessed to determine whether the prosecutor’s case is
strong enough to continue to pursue all charges leveled. It is
possible for some or all charges to be dropped if the defense can
argue successfully that they do not amount to a strong case – or for
all charges to be retained. The former is equivalent to an
acquittal, but the latter is not a conviction, merely a decision
that a creditable case exists that should be pursued.
Radovan
Karadžić was charged with two counts of participation in a joint
criminal enterprise to commit genocide: one in Srebrenica, and the
other in the seven additional municipalities of Bratunac, Foča,
Ključ,
Prijedor, Sanski Most, Vlasenica and Zvornik. He was also
charged
with nine more counts including persecution (in 24 municipalities),
extermination, murder, deportation, and other crimes against
humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war.
In June of 2012,
Karadžić applied under Rule
98 bis for acquittal of all of the charges against him. His request
was denied except in the case of the broader genocide charge, for
which he was acquitted. The ICTY found that there was “no evidence,
even taken at its highest, which could be capable of supporting a
conviction for genocide in the municipalities as charged.” Survivors
of war crimes that took place all around Bosnia-Herzegovina, and
their supporters in the search for justice, were incredulous. The
decision seemed to say that the findings of genocide in Srebrenica
were going to have to satisfy the survivors and their supporters –
and that “the world is tired of dealing with justice in Bosnia.” It
engendered a very bitter feeling among those who cared about Bosnia.
However, on the very day of the reburial at Potočari and the
anniversary of the massacre, a year after the acquittal, an appeals
chamber reversed the decision. Now
Karadžić will, in fact, be tried on the charges of genocide at the
other locations around Bosnia. Human rights activists in Bosnia were
encouraged by the reversal, not the least those in the Prijedor
area, the location of several notorious concentration camps.
Poster in Sarajevo announcing July 1 demonstration and calling for
the dismissal of public officials.
PROBLEMS WITH THE ICTY
The wrenching back-and-forth decision in the Karadžić case is just
the tip of the iceberg in a series of decisions that has left people
wondering what to expect from the ICTY, and finding it difficult to
believe that that court is a place of consistency, let alone
justice. I'm referring to several acquittals that have, over the
past year, astonished observers.
First, in November 2012 the ICTY acquitted
Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač of conspiracy to
commit murder and persecution in forcibly removing Serbs from the
Croatian Krajina. The two had been convicted in 2011, but an appeals
chamber under presiding judge Theodore Meron found that there had
been no conspiracy. This left thousands of Serbs who had been driven
out of the northwestern Croatian region in shock, wondering who
could have possibly been more responsible for their expulsion than
the two generals, and whether there was any remaining possibility
for justice. Some reasonable people have explained that there were
appropriate reasons of law for the acquittal, but I will not go into
that much depth about this case here.
In another case, former Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav Army Momčilo
Perišić was put on trial in 2008 for war crimes related to the siege
of Sarajevo and the shelling of Zagreb. Perišić was the highest
Yugoslav military figure to be tried at the ICTY. He was described
as a “key figure in the murky relationship between Yugoslavia proper
and its armed forces and the Bosnian Serbs, whom Yugoslavia
furnished with arms, funds, men and materiel.” He was charged with
war crimes and crimes against humanity for acts committed by
officers under his command. Those acts included murder,
extermination, and persecution of civilians, notably including the
siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacres.
In November of 2011 Perišić was convicted of aiding and abetting
crimes against civilians, and sentenced to 27 years in prison. It
was the first time that the ICTY had pronounced a Serbian state
official guilty for crimes committed in Bosnia, and it was also a
significant verdict because it pointed to complicity on the part of
Serbia in the Bosnian war – something that had not been achieved in
the Milošević case, due to his death during that trial.
The Perišić verdict was reversed in February of this year, however.
A five-judge appeals chamber found that evidence did not prove
“beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Perišić specifically directed
assistance towards crimes committed by the Army of the Republika
Srpska (VRS) in Sarajevo and Srebrenica.”
Here the controversial concept of “specific direction” was
introduced into the legal proceedings, basically raising the
standards for conviction on the basis of command responsibility to
an impossible level. In this case, judges found that there was “no
evidence that the logistic, material, personnel and other aid
Perisić provided to the Serb armies in Bosnia and Croatia as the
Chief of the VJ General Staff was 'specifically directed' at the
commission of crimes.” Judge Meron stated that Perišić’s assistance
to Bosnian Serb forces was “remote to the relevant crimes,” and that
he had not seen any evidence that Perišić was on the scene when any
of the crimes were committed.
So even though the Serbian state basically made it materially and
logistically possible for the Bosnian Serb army to carry out
genocide, and arguably participated in that act, no one from Serbia
could be convicted of that participation.
