"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [2]

Introduction: A War Over Names

The introduction briefly summarizes events in Sarajevo from the breakout of hostilities in April, 1992, to the 1994 post-'Breadline Massacre' ceasefire. Gjelten also briefly explains how he came to know the staff of Oslobodjenje--unable to find the rear entrance to the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo (the front, of course, was under sniper fire) on his first of many visits to Sarajevo, he instead showed up at the apartment of two people he'd been referred to: Ivo and Gordana Knezevic. Ivo is Croat and a professor; Gordana is a Serb and an assistant editor at the popular and respected daily newspaper, which had begun in 1943 as an underground publication of Tito's Partisans. Gjelten stayed with them for eight days his first visit, and on every one of his many return trips he always visited them and their youngest son (the other children had left Sarajevo before it was completely closed).

Gjelten's sketch of the situation in Sarajevo during this period is short. In general, he explains the uniquely multicultural and tolerant nature of pre-war Sarajevo, and how the idea of civic nationalism it represented was a threat to the ethnic nationalism being espoused by the likes of Karadzic and Tudjman. This idea was appealing to many Western observers and supporters, including himself, but the ideal seemed quite tarnished two years later when the city had been changed by two years of struggle, terror, violence, and ethnic tensions. The demographic makeup had become more overwhelmingly Muslim as many non-Muslims had left, many other less cosmopolitan Muslims from the countryside had arrived, and the SDA-led government had become more shrilly "Muslim" in nationalistic identity and even in confessional terms. The city seemed much less democratic and cosmopolitan than many of its admirers had believed it to be.

Gjelten notes that even as these unfortunate changes were becoming apparent, some media observers began to question the dominant narrative about the war, wondering if the majority of Western media coverage had been biased. As Gjelten puts it, "perhaps it was time for those of us who had described the Sarajevo struggle in moral terms to rethink our sympathies."

The Diana Johnstones of the world might feel a little thrill at reading that sentence, but the very next paragraph would quickly disabuse any Bosnian revisionist of the hope that they have another ally. Gjelten insists that in order to understand how the fiercely anti-nationalist Sarajevo he quickly came to admire and care about in 1992 became the predominantly Muslim, somewhat bitter and hostile, and vaguely anti-democratic city of 1994, it is necessary to take a close look at what the experience of ethnic war, nationalist agitation, and the hardships of living in a city under siege. A lot happened to the people of Sarajevo during those two years, and his book uses the experience of the city's heroic daily newspaper, with its proud tradition of democratic and anti-nationalist beliefs, in coping with the stresses of that period as a window to understand what happened to Sarajevo in general.

In the next post, I will begin Chapter One.

"Sarajevo Daily" "by Tom Gjelten [1]

[As is becoming an all-too predictable routine, this blog goes more or less dormant during the Spring and Fall semesters and then I try to get a review or two in during the Winter and Summer breaks. In keeping with this de facto tradition, here is my latest review.]

Tom Gjelten has been a correspondent for National Public Radio since 1982. In 1995, he published a book based on his reporting from Sarajevo entitled Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege. Gjelten chose to present the story of the Sarajevo daily newspaper Oslobodenje as a microcosm of the multiethnic city under nationalist attack. Gjelten's account has been widely praised, and although he is not a Serbo-Croat speaker, many of the principles he worked with were fluent English speakers, and he also had access to translators when interviewing others.

I will begin my review in the next post.

Peter Lippman Bosnia Travel Journal: Entry # 11

Hello friends,


Leaving Bosnia in November, I flew to Skopje, Macedonia. I spent some days there visiting friends and catching up, and then went to Kosovo for another few days. This report is about those visits, and about things I heard and saw in those places. I had not been to Macedonia or Kosovo for six years.

Some of the names in this report have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

MACEDONIA

I arrived at Alexander the Great International Airport on a Tuesday evening. As I was getting off the plane I immediately received a voice-mail message in my cell phone that said, “Welcome to Macedonia, the cradle of civilization.”

The population of Macedonia is around a couple million, with approximately one fourth of that number being Albanian, and most of the rest Christian Slavs. There have long been tensions between the two ethnic populations, with some flare-ups in the past dozen-odd years. Driving home from the airport with my old friend Gzim, I immediately asked if things were peaceful in Macedonia. He said, “Yes, they are, for now.”

That “for now” is significant, because during the year 2012 there were sporadic incidents of violence between Albanians and Macedonians. Churches were torched; five Macedonians were killed in one mysterious incident; Macedonian police shot two Albanians in another. Nothing like a war is threatened, but neither are relations friendly. (For more detail on this situation see “Macedonia: Ghost of Ethnic Conflict Returns,” December 28, 2012:

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonia-ghost-of-ethnic-conflict-returns.)

Arriving home, I chatted with Gzim and his wife Drita. They explained to me that the Macedonian government was currently in the midst of a grandiose reconstruction project in the capital, where they were spending hundreds of millions of euros. The term “facelift” would be an understatement of the extent of this project, called “Skopje 2014.” In a huge way, they said, the project was a form of propaganda for the VMRO, the leading Macedonian nationalist party.

As “transitional” countries go, Macedonia is in a tricky situation. It is a small and poor country that aspires to join NATO and the EU. Right next door is Greece, already a member of those two structures. For reasons that adhere more to populist politics than to rationality, Greece opposes Macedonia’s membership. The reason given is that Macedonia chooses to call itself Macedonia. And because this name is associated with Greek history going all the way back to the fourth century B.C.E., the use of the name by “Slavic usurpers from the north” betrays Macedonia’s “aggressive territorial ambitions upon part of Greece.”

The historical region of Macedonia covered territory that, after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, fell to Greece, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. Yugoslav or Vardar Macedonia became part of post-World War I Yugoslavia, and during the Tito era became one of the six republics of Yugoslavia. After the Yugoslav federation broke up in the early 1990s, the new state named itself the Republic of Macedonia. In 1993 it was accepted into the UN as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM. Greece, when it is not calling Macedonia “Skopje,” insists upon this name being used as the country’s official name. I don’t know of any other country that is primarily referred to by initials containing a reference to another country that no longer exists.

Over the past few years, Macedonia’s nationalist government has promoted an increasingly populist and chauvinist, Slavic Macedonian atmosphere. To some extent this is a standard vote-getting strategy for domestic consumption, but it is also partially a response to Greece’s resistance to the acceptance of Macedonia into the European political and military infrastructure.

In the next few days, walking through various parts of Skopje, I would witness, with some astonishment, what Gzim and Drita were talking about.

*

The next morning, with eagerness, I walked into the old section of Skopje, to the northeast of the Vardar River. The Bit Pazar and the old Čaršija are located there. Coming into the neighborhood from the east, first I entered the Bit Pazar – literally, the “flea market.” There’s a covered section where mainly produce is sold, and then there are stalls purveying all kinds of other items. In the covered section, just to give a sample, I saw a vast area selling only red bell peppers. Seeing so many red bell peppers all together made me happy because it represented a culinary priority in that culture – so superior, in that way, to our cuisine.

Likewise, there were huge piles of leeks, cabbages, tomatoes, and onions. There were large bins displaying various kinds of rice, and in the next stall, beautiful big red bags of paprika and cayenne that would take most of us in the US years to consume. Nearby were great chunks of white cheese, and another stall with large bins of several different kinds and colors of olives. One man in a corner stall was selling plastic bags. The aroma, not really describable here, seemed to beckon anyone who was interested in preparing to make a typical southern Balkan meal.

The outside part of the Bit Pazar contained the products that we know from a department store, but each in its own stall. So you could buy shoes, razors, radios, bars of soap, packs of cigarettes, music CDs, t-shirts, hair curlers, fireworks, and so on and on, each from a different stall in the same area. One stall, a riot of red and black, sold patriotic Albanian t-shirts and flags. The Bit Pazar and Čaršija are dominated by Albanians, and the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Albanian state was approaching.

Whenever I have been in the Bit Pazar I have noticed the music – Macedonian, Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Turkish, playing in the stalls. I have felt that I am somehow in the geographic, or at least ethnographic center of the Balkans. I could see living there for a spell.

From the Bit Pazar I wandered into to the old Čaršija, or market area, and this feeling was only reinforced. I spoke Serbo-Croatian with the Albanians and Macedonians. I apologized to one shopkeeper for not knowing Albanian, only to learn that he was a local Turk. Many shopkeepers in the neighborhood, young and old, are prepared to sell things in five or six different languages, and to switch from one to another on the slightest hint that might be called for.

The streets were lively, although there were no tourists. At the very entrance to the Čaršija there was a man sitting on a stool, getting ready to play the ҫifteli, a traditional Albanian long-necked, two-stringed instrument. He was a middle-aged man, serious, wearing a traditional plis, a white felt cap shaped like half of an egg. There was a container for coins in front of him and, nearby, a glass of tea. I made a donation and he allowed me to photograph him. We talked, he told me that his name was Nevaip.

The Čaršija is arranged of several straight pedestrian streets paved with smooth-worn stones; as you walk down those streets you pass an ancient stone mosque here and there, or some other stone building constructed in the Ottoman period. There is an entire block of stores selling fancy wedding dresses, and another street of jewelry stores. One shop catered to women who covered their hair in a fashionable way. A back street is home to blacksmiths and metal workers. There, you could buy shovel heads, axes, pails, and home-made tin woodstoves. A man worked at a grinder, sharpening a scythe blade, outside his shop.

Every block was also home to a couple of casual restaurants where you could eat stew or grilled meat; there were also tea and coffee shops where men hung out. If the weather was dry you could see a couple of older men in black berets sitting at a table outside.

An oddity in the Balkans: I saw a storefront with the brightly-colored logo, “LGBT,” and the simple title, “Support Centre.” You would not see that in Bosnia or Serbia. Other than this detail, it seems that in the Bit Pazar and the Čaršija things have not changed, perhaps, since the 1950s.

There is little development of infrastructure in Skopje’s Albanian section. Skopje’s ethnic populations used to be much more mixed, with Albanians and Macedonians living in the same neighborhoods. But in the last fifteen-odd years, the two communities have been separating. Macedonians have been moving south of the Vardar. Albanians have been buying property in the neighborhoods of Ҫair and Butel, where Macedonians have moved out, leaving their old houses. The Albanians tear down those houses and put up new ones.