Families of those killed at Srebrenica, and other survivors, were
stunned by the verdict. Analysts said that one possible result of
this acquittal, should it become a trend, is that the entire concept
of command responsibility could vanish. Another strong implication
of the decision is that the Republika Srpska army, responsible for
the ethnic cleansing, murder, and concentration camps, was a
legitimate army fighting a legitimate war.
Analysts criticized the ICTY at this point for lack of “consistency
and rigor.” Articles came out questioning the court’s credibility,
with titles such as “Requiem for a Court,” and “Accepting a
Difficult Truth: ICTY Is Not Our Court.”
There was still a pending case in which Serbian state officials were
charged with responsibility for some of the crimes committed in
Bosnia: that of Jovica Stanišić and Franko (Frenki) Simatović. These
two former heads of the Serbian secret service were charged with
participating in a joint criminal enterprise to carry out ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia and Croatia. They had trained, supervised, and
paid paramilitary troops operating in Bosnia. However, in late June
the ICTY acquitted both men of all crimes, even though it recognized
that they had “aided and abetted war crimes.” The verdict stated
that although the two accused were involved in ethnic cleansing
operations, the court could not establish “that the Accused
personally directed the Unit during these operations or that they
had issued orders or instructions to commit the aforementioned
crimes.” Again, the court noted that the suspects’ involvement in
operations “was not specifically directed towards the commission of
the crimes of murder, deportation, forcible transfer, or
persecution” that took place.
With this decision, commentators escalated the cry about the ICTY’s
inconsistency. David Rohde wrote a piece called “Gutting
international justice.” Eric Gordy called the acquittal “completely
irrational.” And war crimes expert Diane Orentlicher said that the
ruling provided “a road map for how to provide indispensable
assistance to mass murderers and still beat the rap.” Taking the
angry reaction to even further, former US Assistant Secretary of the
State John Shattuck wrote an article asserting that “if the ICTY
majority had been sitting at Nuremberg, few, if any, Nazi leaders
would have been convicted.”
Survivors of the Srebrenica massacres, along with many others,
called for the removal of Judge Meron. Meron was an Israeli diplomat
before immigrating to the United States in 1977, where he became a
professor of law. This background was raised as pertinent when
Danish ICTY judge Frederick Harhoff sent a letter to his colleagues
criticizing Meron’s behavior and insinuating that he was under
political pressure from the United States to exonerate high
officials who may have had some wartime dealings with the US. The
private letter soon created a furor when it was leaked to the Danish
press.
Thus in mid-summer of 2013, tens of thousands of survivors, widows,
and displaced persons around Bosnia-Herzegovina and beyond were left
with the sense that their hopes for justice through the proceedings
of the ICTY were futile. Even if, as I quoted Sanja Pesek in my last
report as saying, people expect too much from the court, still, the
problem here was not only that the ICTY does not concern itself
overmuch with the feelings of the victims. It is also that in the
past year or so it has behaved in an inscrutable, inconsistent
manner and has backtracked astonishingly from the inroads it has
made to justice.
In an odd and unsettling post-script to this lingering problem,
Vojislav Šešelj, on trial at The Hague since late 2007 for war
crimes including murder, extermination, persecution, and torture,
threw a wrench in the works of his own trial. In early July he
appealed to Judge Meron to remove Judge Harhoff, a participant in
Šešelj’s trial, because he suspected, based on Harhoff’s statements
in his leaked letter, that the judge was biased against Serbs. In
late August an ICTY appeals council duly removed Harhoff, throwing
the trial into chaos. At present the ICTY does not appear to know
what to do about Šešelj, who has been sitting in jail since he
turned himself in back in 2003. There may be a reversal of the
decision about Harhoff – or a new judge could be appointed to
replace Harhoff, which would very significantly set back an already
overlong trial. At present the pending October 30 verdict in the
case has been cancelled. There could even be a cancellation of the
case entirely.
DENIAL GOES ON AND ON
The defense phase of the Karadžić trial has provided an accumulation
of arrogant and fanciful atrocity denial on the part of the
defendent and his witnesses. Here are a few examples:
--“Military
expert” Dragomir Keserović
asserted that Bosnian Serb forces did not carry out the ethnic
cleansing in the Prijedor area, saying that “the population mostly
moved out because war broke out in Bosnia, there was great
insecurity, and everyone tried to leave and save themselves…” and
that “clashes were initiated by Bosniak actions against the Yugoslav
People's Army.”
--Former member of
Karadžić's party
Savo Ceklić
testified that
Karadžić
never wanted to remove Bosniaks and Croats from Serb territories in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. He quoted
Karadžić as saying, “It
is better to negotiate with Muslims and Croats for a hundred years
than spill even one drop of blood.”
--In the trial of Ratko Mladić,
one of his former generals and a close confidante called him
a “charismatic man, a giant with the heart of a dove” and a “strict
and fair commander” who “protected his subordinates.” He also
testified that he had never heard Mladić
order the killing of civilians.
In this case, the court has also recently been reminded of a
statement by Mladić
in front of the Bosnian Serb Parliament at the beginning of the war,
in response to a presentation of Karadžić's war goals. Mladić
said, “Do
you know what this means? Who will have to implement this goal but
the army? Do you think you can just move people like that, as if
they were a set of keys from one pocket to another? What you are
asking me to do, gentlemen, is called genocide.”
Mladić
indeed warned that genocide was in the offing – and then he went on
to implement Karadžić's goals.
PREBIVALIŠTE AND THE MARCH 1ST COALITION
I was catching up with my friend Alison, who works in Sarajevo. We
discussed the law on residency (prebivalište) that is
currently being proposed before the state-level parliament. This law
would introduce restrictions on the freedom of movement that would
significantly curtail the ability of returnees to register to vote
in the municipalities that they have returned to – and would thus
foil the March 1st Coalition’s campaign to encourage
people to return and cast a pro-Bosnia vote in the 2014 national
elections. (For my previous writings about the March 1st
Coalition, read
this and
this.)
Activists with the Coalition comment that passage of the law would
enable police forces in the Republika Srpska to do legally what they
have been doing illegally since the fall 2012 municipal elections:
to harass, frighten, and judicially persecute activists and ordinary
returnees in the RS. Since those elections, especially in
Srebrenica, local police have been frequenting the homes of people
who have recently registered their return to the municipality, and
demanding proof of return that is not required under existing law.
And in Srebrenica and Foča, people who have registered their return
have had their residency rights cancelled as a result of overzealous
police actions that have clearly had the goal of preventing the
reversal of earlier ethnic cleansing.
Police are not even supposed to be allowed to conduct such home
visits. In Srebrenica they have several times called activists to
the police station for interrogations. The new residence law would
require returnees to be available for police inspection of their
homes anytime up to five years after their return, for proof that
they actually returned. Activists from the March 1st
Coalition consider that this power will be misused by local police,
and that there is a possibility that the residency of as many as
200,000 returnees could be removed from the official evidence – and
from the voting lists – if the law is passed.
Alison told me that the new law would legalize the abuse that
Republika Srpska police are now conducting in some municipalities,
and that this is preparation for the 2014 elections.
I heard several comments in Sarajevo about the work of the March 1st
Coalition. One was that the campaign needs to develop local networks
to support its registration drive, not only throughout
Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also throughout the diaspora. The Coalition
is doing this in the United States – particularly in the east, where
Bosnian immigrant populations are more concentrated.
One obstacle in the Coalition’s campaign is the attitude of many
ostensibly pro-Bosnia politicians in the Federation. Their support
of the campaign is crucial, because it is necessary for the
Federation government to guarantee health coverage and pensions to
people who return from the Federation to the Republika Srpska, in
the event that they suffer discrimination there and are not provided
with these services. Particularly the SDP and the SBB have
vacillated in their support for the campaign, often voicing support
for return and for a pro-Bosnia vote in 2014 – but at the same time,
collaborating with RS President Dodik’s legal maneuvers (as I
described last winter – go
here).
One local activist in Sarajevo, familiar with the work of the
Coalition, had a concern about its work. It is difficult to register
Bosnian immigrants to the United States, some of whom have been here
for twenty years, to exercise their right to vote in Bosnia. The
activist said, “People are perhaps unrealistic in their expectation
that Bosnians will bother to register to vote in the RS. If visitors
to Bosnia from the diaspora only have two weeks to visit, they are
unlikely to spend the necessary time, as much as five days, being
mistreated all over again by Serb authorities in order to register.
If only approximately 37,000 from the diaspora voted in 2012, how
likely is it that a significantly greater number will mobilize to
vote in 2014? People from the diaspora in Europe are more likely to
be engaged in the campaign.”
Break dancer performing in the Ferhadija pedestrian zone of
Sarajevo, July 2013
SPORTS
I've never been much of a sports fan, although in 1979 I was able to
tell you the names of all our basketball players, when the Sonics
won the World Series. Then, everyone in Seattle was a fan.
However, paying attention to Bosnian sports is necessary, because
it's the same as paying attention to politics.
Every couple of years, the Bosnia-Herzegovina national football
(i.e., “soccer”) team competes to go to the World Cup, and almost
makes it. When a game is going on, you don't have to sit out in a
sports kafana to watch it. Wherever you are, you can tell by the
cheers and groans who is winning a goal, and when.
The greatest Bosnian football players in this year's national team
are, during the regular season, playing for teams in countries
abroad that can use them and pay them well. Zvjezdan Misimović, a
German-born Bosnian, played for a German team, a Russian one, and
now a Chinese team. Miralem Pjanić plays for a team in Rome. And
probably the most famous Bosnian player is Edin Džeko, who plays for
Manchester City.