There is another Albanian neighborhood nearer to the river and the center of town, in a more convenient location. It has more of a run-down aspect, because the municipal government has not allowed people there to receive permits to build or improve their property. So everything is worn and decrepit there. “They want us to leave,” says Gzim.

Now the Albanian and Macedonian students go to separate schools. They used to go to the same schools, but took separate classes because of the language.

Gzim tells me that some Albanians in Macedonia are attaching to a conservative brand of Islam. He says that this is more of a trend in Macedonia, but not in Albania. He calls adherents to this conservative religion the “Taliban” of Macedonia, and says that their numbers are growing. They are sending their girls to elementary school wearing scarves.

*

I walked to the western end of the Čaršija and approached the ancient Kameni Most, the stone bridge over the Vardar. As I arrived, I saw that huge changes had taken place. First, a statue to Philip II of Macedonia was under construction, the finishing touches being implemented behind a rusty corrugated steel barrier. Then, just before the bridge, on one side of the entrance there was a statue of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and on the other side, a statue of Saints Naum and Kliment. These saints are ninth-century Christian missionaries. The former were Greeks from Thessaloniki, and the latter two were local Slavs. Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, lived nearly a millennium before the Slavs arrived in Macedonia.

To the left of the bridge, still on the same side of the river as the Čaršija, was an imposing, baroque-style Museum of Archeology. To the right of the bridge on the same side of the river were a couple more new, grand buildings. One housed the Ministry of the Interior. In front of one of these buildings there was a monument to Karposh, who mounted a rebellion against the Ottomans in the 17th century. Defeated, he was executed on the Kameni Most.

I felt slightly dizzy as I saw the lovely bridge surrounded by extravagant architecture that rendered the whole scene nearly unrecognizable.

I walked across the familiar old bridge, passing a couple of people selling CDs and cigarettes. I arrived at the grand plaza on the bigger, newer side of Skopje. I found it dotted with one statue after another. The Emperor Justinian was there, establishing (pre-Slavic) Macedonia’s early Byzantine credentials. Czar Samuel, 11th century conqueror of most of the Balkans, was there. Statues of the rebels Damjan Gruev and Goce Delčev cemented Macedonia’s hajduk, anti-Ottoman history.

Alexander himself reigned over the plaza on a horse rampant, and I have not mentioned another dozen-odd statues. I wouldn’t be surprised if Washington DC had fewer statues than this 2500 square meter plaza and an adjacent park. A replica of the Arc d’Triomphe stood off to the side, looking like an afterthought. Altogether, the ensemble of statues reminded me of an antique store filled with kitsch.

Compounding the tackiness of the scene, a large, permanent digital advertisement screen, which must have been some thirty feet long and twenty feet high, was mounted to one of the buildings. It prominently advertised local travel agencies and high-tech outlets.

Albanians, at least one quarter of Macedonia’s population, don’t exist in this idealized portrayal of Macedonian history and society. The only Albanian represented there was Mother Teresa, but her ethnicity was not mentioned.

In the glorious pantheon of Macedonian history, stretching twice the length of the Slavic presence on this territory, the timeline apparently ends right around 1940. The only mention of the Partisan era was to insinuate that Tito’s regime was an oppressor of the identity of the Macedonians. Other than that, the Tito era never happened. And the VMRO, Macedonia’s reconstituted, ruling nationalist party, is glorified as practically the founder of the nation.

A block away from this main commercial square stood a large park with more statues: the anti-Ottoman rebel Pitu Guli, the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, and an expansive monument to the VMRO, the resurrected Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. This party, dominating Macedonian politics today, named itself after the anti-Ottoman rebel movement that was founded in the late 19th century.

This leading political clique of Slavic Macedonia thus completes its credentials, ranging from ancient times to pre-World War II, constructing a national mythology that excludes Albanians and Partisans, and ignores Macedonia’s intertwined history with Bulgaria as well. In tying part of its identity to Alexander the Great, Macedonia’s profligate government spites Greece while simultaneously shooting itself in the foot by spending half a billion Euros on ridiculous construction, money that could be going to schools and factories.

Gzim tells me that there was less corruption in Macedonia during the socialist period than there is now – that now the government will, for example, announce that a statue or some construction project is going to cost ten million Euros, when the real cost would be five million. Then that extra five would go partially for kickbacks, and the rest directly into the pockets of the politicians. As in Bosnia and Serbia, the link between nationalism and corruption is a firm one.

For an extensive and very informative article on government support of culture in Macedonia, see “Macedonian Culture Strategy: Milestone or Wish List?” from November 15th, 2012, at:

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonian-culture-strategy-milestone-or-wish-list.

This article mentions that seventy percent of Macedonia’s cultural monuments are in “critical condition,” with some “practically decomposing.” The medieval frescoes in Macedonia’s churches are a world treasure. There, just for one example, is a place where Macedonia could better spend its scarce funds.

Additionally, an excellent article that just came out explains the politics behind the above-described project in very clear terms. It describes the political system as being “held hostage to the egos of a few leaders who consider the country their property,” those leaders being “clusters of influential people, often well planted on both sides of the thin line that separates legality from crime.” The “clientelist” networks dominated by profiteer-politicians are distinguished not by any particular ideology or state-building agenda, but by their lust for riches and power. This applies to the political infrastructures dominating both the Macedonian and the Albanian sides.

The article describes the crafting of a national narrative that I have introduced above, commenting that the massive construction project on the Macedonian side is too expensive to undertake in a recession period. This can lead to further unrest. But, the article concludes, “When the political fight is left to warlords, it is not surprising that there is no respect for laws or civil liberties. Rules are made for those who are under them, not for the rulers.”

See “Patronage Politics Push Macedonia to a Precipice,” December 28th, 2012: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/patronage-politics-push-macedonia-to-a-precipice.

KOSOVO

I took an early bus from Skopje across the border to Kosovo, less than an hour away. Going into Kosovo, the scenery for the first half hour or so was unremarkable, not changed much since my previous visits. There were some dilapidated shacks and offices near the border in Blace, projecting the air of a neglected outpost. Soon afterwards the road, bordering on a canyon, entered a pleasant, undeveloped mountainous area.

About a half hour before the capital, Prishtina, there were signs of a kind of parasitical development that promises nothing productive. Boxy, glassy buildings with cheap metal siding lined the road, offering construction materials, new cars, and furniture. Here and there stood a gleaming hotel.

The scene read “foreign assistance” mixed with “remittance from the diaspora.” Later I was told that many Kosovar Albanians in the diaspora were building houses in Kosovo, leaving them empty, and coming back once a year to visit.

I remember that last time I was in Kosovo, in 2006, the country was discussing a declaration of independence. This declaration finally took place two years later, in February of 2008, and to date nearly one hundred states have recognized Kosovo (the most recent recognition coming from Pakistan, just last week). Of the EU members, 22 out of 27 states recognize Kosovo. Significantly, Serbia and Russia have not recognized Kosovo, and probably never will, or not for a long time.

There was euphoria on the streets in Kosovo when independence and statehood were proclaimed. But during my last visit I spoke with one man who said to me, “I don’t care about independence; I just want a job. Now, our economy is so poor that the only thing we are really exporting is money [for imported goods].” I would add that another significant export from Kosovo is people.

In Prishtina, I spoke with my friend Loran, the nephew of Gzim. He brought me up to date on political developments in Kosovo. Loran and all his relatives, many cousins, some uncles and aunts too, were all subject to the occupation and attacks by Serb forces in the late 1990s. Most of them were temporarily displaced; it’s fortunate and rather remarkable that they all survived that period, though not all of their properties were found intact after the war.

I spent some time in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 during that turbulent period, and wrote about it: see http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/kosovo98.htm from 1998; http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/kos99-1.htm from 1999, and various other reports whose links you can find if you scroll down towards the bottom of this page: http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/journal.htm.

When NATO was intervening and bombing many parts of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, around 800,000 Albanians fled Kosovo for Montenegro and Macedonia, in response to heightened persecution from Serb forces. Those forces destroyed several hundred villages and killed thousands of Albanians.

Loran told me something I had not heard before about that period. The NATO intervention started in late March of 1999, and mistreatment of Albanians, which had been going on all along, immediately increased in a premeditated bid to rid Kosovo of its majority Albanian population. But, Loran told me, the expulsions stopped in May of that year, before the end of the intervention and the defeat of the Serbian forces. At that time, Loran said, “the Serbs stopped killing and expelling Albanians from Kosovo. They started registering us, instead.” Apparently it was deemed acceptable by the Serb authorities to retain a certain disempowered minority of non-Serbs within the province.

Loran also told me that, among the Albanians when he was growing up, “no one really believed that Yugoslavia was going to last for a very long time.” I remember speaking to young people in Kosovo, as long ago as the early 1980s, and hearing resentment of the discrimination and mistreatment they experienced at the hands of the Serbian rulers of their autonomous province. Some of them advocated the creation of Kosovo as a seventh republic within Yugoslavia – but I never heard promotion of Kosovo as an independent country at that time. However, Loran said, “The elders told us that Yugoslavia was not going to last forever.”

Present-day, semi-independent Kosovo has been engaged in state-building, but it faces a raft of problems. The poor, unproductive economy, with little to export, is one of them. Corruption among the leaders is another. Bad relations with neighboring Serbia is a third problem. The relationship between Kosovo’s government and Albanian majority, on one hand, and its minorities – especially its Serb inhabitants, on the other, are a particularly difficult problem. In the south, Serb enclaves are for the most part living in cooperation with the government. But in the north, the Ibar River acts as an unofficial border between the main part of Kosovo and a primarily Serb-inhabited region.

This area has repeatedly been the scene of violence between Serb separatists who refuse to recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo, and Kosovo’s authorities. And the status of northern Kosovo has served as a political issue to be manipulated by the Serbian government in Belgrade.

Because of ongoing instability, NATO has retained a military force, KFOR (Kosovo Force) in Kosovo. Over the years this force has been reduced to the point where it now numbers around 5,500 troops. The UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has created and enforced civil administration procedures. After Kosovo’s declaration of independence, UNMIK reduced its role in favor of EULEX, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo. EULEX deploys several thousand European police and judges in Kosovo, and concerns itself with security and defense policy.

These international institutions have in some degree constituted a protectorate, their intervention in domestic matters compromising Kosovo’s sovereignty. That is why I call Kosovo semi-independent, in addition to the fact that, without Russia’s consent, its prospects for admission into the UN are nil. However, in the past year international supervision was declared to be over. And under international pressure, relations with Serbia are making very tentative steps forward as negotiations have been resumed and an agreement has been reached on bilateral supervision of the tense northern border of Kosovo.

For an overview of Kosovo’s international position, see the recent article, “Kosovo: Year of the Historic Handshake,” December 28, 2012, at http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/kosovo-year-of-the-historic-handshake.

Over the years, the movement for self-determination Vetëvendosje (full name in Albanian: Lëvizja Vetëvendosje!) has played an interesting role as gadfly, a fighter against corruption and against the compromise of Kosovo’s sovereignty both by Serbia and the international officials who they see as giving that sovereignty away. Led by former student activist (and for two years political prisoner in Serbia) Albin Kurti, Vetëvendosje started as a grassroots movement, and a few years ago it transformed into a political party. During its movement years it was often in the headlines for fomenting unruly demonstrations in which projectiles were thrown and people were arrested. Kurti himself seemed to be in jail or under house arrest by the Albanian authorities just about as often as he was free. The organization has also been very creative in its use of graffiti and political theater.

I have mentioned Vetëvendosje because people in Kosovo have strong opinions about it. They either love Vetëvendosje or despise it. In any case, I think that the organization brings up very important issues and it is correct to mistrust Kosovo’s leaders, Serbian leaders, and international officials who they see as too willing to compromise on important issues. For these reasons, I tried to learn what people I met with thought about Vetëvendosje.

Some people call Vetëvendosje “nationalists” or “extremists.” Loran told me, “Vetëvendosje says that they are in favor of uniting with Albania, but they are not serious about it. This is just rhetoric.” Commenting on Vetëvendosje’s indoor-outdoor practices, he said, “It is not ok that they are in Parliament, but still organizing rowdy demonstrations...Vetëvendosje opposes negotiations with Serbia. But negotiations are needed. It shows that we are serious. And the European Commission has taken steps to bring Kosovo closer to the EU, even though our sovereignty is not complete. Maybe this took place because we have been willing to negotiate.”

For more information on Vetëvendosje, see its English language home page at http://www.vetevendosje.org/?cid=2,1.

Loran criticized the leaders of Kosovo for corruption, saying that money that comes into the country “is all going into the pockets of the politicians.” He added, “Most of the development money in Kosovo comes from the diaspora. Some of it comes from money laundering.”

On local administration in Prishtina, Loran said, “The mayor of Prishtina was chosen because he was popular, not because he was capable. He rejected a 30 million euro offer from the European Commission to build a sports complex behind the shopping center, simply because his party would not have control over the property.”

I bought a SIM card for my cell phone so that I could arrange meetings. Unlike in several other countries where I have done so, I was required to register my identity as owner of that phone number. In Bosnia, Croatia, Germany, and England you can walk into any cell phone store or a corner market, or even a kiosk, and purchase a phone number for the equivalent of a few dollars. In Kosovo I had to show my passport and fill out a form that even asked my father’s first name. Loran explained that the government has decided on this measure in order to cut down on crime. I told him, “I guess they don’t like the competition.”

Loran spoke of a lack of hope in Kosovo, saying that more Kosovars are now seeking asylum in Europe. He himself is thinking of leaving Kosovo. It would be hard for him and his wife, he said, but in the long run, it would afford a better life for his children.

*

For a recent article on militant Islam in Kosovo and in Macedonia, see “Fissures in the Faith: Rise of Conservative Islamists Alarms Kosovans,” December 24th, 2012: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/fissures-in-the-faith-rise-of-conservative-islamists-alarms-kosovans

*

I spoke with my old friend Erëblir Kadriu. I met him when I came to Kosovo immediately after the NATO intervention. Then, he was a skinny high school kid, but a very intelligent and helpful one, and already an activist – among other things, a member of the regional PostPessimist Network (see http://www.norad.no/en/tools-and-publications/publications/publication?key=165433). He helped me set up interviews with various activists.

Over twelve years later, Erëblir is the same guy – just not skinny anymore. He spent five years in the United States, finishing his high school and undergraduate studies. Then, he returned to his native Kosovo – a patriotic and optimistic act – and became a teacher. Later he received a master’s degree in psychology and education at Cambridge. He is considering pursuing PhD studies.

You can see that this puts Erëblir in an area of interest very similar to Belma and the staff of Krila Nade in Sarajevo, whom I wrote about in my last report.

Today, Erëblir wears many hats; his list of undertakings is impressive. He works as a guidance counselor at American School of Kosovo; runs the American Advising Center-EducationUSA Center in Kosovo; teaches social psychology and research methods at the University of Prishtina; and does research in educational activities for students. Erëblir also works with an NGO called IPE, International Progressive Education (see www.ipeks.org).

IPE provides information about state building and civil society, and supports research on educational issues. The NGO is involved in research on training teachers in this work. One study that it has implemented asked students about their perception of a good teacher. Another study dealt with teachers' experience in curriculum reforms in Kosovo. IPE also plans to conduct a study on school violence.

Together with colleagues from the American School and IPE, Erëblir organizes an event called the “Kosovar and Regional Student Conference on Social Issues.” Participants are a mixed group of young people including local Albanians, Serbs, and Americans. The most recent conference took place this year in Kosovo, on December 7th and 8th. Young Serbs from North Mitrovica and Serbia attended. Students presented reports on social issues such as economics, education, privatization, gender issues, and religion.

Erëblir told me, “People who attended from different parts of the region became good friends with each other after a few days. On Friday and Saturday the activities were at the school dormitory. People went bowling together.”

Regarding the research that IPE shares with teachers, Erëblir says, “The teachers learn and say, ‘These are great techniques, but we can’t practice them in classes of up to 45 students.’ …There is a disconnect between the theory and the practical. People attend the trainings but then they are blocked because of the large classes, also because of problems with resources. For example, it is difficult even to photocopy something for the students. A class lesson has to go to the school principal for approval. And some school maintenance projects even have to be approved by the municipality. It takes forever, for example, just to fix a broken window.”

Some aspects of Kosovo’s educational system are carryovers from the Yugoslav system of the Tito era. In my report on Krila Nade I mentioned the pedagogues that were present in Sarajevo’s schools. They are present in Kosovo as well, but are becoming less important there. There is a new educational strategy now that involves having a psychologist, a nurse, a doctor, and a social worker in each high school. Erëblir tells me that there is a new framework for the curriculum as well. New courses include health education. But there is a lack of resources for implementing the changes.

Erëblir says, “The official count of students per classroom is around 36. But it is not true. There are as many as 50 students in some classes.”

We talked about broader issues of economics and corruption in Kosovo as well. Erëblir told me that “Kosovo has a high percentage of the population that is under 30 years old, but they are leaving. People are losing hope. Youth unemployment is around 70%, while overall, it’s around 50%.”

“It is a ghetto feeling here. People want to leave. The only places they can go without a visa are Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Turkey. They can’t go to Bosnia without a visa. There is a special document that they can get to go to Bosnia and Greece.”

Regarding the economic situation, Erëblir told me, “Kosovo’s economy has to be focused on agriculture. We produce potatoes, tomatoes, and apples.” Kosovo’s biggest trading partners, both for export and import, are Macedonia, Serbia, Germany, and Turkey. “But the local Kosovar producers are giving up. Our farmers could grow and produce our own vegetables. We are importing tomatoes from Macedonia, and we don’t need to. The farmers can’t compete with these imports, and financial stimulation for domestic agriculture is small to non-existent.”

Along with the poor economy comes corruption – partly a cause, and partly a result. Erëblir mentioned the Hotel Grand as an example, saying that the deputy prime minister of Kosovo was involved in the corrupt privatization of that hotel.

“There was a scandal with the Minister of Internal Affairs,” Erëblir continued. “That Ministry entered a tender for printing Kosovo’s passports. They paid 14 million euros to an Austrian company. There was a woman who transferred ten percent of that tender back to some people from the Ministry. Upon inquiry into this kickback, she said, ‘I will tell the names of the people who engaged in the corruption, but you have to provide me with witness protection.’ EULEX refused to do this. …was it because it would ‘destabilize the government.’” (For more on this scandal, see http://www.vetevendosje.org/index.php?cid=2,2,5369&author=0.)

“Kosovo is a ghetto. There is uncontrolled construction going on here, without any plan. If there were an earthquake, everything would fall down like dominoes. There is corruption, and no enforcement of the laws.

“Then there was a new highway construction project, and the government wouldn’t tell the public how much it cost. Vetëvendosje published the figures, how much the international corporations Bechtel and Enka were being paid.”

I asked Erëblir his opinion on Vetëvendosje. He said, “Now I am closer to Vetëvendosje than I was before. I see that nothing is changing, and we need radical changes. I have given everything a chance, but in some aspects, things got even worse. Some people automatically associate Vetëvendosje with nationalism, but don’t want to take a look at what they are offering. Vetëvendosje wants the right to a referendum on unification with Albania. This is prohibited in our constitution. It is having the right to a referendum that is key. If people are not in favor of it, then they can vote that way. In any case, we are not going to wage a war to reunite with Albania. There has already been enough war.”

Q: Does Vetëvendosje want EULEX to leave?

A: “No, Vetëvendosje says they should stay, but as partners. And we need the foreign judges who are present in our court system to stay as well, but as equals.”

For my final question, I asked Erëblir, “Do you have hope?”

“I’m always hopeful,” he responded. “Remember, I was in the PostPessimists - we were beyond pessimism, but not yet optimistic.”

UPDATES

The Missing:

In my previous report I wrote about search for Bosnia-Herzegovina’s missing persons and Jasmin Odobašić’s work in this field. I mentioned that he had been removed from his position as head of the Sector for Operational, Legal, and Financial Affairs in the Missing Persons Institute in 2010 after having publicly criticized his colleagues. Odobašić appealed his removal. In a recent decision, the Appeals Council of the Bosnian Court found that he should be returned to his position in the Institute, and should be awarded thirty months’ back pay.