When it comes time to compete for a place in the World Cup, these
guys come back to Bosnia from the four corners of the map and train
under a coach who is generally a former star footballer in his own
right, from the Yugoslav heyday of the sport. In 2008 it was the
colorful “Ćiro” Blažević who led the national team to one of the
best seasons they'd had since the war – but one not quite good
enough to go to South Africa. Since 2009 the coach has been Safet
Sušić “Pape,” remembered from his 1970s-80s career as one of the
finest players in all of Europe.
By the middle of August Bosnia was at the head of its division,
undefeated with nine wins. It lost a “friendly” game with the USA.
At that point it had four games left in the season, and if it won
three of them, it would have the right to compete in next year's
World Cup in Brazil. The next two games were against Slovakia – one
at home (in Zenica) and one away.
A couple of weeks ago Bosnia was defeated by Slovakia in Zenica.
People were depressed but not resigned. Then the away game took
place in Žilina, Slovakia. There was tension in that town, where
shop owners were bracing for an onslaught by Bosnian fans who were
coming up to watch the game. Shops were closed on six of the main
streets. Locals were advised to move their vehicles off the streets
near the stadium in order to prevent damage from unruly sports fans.
The police designated the upcoming match as a “high risk” game.
As it happened, Bosnia won the away match in Slovakia, two to one.
The two points were earned by two of Bosnia's relatively new
players, Ermin Bičakčić and Izet Hajrović. I saw the footage showing
Hajrović, 77 minutes into the game (with 13 minutes left), shooting
the second goal in from 25 meters away, in a lightning shot with no
warning. That alone was enough to yank you out of your seat.
Coach Pape said, “Nothing can stop us on our way to Brazil.” There
remains a home game against Liechtenstein (October 11) and an away
game against Lithuania (October 15).
There was great jubilation and it was impossible not to share in the
celebration. As far as I know, the 7,000 Bosnian fans who traveled
to Slovakia to support their team did not participate in any
hooliganism. On the main streets of Sarajevo people were honking
their horns, playing the Samba through loudspeakers, and carrying
signs that read, “We're going to Brazil.”
You could see clips on YouTube of people celebrating. One
middle-aged man dressed only in sweatpants jumped up and down, fell
on the floor and waved his arms and legs in the air, and then got up
and hugged and kissed the television.
In Mostar there was rioting. Some youths set out from the
Muslim-controlled section and started a fight with police on the
west side.
Meanwhile, political figures who have made it their business to
studiously ignore the Bosnian national team, or even to root for the
other side (unless it's Turkey), were reluctantly drawn into the
enthusiasm. President of the Croat nationalist party Dragan Čović
congratulated the team, saying “Brazil is coming, let's support the
team.” And Željko Kopanja, owner of the pseudo-independent “Nezavisne
Novine” (Independent News) in the pocket of Milorad Dodik,
commented that “more and more citizens of Banja Luka are rooting for
Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
In an internet correspondence, human rights activist Refik Hodžić
wrote jokingly, “Hajrović,
Hajrović, don't you know how much a ticket to Brazil costs, let
alone tickets for the games, and lodgings, and food, and
alcohol...have a heart!”
And in an ironic response to his own complaint, he said, “Finally
there are some 'real problems,' and not all this complaining about
war crimes, the disappeared, mass graves, war trauma, corruption,
fascism, widespread plunder, poverty, impoverished schools and
health services, homophobia, misogyny, violence among the youth, and
other fanciful things...”
In other words, the Bosnians could use a little relief.
Boris Dežulović, the sometimes hilarious, always insightful
columnist from Split, made a parallel between the football game and
Bosnian politics. He noted that Bičakčić and Hajrović were new
players on the scene, and that that's exactly what Bosnia needs in
politics as well.
It's time, he wrote, finally to say thanks “to Izetbegović, Tihić
and Silajdžić, to Dodik, Radmanović, Bevanda, Lagumdžija, Komšić,
Čović i Valentin Inzko, to disband all the Parliaments and the
Presidency and the Council of Ministers and each of the fourteen
governments, to give each of them a gold-plated watch from Taiwan
with an engraved dedication, and to solemnly take away their
passports and to ship them off to sanatoriums and prisons, and call
back the youngsters who have left Bosnia for the whole wide world.
There is still time, at least thirteen minutes...it's time to send
in Bičakčić i Hajrović and the others, to bring in newcomers off the
bench, take the ball and knock in that goal. Without complicating
things, without voting and outvoting, without coalition-making,
integrating, implementing, restructuring, blocking...just taking the
fucking ball and shoot it in, from 25 meters, from the parking lot,
from Peking, anything at least to take this country further away
from the World Cup of the homeless and the infirm...and into the
Finals.”