Formation of Srebrenica’s Municipal Assembly

In my eighth report, I mentioned with alarm some news about the formation of Srebrenica’s municipal assembly. It had been announced that the SDP and SBB (respectively, the social-democrat party of Zlatko Lagumdžija and the party of Fahrudin Radončić) were planning to form a coalition with the Serb-controlled parties in Srebrenica, thus nullifying the entire effort to elect Ćamil Duraković as a candidate from a coalition of parties that do not deny the fact that genocide took place in Srebrenica. Well, the municipal assembly was finally formed, on the last day of 2012, and no coalition was formed. The several parties involved – both Serb- and Bosniak-dominated – agreed to form a government with no opposition.

This unusual arrangement could mean that “instant coalitions” will form whenever it is convenient; it could also mean that the parties will all cooperate in the best interests of the people of Srebrenica. Time will tell.

Peter Lippman Bosnia Travel Journal: Entry # 10

Hello folks,

Here is my last report concerning my recent experiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but not the last report in this series. After I left Bosnia in mid-November I spent some time in Macedonia and Kosovo, and then visited the Society for Threatened Peoples in Göttingen, Germany. So there will be a couple of reports about those visits as well.

This posting covers a couple of issues that arose just before I left the country about a month ago. I met with Belma Žiga, who works with a foundation that serves marginalized groups. I also share some notes on the search for missing persons. There's a section on the recent arrest of a Belgrade tycoon who has ties to Fahrudin Radončić, Bosnia's new Minister of Security. I end with an introduction of the new campaign, the March 1st Coalition.

WINGS OF HOPE - BOSNIA

I have developed a rather finely-tuned internal meter that detects how effective, useful, and honest the work of a non-governmental organization is. Along with exposure to NGOs comes a certain amount of skepticism, as I've observed that everyone in the "third sector" knows the right things to say to foreigners, and everyone knows how to fill out an application form for support from an international humanitarian agency. These are the ABCs of NGO work - but also of humanitarian profiteering. NGOs are to be found at every point along the spectrum from altruism to exploitation.

Once in a while you find an NGO that is doing exemplary work. I found one almost inadvertently, an organization whose members I visited only because of the irresistible invitation of a friend. But by the time I left the meeting, I was inspired.

The Foundation for aid to victims of war "Krila Nade," or Wings of Hope - Bosnia, has been working to help people in Bosnia-Herzegovina since the war period. Founded by a Dutch organization of the same name, Krila Nade became completely independent in 2004. Since then it has concentrated on service to people in Sarajevo Canton. The organization defines its updated mission as one of "empowerment and social inclusion of vulnerable and marginalized groups, particularly women, youth, and children through the promotion and protection of human rights and mental health and support of education."

I spoke with Belma Žiga, psychologist and staff member of Krila Nade, about what this means.

Ms. Žiga described a "multi-system, interdisciplinary model of social inclusion" implemented by Krila Nade. The organization employs a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and an educational consultant or "pedagogue."  "We work to educate people regarding the role of psychologists and therapists, to reduce the amount of stigma associated with therapy."

Krila Nade is the only center in Sarajevo where one can choose different forms of psychotherapy. Each year, over two hundred clients receive psychotherapy or counseling there.

In addition to providing therapy, Krila Nade implements projects on several fronts including employment assistance, summer school and special school sessions, adult education, and creative workshops. As usual, implementation of projects depends on available funding. One successful program that had to be terminated was the support of a dentist who volunteered to tend to clients' teeth without compensation. Materials were also donated. Through this program over a thousand uninsured children received dental care over a period of three years. Another now-defunct program brought disadvantaged children to the mountains, in wintertime, for lessons in skiing and snowboarding.

The work that most fascinated me involved pilot projects in elementary schools. Ms. Žiga told me that the organization's project of "integration and inclusion," supported by the Soros Open Society Foundation, is called, "Redefining culture, policy, and practice in elementary schools in Sarajevo Canton."

Ms. Žiga repeatedly used the term "inclusion." At first I assumed that this referred to the inclusion of non-Muslim students in the learning process in the predominantly Muslim-populated school system of Sarajevo Canton. I found out that "inclusion" referred to something much more basic.

In previous reports I have mentioned problems with the educational system in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lessons tend to be delivered as packages to be consumed by students without their active participation. "Inclusion" refers to participation, active learning that is necessary for a more effective education. Ms. Žiga explained, "Inclusion is a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, culture, and communities, and reducing exclusion within education and exclusion from education. There is a need to be responsible in the schools for inclusion of all different aspects of diversity; not just children with special needs, but also for gifted children."

I remember from my own school experiences that questioning was at times a risky thing to do; most students accept without resistance the social processing that is the main goal of education. By they time they reach high school, critical thinking is non-existent, or at least heavily suppressed.

In recent decades there has been a widespread fight against this anti-thinking form of education in the West. In Bosnia, Krila Nade is trying to introduce independent thought by way of active learning in some of Sarajevo's schools. The organization is implementing a ten-month pilot program in two elementary schools. The program introduces a method of self-evaluation called "Index for Inclusion," and it provides school psychologists as well. One goal of the pilot program is to assess policy, culture, and practice in those two schools.

Regarding this project, Ms. Žiga explained, "In the schools, students are passive, and there are human resources that are not used. The students are not involved in the educational process; they do not participate actively and cooperatively in the learning process.

"Students at all levels, from age six to 25, are passive. They only try to repeat what they have learned. So this results in a situation where, when they finish school, they have a low level of self-confidence.

"We have hoped to get the Ministry of Education involved and to have them recognize the value of this type of work. But the Ministry of Education, as soon as we mentioned psychologists, they stopped the discussion and said, 'We have pedagogues, don't mention psychologists.' That was the end of this. So we did not ask for permission to have our psychologists in the schools. You have to break the rules."

In Bosnian schools, there are problems that are more striking than the simple, old-fashioned system of rote learning. There is the notorious practice of corruption - especially in the universities - where students are compelled, at times, to buy passing grades with money or sex. I can't help but think that if students were trained to question and to use their critical thinking capacities from an early age, they would not put up with such practices. 

Krila Nade aspires to develop an educational culture in schools, to encourage teachers to use the mental resources available to the students. "It's not so hard," Ms. Žiga said. After describing to me the school projects of her organization, she asked me, "Do you think we are too ambitious?" I said, "You are subversive, and for that, in order to fight the brainwashing, you have to be ambitious."

Q: Do you get a good response from the teachers?
A: "They are tired of seminars about stereotyping and about special needs. They act like they know everything - as if they are from Star Trek. But, for example, they are not prepared to deal with autistic children, or with ADHD.

"We made a survey with a questionnaire and asked what the teachers wanted to learn, what they lacked in their work, and what they felt they had to contribute. But in their responses, they were not interested in a gender workshop nor in active learning. There is a lot of work being done on active learning, but the teachers are not using this knowledge in practice. There needs to be more effort."

I left the Krila Nade office promising to try to help the organization in any way I could.

For more on Wings of Hope, see http://www.wings-of-hope.ba/fondacija/istorija-povijest/?lng=en.


THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING

There's not much in Bosnia-Herzegovina that's more painful for the survivors of the war than not knowing where their missing loved ones are. At the war's end there were some thirty thousand people missing in Bosnia. Finding them has been an excruciatingly slow task, especially in the first few years after the war. At that time, it was dangerous to venture into "enemy" territory and search for mass graves. Those who knew the location of such graves were not talking. And when graves were found and remains were exhumed, there was no scientific way of establishing the identity of the remains until the introduction of DNA matching technology at the end of the last century.

In spite of this, a number of courageous people dedicated their lives to the search for the missing. It is hard for me to imagine spending my days, for years on end, braving the scorching sun or the chilling cold - and sometimes the glare of watchful neighbors - to scrape in the ground for the bones of the missing. Yet people like Amor Mašović, Jasmin Odobašić, and many others have done just that. In performing this work over the past seventeen years, they have brought a measure of comfort, for example, to the widows of Srebrenica, by making possible, so far, the identification of the remains of over six thousand victims of that notorious set of massacres.

Prijedor municipality is another area where several thousand victims went missing, and investigators gradually discovered mass graves there as well. Dozens of mass graves were discovered in that municipality.

Both with the war crimes related to Srebrenica and to Prijedor, the fact of "secondary graves" has made identification of the victims so much the harder. Secondary - and sometimes even tertiary - graves are the result of the excavation of remains from one mass grave and their removal to one or more additional sites in order to conceal the crime. Such an additional crime upon a crime tended to mix up the bones of the victims, so that it has not been unusual for one person's remains to be found in two or even more sites. It has been unusual, in fact, to find a complete set of remains in one place.

In order to make a DNA identification, relatives have to provide blood samples. For the more than 30,000 missing, to date over 90,000 samples have been received from survivors, many of whom have moved to exile in the far corners of the world.

These are some of the factors that complicate the effort to soothe a survivor's anguish by providing her with remains to give a proper burial. For this effort, those who search for the remains deserve praise and admiration.

I spoke with Jasmin Odobašić, former deputy head of the Muslim Commission for Missing Persons. Until 2008, there were three missing persons commissions, one for each of the main ethnicities in Bosnia. In that year the commissions were mothballed in favor of a nationwide Missing Persons Institute. Odobašić became head of a department in that Institute, under the direction of Amor Mašović.

Upon my meeting Odobašić, he immediately showed me some photos of himself, his brother, and his father, black and blue after having been beaten at the police station in their pre-war home town of Prnjavor. Before the war Odobašić was an attorney and the deputy director of a factory in that city. As a member of an elite Muslim family in Prnjavor, Odobašić and his relatives were targeted by the separatists who wanted to intimidate Muslims into leaving. They were not put into a concentration camp, but they were taken to the police station every day, and put to physical labor as a way to humiliate them.

He showed me his photographs and said to me, "This is why I'm searching for the disappeared."

Odobašić was rescued from Prnjavor via prisoner exchange in 1994. Immediately after the war he became engaged in the search for the missing. Since he was from the Krajina, he employed his knowledge of that region and its people to search for mass graves more effectively. Under his leadership, teams of searchers discovered the hidden resting places of over four thousand victims in the northwestern part of Bosnia alone.

Mr. Odobašić spoke to me about the graves he had helped to discover in Prijedor: "We first went to Prijedor illegally, without permission from the local authorities, in 1998. There was the big grave in Stari Kevljani where 456 remains were recovered and of those, 352 were identified. In Jakarina Kosa 373 remains were recovered, of which 296 were identified.

"In Stari Kevljani the graves were six meters down. That site was discovered in 2000, but not exhumed until 2004 because of lack of funding. We were able to identify the specific bulldozer that was used in that grave from the scrape marks, and we determined that there was only one such bulldozer of that type in the municipality.

 "The people who were killed at Omarska concentration camp were taken to Tomašice, which was a primary grave site. Later those remains were moved to the mine at Ljubija, in 1994."

Odobašić has written one book about the exhumation process - published at his own expense - and is compiling another: "My book will be about one thousand graves in the Bosnian Krajina. There were 1,025 graves in the region, and 4139 remains that were recovered. In Prijedor alone there were 1962 remains recovered; of those, 1463 were identified. All these graves that were discovered have been noted with GPS locations.

"There were traces of the remains - sometimes they were not even completely buried. You found a skull with gold teeth. There were pits near Ključ. There was a five-month-old baby and a four-year-old boy. We found documents as well."

I asked Odobašić how the mass graves were found: "I got information from survivors, witnesses, and returnees. There were some Serbs with a conscience. There were other Serbs who would give information in return for a favor. There were others who would get drunk and start bragging in a kafana, and someone would hear the information and convey it. And then there are people who will sell the information."

Odobašić noted that at times, he had received instructions - including from the international community - only to search for the remains of Muslim victims: "From 1996 to 1998 no one allowed me to exhume Serbs and Croats, nor were they [searchers from those ethnicities] allowed to exhume the others. We were not allowed to exhume at Briševo [village in the Prijedor municipality, location of a large massacre of Croats]. But a victim is not an ethnicity; a victim is a victim. Every mother cries the same.

"Then we found nine Croats, and I wrote to the OHR, 'I made a mistake; shall I return the remains?'  In one mass grave I found fifteen Muslims, eight Croats, and one Serb.
I have found around 200 Croats, and I found some Serbs around Mt. Ozren."

Odobašić has become a controversial figure in the realm of the search for the missing. After many years of work, in 2010 he was removed from his job at the Missing Persons Institute when he made some public statements criticizing his colleagues. His accusations have included venality and delay of identifications, among other things. These are, naturally, shocking assertions. Of such behavior, Odobašić says, "It is not unusual to steal from a store, or on the stock exchange. But stealing from the dead - never, that is a sacred question."

I have heard the kind of accusations Odobašić leveled before. My "honesty meter" gave him a strong reading for sincerity. But upon looking into his statements, I realized that I would have to dig much deeper in order to know the whole story.


SERBIAN TYCOON IN SLAMMER - RADONČIĆ AND DODIK NEXT (...or ought to be)

A couple of weeks ago, the man often known as the "richest man in Serbia," Miroslav Mišković, was arrested and jailed on corruption charges. This is interesting on a number of levels; the move has domestic and regional implications, and it certainly pertains to Bosnia.

I wrote about Mišković in 2008, when his economic forays into Bosnia-Herzegovina were being revealed (seehttp://balkanwitness.glypx.com/journal2008-1.htm). Some of the wording that follows comes from that earlier writing, as it is still valid.

This month Mišković, his son Marko, and nine other influential players in the Serbian economy have been charged with criminal activities in connection with the privatization of road-building companies.

The owner of the complex of businesses called "Delta Holding" first became known to the broader public when he served as deputy prime minister of Serbia for a time under Milošević. Mišković served as Milošević's main economic advisor and was, it is alleged, one of Serbia's main wartime financiers. Since Milošević's fall in 2000, Mišković has donated funds to various political parties, including the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). This is the SRS that, led by Vojislav Šešelj (now on trial at The Hague), organized paramilitary formations that rampaged, murdered, burned, and committed rape during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
  
Delta is Serbia's largest private company, and the fourth-largest in the country after several state-run firms. A December 14^th news article read, "Employing about 5,000 people, it operates through 76 different subsidiaries, dealing with farming, food production, retail, export-import, representation of foreign companies, consumer goods, car sales, real estate, financial services, and insurance."

Sometimes called the "true owner of Serbia," Mišković is the owner of four large retail chains in that country, and he has worked tirelessly to expand his empire into the rest of the former Yugoslav republics. To date, Mišković owns property in Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, and Bosnia. He does business in Croatia and Switzerland, and as far away as Russia.

In 2007 Mišković was listed as one of the thousand richest people in the world. He has specialized in buying weak companies and, often as not, turning their prime real estate into shopping centers. In Serbia, Mišković's sway is such that foreign companies that wish to build shopping centers in Belgrade are forced to build them on the periphery of the city, giving Mišković an effective monopoly in the more lucrative areas - where he prices his goods at 20% above the market rate. Mišković is said to control 70% of Belgrade's retail market.

The present charges against Mišković and his business partners hold that they withdrew money and property from privatized companies and, in this way, stole some thirty million euros.

Investigative journalists discovered some of Mišković's crooked dealings several years ago, but his power over the media (through purchasing advertising, among other things) was such that the information was swept under the carpet. One crooked practice involved buying failing companies that were located on very favorably located property in exclusive neighborhoods, without paying for the valuable land, only for the derelict building. Then, instead of reconstructing the factory or other productive company, Mišković would tear it down and build a shopping center or apartment building.

Serbian tax laws have allowed Mišković to buy a state company through one of his off-shore holdings without being required to pay taxes on that acquisition.

Mišković's wealth led to great political influence. He donated to those in power and to the opposition parties as well, thus buying a say in how governments were formed at various levels.

The financial manipulations by Mišković are far more involved than what I have related here. But how and why did he get into trouble? The fact that Mišković was taking advantage of the Serbian economic system in such a crooked way, and costing the state budget so many millions of euros, was something that was bound to get him in trouble as soon as the authorities worked up the resolve to take action. One component of that resolve is that there is a new government in Serbia, headed by the extreme right-wing leader of the ironically-named Serbian Progressive Party Tomislav Nikolić. 

Nikolić's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Aleksandar Vučić, is the head of Serbia's campaign against corruption. It is apparent that as Nikolić's new government has gotten underway, pressure from the European Union has helped to breathe some life into that campaign. What better way to show your sincerity to the club you wish to join than arresting your richest embezzler?

In this, there is a close parallel to the jailing of Croatia's former prime minister, Ivo Sanader. Croatia is set to become a member of the European Union in the middle of 2013. Sanader unexpectedly resigned without explanation from his post in 2009. The next year he was arrested in Austria for high-level corruption charges leveled by the Croatian authorities. Just last month, he was sentenced to ten years in jail.

This looks good to the EU. The question is, when can Bosnia-Herzegovina ingratiate itself with the EU by arresting its most corrupt tycoons?

Just the other day, on December 21, the US Ambassador to Bosnia Patrick Moon came up with a bright idea. Speaking to the Bosnian daily Avaz, he said, and I quote from an internet news posting, ".corruption in Bosnia was visible at all levels and that ordinary people rightfully expected something to be finally done about it. The political leaders must notice that, they must speak against corruption and corruption cannot exist in government, Moon said, adding that corruption should not be prosecuted selectively and that such measures should taken against everyone if there was evidence of it." (Seehttp://dalje.com/en-world/us-ambassador-says-bosnia-can-fight-corruption-like-croatia/453650)

Hallelujah - Patrick Moon has, as they say in Bosnia, discovered hot water!!

There's such a broad field of corrupt tycoons in Bosnia that one could hardly know where to start. How about arresting RS President Milorad Dodik? Such a move would not only remove a very corrupt individual, but would also, perhaps, take some of the wind out of the sails of the Serb separatist movement, of which Dodik is the foremost proponent.

On the same day that it occurred to Ambassador Moon to light a fire under the corrupt operators of Bosnia, Dodik was agitating against corruption in his own entity. The press agency Fena announced that Dodik has commanded the RS special prosecutor to work more effectively in breaking up organized crime and in fighting grave economic corruption. He cited public dissatisfaction with a special prosecutor's progress in anti-corruption work, and criticized that office for intimidating the free press, which he called "absolutely unacceptable."

I don't see why intimidating the free press in the RS should be a problem, since there is none.

Nor have I ever heard of an economic criminal (nor a war criminal, for that matter) arresting himself in the RS, but it appears that things are taking a turn for the better.

President Dodik commented on Mišković's arrest, saying that "every fight against corruption is important," but that Mišković's guilt had yet to be proven. Dodik praised Mišković's investment in the Republika Srpska, and said that "it would be good if Serbia had more investors like Mišković."

Perhaps a better parallel to Mišković than Dodik would be Fahrudin Radončić, a corrupt tycoon who has entered into politics in the last couple of years, and who was just recently appointed to the post of Minister of Security. Radončić is sometimes called "the Mišković of Bosnia."

It's a good parallel - Radončić even has business dealings with Mišković. This relationship goes back to 2007, when the two businessmen formed a company called Prezident Realty, together with an off-shore firm based in Belize named Vanity International Corporation.

The story gets even richer as it is revealed, by Bosnia's top intelligence agency SIPA, that the owner of this off-shore company is Naser Kelmendi who, as I described in my first report in this series, has been blacklisted in a report signed by President Obama as one of Europe's top narco-traffickers. During a political shake-up last summer a raid was conducted on several gangster outfits in Bosnia, and Kelmendi has been on the lam since then, allegedly back in his Kosovo home.

Kelmendi is an old friend and business partner of Radončić, as I have written before. Once Kelmendi imported a couple of reinforced Jeep Cherokees with bullet-proof glass from the US and supplied one of them to Radončić.

Prezident Realty has purchased land in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, and Tuzla. In Sarajevo, Prezident bought a furniture factory called Standard, with the intention of tearing it down and constructing a shopping center.

Here's a timeline that tracks some of Radončić's progress from rags to riches.

--1970s: After finishing trade high school in business in his native Montenegro, Radončić finishes a college degree that qualifies him to be an art instructor.
--1977: Joins the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and remains a member for the next twelve years.
--1978 to 1991: Works as a journalist and editor in the capital city of Montenegro.
--1991: Moves to Sarajevo (carrying his belongings, everyone says, in two plastic bags), founds Avaz publishing house and company for real estate and hotels.
--1993-1995: With financial help from the Bosniak nationalist party SDA, expands his holdings into a media empire including the influential daily newspaper Avaz.
--Mid-2000s: In Sarajevo, with money illicitly granted from the Federation of Bosnia's Development Bank, builds tallest tower in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
--June 1, 2012: Social Democrat Party announces break in Parliamentary coalition with SDA and formation of new coalition with Radončić's SBB (Party for a Better Future).
--June 1, 2012: On the same day, President Obama signs blacklist that names Radončić's friend and business partner as a top drug trafficker in Europe.
-- June 1, 2012: Also on the same day, President of the SDP Zlatko Lagumdžija proposes Radončić for the post of Minister of Security.
--July 2012: Radončić divorces his wife Azra, a hairdresser who had never paid taxes.
-- July 2012: Radončić sells Avaz business complex to his ex-wife Azra for 200 million KM.
--October 7, 2012 (election day): Fahrudin Radončić walks into the voting station holding hands with Azra Radončić.
--Late November, 2012: Radončić is appointed Minister of Security. In a financial disclosure form, he reports his monthly income as 1404 KM. In the same disclosure, which asks if any member of his family owns or manages any private firm, he answers "no."

Other nicknames for Radončić: "The Donald Trump of Bosnia." "The Berlusconi of Bosnia."

So you have a triangle composed of a high-level Montenegrin/Bosnia media/real estate mogul turned politician (Radončić), a high level ("controversial") Serbian businessman (Mišković), and a high-level Kosovo Albanian/Bosnian drug lord gangster (Kelmendi).

One is in jail. One is (safely) on the lam. One is Minister of Security.

Ah, well. I guess it will be "malo sutra"- a colloquialism meaning, roughly, "never," or, "that'll be the day" - before Radončić is arrested. Sadly, Bosnia-Herzegovina's just not that ready to go to Europe.


THE MARCH FIRST COALITION

This posting wraps up my series of reports on justice and activism in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I can't finish the series on Bosnia, however, without telling you about one very interesting development: the March 1^st Coalition. Those who are interested in the fight for justice in Bosnia will want to follow the progress of this important campaign.

On December 18^th, representatives of 27 non-governmental organizations met in Sarajevo and signed an agreement to form the March 1^st Coalition. Many of the leading lights of the human rights movement were there: Edin Ramulić of Izvor (Prijedor); Munira Subašić of the Mothers of Srebrenica organization (Sarajevo); Bakira Hasečić of Women Victims of War, Hajra Ćatić of Women of Srebrenica (Tuzla); and Hatidža Mehmedović of the Association of Srebrenica Mothers (Srebrenica).

The new coalition will campaign to register voters in the locations where they voted before the war - thus the name March 1^st, referring to the last time that people voted before the war, in 1992.

The campaign is reminiscent of the recent registration campaign "'Glasaću za Srebrenicu" (I will vote for Srebrenica), which I described in my third report in this series. Then, activists led by Emir Suljagić registered several thousand displaced Srebrenicans to vote in their home municipality last October. The result was a victory for the independent mayoral candidate Ćamil Duraković, who was unanimously backed by all the political parties that do not deny that genocide took place in Srebrenica. After months of appeals and delays, just this month the Central Election Commission found it within itself to give a final confirmation to the electoral results.

The March 1^st Coalition's tactics will be similar, though much grander in scale. Here, the campaign's goal is not only to elect favorable candidates in the upcoming 2014 general parliamentary elections. The goal is to make it possible for enough officials to be elected in the Republika Srpska and at the state level for there to be a change in the constitution.This is truly an ambitious project that could, theoretically, unblock the political stalemate and end the crisis that has been in force in Bosnian politics ever since the Dayton agreement was signed.

Emir Suljagić, initiator of the new campaign, explained that the primary goal was to elect five favorable representatives to the state-level Parliament from the RS. The presence of this many "pro-Bosnian" officials in the entity and state-level parliaments would make it possible for lawmakers to cooperate in clearing hurdles to membership in the EU. Some of these hurdles involve constitutional change, particularly in response to the 2009 decision by the EU Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. That court found the Bosnian (Dayton) constitution to be in violation of international human rights conventions because it discriminates against minorities. There are rational solutions to this problem, but they have been blocked since the decision was made.

The Coalition must work at several tasks in order to succeed. In violation of Dayton's Annex 7 guaranteeing freedom of movement, there are laws in preparation in the RS to prevent people from registering in the place of their choice. The Coalition will have to fight against these laws. The Coalition will also have to ensure, as was done in Srebrenica, that there is a solid electoral coalition of candidates who are not destroying their chances by competing with each other. At present there are enough sympathetic voters in the RS to guarantee three favorable representatives in the state-level Parliament. Suljagić reckons that an additional 80,000 to 100,000 voters would make the election of two more representatives possible.

Another task is to establish in the Federation Parliament a law that supports returnees to the RS, as was done in the case of Srebrenica in the recent campaign.

The biggest job will be registering voters from the diaspora to participate in this campaign. In the recent municipal elections, out of 1.5 million Bosnians in the diaspora, only some 35,000 voted.

It is hoped that all the political parties in Bosnia that do not deny genocide will participate. This includes the SDP, whose behavior this year has been so unprincipled as to bring its participation into question. This is particularly important as SDP President Lagumdžija holds the post of Foreign Minister, and he could thus have an influential role in promoting the registration campaign abroad. I would not personally bank on his cooperation; however, on December 13^th the SDP publicly announced that the party would support the campaign.

RS President Dodik has, naturally, come out in opposition to the campaign, saying, "It is obvious that the atmosphere is being created to repeat what happened in Srebrenica. We will certainly not allow a new campaign."

Suljagić brushed off Dodik's words, saying that "Dodik is not in a position to threaten anybody, let alone the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is only the president of one of two entities in the state of Bosnia, in which there are more hungry than there are satisfied people. If I were in his place, I would take care to preserve the loyalty of his praetorian guard, that is, the Ministry of Internal Affairs [the police], whose pay he recently, once again, reduced by ten percent, because that is the only thing that stands between him and the anger of the people."

Suljagić commented that the presence of the critical number of favorable representatives in the state-level Parliament can lead to the creation of the "foundation of a renewal of Bosnian-Herzegovinan society on the principles of tolerance, truth, justice, equal rights, and the protection of human rights on the whole territory of the state."

These are, of course, admirable goals and the campaign is, in a way, a rare attempt to strike back and the separatists and plunderers who have been tearing the country apart for the last twenty-odd years. One only wishes that the idea had been promoted immediately after the war, but the campaign is worth watching.

For a television screening of the public founding of the campaign (in Bosnian), see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bsuNEnQ6mm8

Late news: A December 25^th news post reported that police officials in Srebrenica were harassing members of the March 1^st Coalition in that city by coming to their homes late in the evening and questioning them about the location of some of their fellow members. One policeman threatened to issue an arrest warrant for members who were not immediately located. A communiqué from the Coalition condemned the police actions as police harassment of non-Serbs and likened atmosphere in the Republika Srpska to apartheid.

Peter Lippman's Bosnia Travel Journal: Entry #9

Hello folks,


Here's another report on things I saw and heard in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This one starts with a discussion of activism in Bosnia, especially in Sarajevo. The second part relates some little-known information about the process of refugee return to Zvornik and Srebrenica, comparing the two. The report winds up with news about recent activity in the Prijedor municipality.

ACTIVISM IN SARAJEVO

What needs to be the target of activism in Bosnia? In my series of reports so far I have particularly focused on the campaign for memorialization of the war crimes that were committed. It is my opinion that for justice to be achieved, the atrocities that people endured have to be recognized; the criminals have to be legally processed; and the victims have to have the possibility of commemorating the history of their suffering publicly.

There will be more discussion of these things. But there are also other targets of activism. The protest against the destruction of Picin Park, as described in my fifth report, in fact opened the door to protest against corruption, profiteering, and cronyism. And these phenomena are what's really behind all the other problems in Bosnia - even behind the historical revisionism and denial as well.

Grassroots activism occupies a small place in the modern history of the country; the dominant model for political change is top-down. Non-governmental organizations, often called the "third sector," tend to replicate this hierarchical model, sometimes in the extreme. While the personality cult of Tito is gone, the rule of one "big man" has often simply been replicated at lower levels - from the local party boss all the way down to the bus driver. NGOs exist along an entire spectrum from the altruistic to the profiteering. For the most part, their relationship to activism is tangential.

Activism in Bosnia-Herzegovina has its ups and downs, and developing a grassroots movement in Bosnia is a matter of reinventing the wheel in very adverse conditions. It is not unusual for an independent project to arise in one location, where it will last a while, and then either cooptation by authorities or lack of skilled leadership will lead to its demise.

I spoke with Darjan, a Sarajevo activist with the organization Akcija Građana (Citizen Action), and formerly with Pokret Dosta (the Enough! movement), which I have described before. Darjan mentioned the height of grassroots activism in Sarajevo, which took place in February of 2008. At that time, somewhere between six and ten thousand people came out to participate in a march in protest of an epidemic of street violence in the city. Not long before, 17-year-old Denis Mrnjavac had been stabbed to death by unknown attackers while he was traveling in a streetcar. There were many other such lethal or dangerous incidents that had taken place in that period. Pokret Dosta was the leader of this protest, along with several other protests in the year or so before and after that event (See http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/journal2008-2.htm).

As with the activism around Picin Park in Banja Luka, protests about the street violence were an entrance into protests about other grievances such as utilities price hikes and, generally, about corruption. Dosta built a network in several cities around the country. Unfortunately, the movement lost momentum and today, if it exists at all, its activity has been reduced to the painting of graffiti around Sarajevo.

Darjan said, "I split from Dosta because I saw that there was decreasing interest in actually changing things." He mentioned that at its height, Dosta had "about fifty good activists." But he faulted the leadership for lack of transparency.

Discussing the situation of activism on a larger scale, Darjan said, "The problem in Bosnia is that we're not one society. We have the societies centered around Banja Luka, Sarajevo, and Mostar. And the public opinion that could influence the government does not exist. There is not a network established for collaboration among people."

"There are problems in organizing and promoting change. The Serbs from Sarajevo went to Višegrad, Pale, and other places. Many villagers came to Sarajevo. They think that things are great for them here, because they have running water and other amenities. They don't know that they have the right to call for more."

"In 2008 there were the demonstrations, and afterwards there were four people who lost their jobs because of being involved in the protest. There were a couple of people who had been working in the tourist industry; they lost their jobs.

"We held preparatory demonstrations to the big one for three months, every weekend. There were marches. In that time, there were never more than three thousand participating. Meanwhile, there were always more than that number in the kafanas of the city.

"At one point in the demonstrations some people threw some rocks. [One of the leaders] called for people to go home. That was the end of it. He should have organized people to come back, to continue the protests.

"Safety on the street is a big problem. But if the Reis [the leader of the Islamic community] called for a protest because people are eating cvarci [fatback, a pork product], there would be more people on the street. As activists we are outsiders, marginalized. And meanwhile, in the schools they are not teaching critical thinking.

"In Western Europe after World War II, democracy developed. People had more rights, and women's rights improved too. Here after the recent war, they did not even prohibit those who started the war from participating in politics.

"The first post-war election took place in 1996 - that is unfathomable! They gave the election to the idiots. And since then, we've been running around in the same circle.

"As for those leaders who keep being elected, they are not actually in favor of Bosnia-Herzegovina becoming part of the EU, because then rule of law would be implemented. And they would be the first to go to jail."

I asked Darjan about the work of Akcija Građana.

"We started as an informal group, working on that basis for six months in 2008 without registering. Then, we had a referendum within the group about registering. I was not in favor of registering, but we did. By registering, we legitimized the system. And they are the ones who make the rules of the game. Then, we got support from the Open Society Fund - but they don't try to influence us.

"We were arrested at Butmir base [headquarters of the EU military operation in Bosnia, on the outskirts of Sarajevo] when there were the negotiations there in 2009. They held nine of us for two hours. We displayed a banner that read, 'For us, it's fine this way' [satirizing the position of the leading politicians]. That is, it's fine for them if we remain in this black hole, where money laundering is common, as are trafficking of drugs and women, and the leaders can take pleasant vacations.

"We had gone to Butmir a couple of days in advance to let the authorities there know that we were going to come and make a protest. They showed us an area where they were going to let us stand. But when it came to the demonstration, it didn't work out that way. We were arrested. But the media never covered this, not even for one minute of air play. They just weren't interested.

"Now our work is going slower, and there is a lack of results. We have decided to orient ourselves towards high school students, doing workshops with them. Then, once these people come to the University, there will be activists. As it is now, activism is weak and there is no action. In Sarajevo there are about 3,000 students in the University. If there were that many activists, it could be enough for a revolution, a strike at the system.

"We had a chance in 2008, but we didn't know what to do. They called us mercenaries."

Q: Are there any effective NGOs working in Sarajevo?

A: Activism can exist in an NGO. But for now, the NGOs are only involved in humanitarian work. The majority of the NGOs are family arrangements.

[I am conveying Darjan's opinion here; I don't mean to dismiss some Sarajevo NGOs that are actually quite effective in their areas of focus.]

Q: What are the themes of your discontent now?

A: We are calling for responsiveness. For example, in Sarajevo the water supply lines, the transportation, and the security situation - these are all in disastrous shape. There are guns and knives on the streets, stabbings in the streetcars. The cultural institutions are deteriorating too: The museums, the libraries, the galleries are all closing. Even in the war it wasn't this bad.

"All the aid gets stolen. They steal from the state companies, and from the state budgets; then they build villas for themselves. Seventy percent of the funds from the IMF go to pay pensions and salaries rather than towards investment. We are headed in the direction of the situation in Greece.

"We have wasted a good opportunity to make progress, to make a European city of Sarajevo, instead of the biggest village in the country. People here do not accept others, different people. We have lost our educational system, our health system, and our morals. Then, we have taken the worst from the West and from capitalism: corruption, the bad health coverage. .When I come from Vareš to Sarajevo, it is like coming to a different world.

"There can be no revolution here. All the state companies are here, so there are well-paid people here. Those who work for the companies vote, and the large number of marginalized people do not vote. Nor do many of the women vote either.

"Educated people have left here. Out of 35 people from my elementary school, there are six who have stayed. Of 32 from my high school, 15 have stayed. I am 34, so half of my life has been spent in waiting, watching from one election to another.

"There is much poverty, but people are religious. They say, "Ako Bog da [If God grants]." And I ask a villager, "Did God ever give you a cow?" You won't get anything, if you don't do anything.

"Discontented people in the city are inclined to torch and wreck things, not to build things. We simply haven't come back to our senses here. Gras [the city's public transportation company] raised its prices. There was talk of a boycott, but it didn't lead to anything. In Sarajevo there is more involvement in drinking coffee and in betting than in activism.

"If someone comes to Sarajevo they notice these things: beggars, the ruined buildings, and the shiny new glass buildings."

For more on Akcija Građana, see http://www.akcijagradjana.org/

RETURN TO SREBRENICA

During my time living in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1997 and 1999, and for several years afterwards, I paid close attention to the return of refugees and internally-displaced persons to their pre-war homes. For approximately seven years after the war, return was the most important and compelling movement, from the grassroots on up. International and domestic leaders were themselves pushed and prompted by movement from the grassroots. Intelligent (and sometimes charismatic) people who had been high school teachers, social workers, or office workers before the war were galvanized to lead their communities back home. People like Zulfo Salihović, Hakija Meholjić, Vahid Kanlić, and above all Fadil Banjanović "Bracika" stood out as the individuals who expressed the determination of their constituency to achieve their right to return.

Return essentially wound down ten years ago, with few exceptions. Some return took place in nearly every one of the 140-odd municipalities throughout the country, but in many cases it was mere symbolic return. There were places where there was almost no return; other places where, say, twenty percent of the displaced returned, and a few places, such as Prijedor and Zvornik municipalities, where there was a truly significant amount of return, approaching fifty percent of the pre-war population.

In Srebrenica return took place late, and it was weak. On the other hand, in nearby Zvornik, significant return took place in nearly every village in the municipality.

It is interesting to compare the two returns. I won't go into great length on this here, but I will share a couple of points of comparison, and then some of the observations of journalist Hasan Hadžić, who was closely involved with Bracika in the return movement in northeast Bosnia from the beginning.

I have written at length about return to Srebrenica here:

http://advocacynet.org/resource/1060 and I have written before about Bracika here: http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/journal2008-7.htm.

First of all, return to Srebrenica was fiercely obstructed by the Serbs who controlled that municipality. In response to this obstruction, the international community placed sanctions on Srebrenica, and basically turned its back on the town for several years. Meanwhile, it was difficult in any case to mount a movement, because the male population was decimated. There were survivors, but among them there were also some 6,500 single mothers. The overwhelming number of families without male heads made it difficult for potential returnees to prepare to clear the rubble from devastated property and to plan to rebuild, let alone to do any extensive farming.

These things are obvious. But behind the scenes, I had periodically been hearing about obstruction against return from the other side - from the leaders of the Muslims within the Croat- and Muslim-controlled Federation, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people from the Republika Srpska had taken up temporary residence during the war. I heard, even from former members of the Muslims' ruling SDA party, that members of the SDA were acting to discourage people from returning to Srebrenica.

The apparent reason for this was that it was useful to the SDA to have what was called a stable, ethnically-homogenized "voting machine" present in the Federation, in order to keep that party in power.

Meanwhile, Bracika and his fellow activists, early on, were putting themselves in harm's way to establish a foothold for return in the outlying villages of Zvornik municipality. This movement began almost immediately after the war's end.

It helped that those villages were right across the inter-entity borderline from the Federation, thus relatively easily accessible to would-be returnees. On the other hand, displaced Srebrenicans had to travel across many kilometers of hostile territory, at quite some danger, in order just to visit their pre-war homes.

Hasan Hadžić spoke to me about his work with Bracika, about the various manifestations of obstruction to return, and about differences between return to Zvornik and Srebrenica.

"Bracika was my brother. The strongest movement for return was here in Tuzla.

In 1996, in Tuzla, we formed the office for return, while in Sarajevo they were doing the opposite. We exerted pressure in 1996 to create that office.

"We were in Sapna [in the Federation] and we could see them blowing up houses right next to Sapna, in Jušići [a village in Zvornik municipality, in the Republika Srpska, where some of the first return efforts took place].

"On the Serb side, authorities were spending money for the displaced Serbs to stay in the Republika Srpska. They built hundreds of settlements, for example, they built one at Branjevo [site of one of the Srebrenica massacres]. They spent millions on this.

"In Jušići we went step by step. There were special [Serb] police forces who were drawing guns on us. They beat older people and women who were staying in one return house. Then some of our people started throwing rocks at the police and defending themselves with toljage [clubs]. When this happened, the IFOR [UN troops] troops came in a transport vehicle. It was exciting.

"During our early return attempts, they killed a man in Gajevi near Koraj, near Lopare. They shot at our column of people. This was in the fall of 1996.

"At the higher levels, there was a General in IFOR who criticized us, saying that we were a 'military operation.' But it wasn't true, of course. At the middle level of IFOR there were Majors who understood us better and knew this was not a military operation, and they supported our drive for return. They patrolled and helped. When we returned to Mahala, our men were coming with clubs and rocks. We knew we could fight because the IFOR soldiers were behind us.

"That General was telling us to go slowly. But you can't, it would not have worked. Bracika had a tactic: first we went to clean the cemeteries. If we had waited for permission, it would never have happened.

"People were already leaving the country, and we couldn't afford to wait. So we took those risks. Then other people around the country saw what we were doing and that it had worked, and took similar moves, such as in Goražde.

"One of the differences between Zvornik and Srebrenica was Bracika. But the government really never supported return.

"Bracika was a man of the people. He returned with his daughter and put her in the school with the Serb children. Sadik Ahmetović [former vice-mayor of Srebrenica] never did that. Neither did Šefket Hafizović or Hasan Bećirović [other highly-placed SDA officials from Srebrenica]. They would come to Srebrenica like tourists for two or three days and then return to Sarajevo for džuma [Friday prayers].

"But Bracika's returning, with his daughter, sent a strong signal to the displaced people that he was sincere. There were 700 people who were killed in that area, but return still happened!



"More people returned to two or three villages near Zvornik than to the whole Srebrenica municipality. But Srebrenica is the cash cow."

By this, Mr. Hadžić meant that a disproportionately huge amount of international resources for return and reconstruction went to the Srebrenica municipality. In my own opinion, this took place because the international community, in its various forms, somehow decided to expiate its guilt for the destruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina particularly in Srebrenica, while ignoring the possibility for recovery in some other parts of the country. So large amounts of international aid were channeled to that area (and even larger amounts promised). An arguably huge amount of that aid never reached the people it was intended to help.

Speaking of the return effort to Srebrenica, which started in earnest in 1999, Mr. Hadžić said, "Hakija [Meholjić, wartime police chief in Srebrenica and a postwar leader of return] was returning people, and Adib Djozić was coming out in a jeep and scaring people, saying 'They will kill you.' Then people would go back where they were. Djozić worked for the Ministry of Refugees in the Tuzla Canton.

I asked Mr. Hadžić about statements I had heard to the effect that the SDA, in the early period of return, was trying to dissuade displaced Srebrenicans from leaving the Federation and returning home. He answered, "We went to Vozuća with Hakija and Bracika to encourage people to return to Srebrenica. Then Djozić and Bečirović came in immediately after that and broke things up. Having people return didn't suit them."

When people talk about encouraging return today, they mean making the return that has already taken place sustainable. Because of discrimination and difficult economic conditions it is not uncommon that people who have returned will pick up and leave again, as I have previously described - preferably for another country.

On this issue, Mr. Hadžić said, "Return has ended. There is much money for sustainable return that has come to the Ministries, but none of it is getting to the actual places of return. It is being spent on things unrelated to return. For example, the authorities in Sokolac used money for return to fix the water supply system. And in Prusac they fixed a road. Neither of these things was related to return communities."

For English translations of a couple of Mr. Hadžić's articles, see

http://www.ex-yupress.com/dani/dani6.html

and

http://www.ex-yupress.com/dani/dani112.html.


ACTIVISM IN PRIJEDOR, REVISITED

In my sixth report, I wrote about events in Prijedor municipality, in northwestern Bosnia (see http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/journal2012-6.htm). Prijedor municipality is a special and important place in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The crimes that were committed there during the war reached extreme heights in the terror that they spread. Thousands of people were tortured or murdered, and many more expelled.

These things happened in many parts of Bosnia. But Prijedor is special for another reason as well. Expelled citizens of the municipality were in the forefront in return to their homes soon after the war. And because there is that returnee population - and because some of them are brave enough to represent their community in the face of repression, and to fight for the rights that they know they have - Prijedor municipality happens presently to be one of the most active locations of human rights struggle in the country.

Because of this, and because of the wrongs that were committed in the municipality during the war, it is important that people who believe in solidarity around the world support Prijedor. Those who care about Bosnia-Herzegovina should notice Prijedor, should pay attention to what is going on there, and should find out how to support that struggle.

People occasionally say, "Too much support and resources went to Srebrenica, to the detriment of Prijedor and other places in Bosnia." I would not say that there has been too much attention upon Srebrenica, but there has simply not been enough support or attention to Prijedor and other places. It is as if the world, especially international officials who make decisions about allocation of resources, expiated their guilt on Srebrenica, and then turned their backs on the rest of the country. Well, we don't have to do the same thing.

There is news on the human rights front in Prijedor.

At the beginning of December, a "Committee for Commemoration of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Mistreatment of Innocent People of Prijedor Municipality," composed of eight local non-governmental organizations, announced a plan to hold a demonstration and march in protest of ongoing discrimination against Croat and Bosniak survivors of the war. The event was announced for International Human Rights Day, December 10th (the anniversary of the UN's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights - see http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml).

Here's part of what the Commemoration Committee wrote in its announcement: "Employment that was forcefully taken away [from expelled citizens of Prijedor] has not been restored; the municipal government invests the least amount in (returnee) settlements where the infrastructure and all buildings were completely destroyed. The discrimination against civilian victims is particularly obvious. The possibility for them to achieve any of their rights is obstructed in every manner. The municipal budget apportions funds exclusively for the Serb soldiers and their associations. Monuments are pointedly erected to fallen Serbs in public places, in front of schools and institutions, in a way that intimidates members of the other ethnicities and minorities. The government has erected a terrifying monument to Serb soldiers at the place where thousands of women and children from Prijedor suffered, at Trnopolje camp. At the same time it forbids the construction of any commemoration at the largest places of suffering and torture in Prijedor municipality, notably the death camp at Omarska. In the city itself there is not even the smallest marking that would commemorate the suffering of non-Serb civilians. (.) A particularly grave rights violation has been noted against more than a thousand disappeared Prijedorans. Besides all other human rights, they have been denied the right to identity and to a dignified burial."

This announcement was posted on December 5th. On the 8th, it was announced that the Prijedor police department had prohibited the march component of the action.

The Commemoration Committee protested this prohibition, mentioning that, on May 23rd, the police had forbidden the organizations of returnees and war survivors from marching to commemorate the wartime murder of 266 women and girls in Prijedor municipality. In response to the banning, the Commemoration Committee accused the Prijedor government of repression and of promoting apartheid in the municipality. A statement also recalled the wartime murder of some 800 prisoners at Omarska and Keraterm, as well as of 200 more prisoners killed in a massacre at Korićanske Cliffs.

Following the prohibition of the demonstration, the police also called some of the event's organizers for "informativni razgovor," or interrogation. The Commemoration Committee vowed to resist the repression and these grave violations of rights. Edin Ramulić, activist with the Prijedor association "Izvor," refused to respond to the police's invitation to interrogation.

Ramulić stated that there was no point in cooperating with the police, when their dictates were inconsistent and made no sense. In May activists had been prohibited from gathering on the town square, with the excuse that the situation was "not favorable for security considerations." Now the police department was saying that they could gather, but would not be permitted to make a march of one hundred meters down the pedestrian zone and back.

Ramulić further commented, in connection with previous appeals of such rights violations, that "going into a legal process makes no sense, because there are no sanctions." The activists had appealed to the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees, to the OHR, and to foreign Ambassadors, all without results. Foreign officials had even addressed the problem with Mayor Pavić, but the repression - and attacks by extremists - just worsened.

Ramulić also noted that even Bosniak members of the municipal council for whom returnees and survivors had voted turned against them. They did not work to defend the activists, and some of them tried to persuade the activists not to use the word "genocide" in their public statements. Earlier this year, Mayor Pavić had prevented a demonstration and threatened prosecution of activists because of their use of this word. Ramulić said, "Some of those politicians are close to those who rule the RS; probably the explanation of this [behavior] is that they are prepared to do anything in the interest of their own political privilege."

It is not unusual to hear phrases from activists in Prijedor characterizing their Bosniak representatives on the municipal counsel as "collaborators" and "sellouts." Some of those officials, upon the banning of the march, gave mild statements to the effect that, "We will get to the bottom of this."

Amnesty International condemned the banning of the march (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/banning-human-rights-march-republika-srpska-unacceptable-2012-12-10), as did several domestic human rights NGOs.

When International Human Rights Day arrived, some of Prijedor's activists decided to march in spite of the ban. Seven young people walked through the snow, with tape symbolically covering their mouths, carrying a banner that read, "Where human rights are violated, civil disobedience is a duty." Of the marchers, two were Bosniaks from Prijedor, and two were Prijedor Serbs. There were two Bosnians from Slovenia who marched in solidarity, and one from Sarajevo.

In nearby Banja Luka, members of the human rights organizations Oštra Nula and the Helsinki Citizens Assembly stood prominently in the main square in solidarity with the activists of Prijedor. The Prijedor Commemoration Committee held a news conference and stated, "On the international day for the protection of human rights, the police in Prijedor have placed themselves above the law on public gatherings in the Republika Srpska and have prohibited a peaceful march, without any legal basis. The police have shown that they work according to the dictates of the local government and that they are an important instrument in the establishment of apartheid."

Meanwhile, RS President Milorad Dodik marked Human Rights Day, saying that "in recent years the Republika Srpska has created an environment in which all of its citizens can realize their human and civil rights, as foreseen by the European Convention on Human Rights and other international documents. We have succeeded in achieving high standards and we will continue to do all that is necessary to, first of all, improve the economic and social position of citizens, which will be our priority in the coming years."

One of the Prijedor marchers, Emir Hodžić, wrote a statement shortly after the action, describing his position: "If the right to free and peaceful gatherings is guaranteed in the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the constitution of the Republika Srpska, who has the right to violate that right? Once again the Prijedor police have tried to show, on the day when the entire world celebrates human rights as the heritage of civilization, that Bosnia-Herzegovina is an absurd state."

Speaking of the action of the multi-ethnic group, and the response from local citizens, Hodžić wrote, "As a Prijedoran, I saw in front of me concerned citizens, not Serbs nor Bosniaks. I saw the faces of people who see and know that discrimination on an ethnic basis or the prohibition of association lead to nothing good, and at that moment, I felt hope. I felt that I was among my people, that we all speak the same language, and that we all understand the difficult path before us.

"Our symbolic civil disobedience echoed around the country. Our fellow citizens from Banja Luka.heard and conveyed the message by going out onto their streets. Various associations and workers for human rights around the country also sent support and solidarity. Again I felt hope, again I saw my people. We understood each other.

The full article by Hodžić is available, in Bosnian, at http://diskriminacija.ba/node/285. An article showing a photo of the march, with an accompanying video, is available at http://www.federalna.ba/bhs/vijest/51992/ima-nade-za-prijedor.

Shortly after the protest action in Prijedor, the Society for Threatened Peoples, based in Göttingen Germany, posted an "Appeal to Members of the EU Parliament, the Council of Europe and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in Vienna." The Appeal, signed by Tilman Zülch for the Society, and Milada Hodžić for the Prijedor organization Izvor, was sent to seven hundred officials of the European Union, to the OHR in Bosnia, and to the Bosnian Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees. It was also sent to the mayor of Prijedor and the president of the RS. It is available in English at http://www.gfbv.de/pressemit.php?id=3331.

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While the action in Prijedor was taking place on Human Rights Day, a more general action was undertaken in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, and Mostar. In these cities activists from the regional NGO Youth Initiative for Human Rights staged mock burials, complete with coffins and a funeral march, to bury the human rights and freedoms that they say no longer exist in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

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On December 19th, in Sarajevo, a dozen young people staged a mock protest against the end of the world, slated for December 21st. Five hundred people signed onto their Facebook page. In a statement, the group explained, "We have gathered here today in order to make fun of some people, especially the Americans," adding that there was no chance that the world was going to end. The protestors proved this assertion by displaying a can of liver paté whose expiration date was marked as the year 2013.