SURVIVING THE PEACE The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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August 12, 2020
Prijedor anniversaries; Rewarding war criminals; Corona update

This past month has not been a newsy time in Bosnia-Herzegovina. That's probably a good thing, since most news these days seems to be bad. So the present blog entry will be an update on some commemorations and some low-grade news that's taken place since I last wrote.

Prijedor

July and August are customarily the time of commemorations in Prijedor municipality, as the anniversaries of several important war-time events fall in this period, for example, the massive attack on the Bosniak settlements on the Left Bank of the Sana where at least 1500 people were killed in a few days; the revelation of the concentration camps; and the eventual disbanding of the worst of those camps, including the one at Omarska.

More than 3,000 non-Serb citizens of Prijedor municipality were killed or went missing during the war, with attacks on Bosniak and Croat populations starting in May of 1992, and concentration camps (including the notorious Keraterm, Trnopolje, and Omarska sites) being formed at about the same time. To date the remains of nearly 2,600 victims have been discovered at over 70 mass graves (some reports count 98 sites), with almost 600 people still missing. In recent years 435 remains were found at Tomašica, including 275 complete bodies, and other remains were found under the cliffs at Korićanske stijene. A new search at Tomašica was undertaken in late July, but no new remains were found.

On the annual funeral date of July 20, six recently identified remains were reburied in the cemetery at Kamičani near Kozarac. Five of these had been discovered at Korićanske stijene. Some 30 remains were supposed to be reburied. But relatives of the victims were unable to travel to Bosnia because of the pandemic, so many reburials were postponed. The number of remains discovered and identified decreases each year; last year nearly 80 were found and reburied.

The head imam of the Bosnian Islamic community, Reis-ul-ulema Husein efendija Kavazović, spoke at the funeral in Kamičani. He declared that genocide had been committed in Prijedor. This should not be a controversial statement if one briefly examines the clear and simple legal definition of the term in the UN Convention on the Crime of Genocide, especially Article II, here. But given that atrocity denial and historical revisionism are a full-time avocation for the apologists for the war criminals, Kavazović's message needs to be repeated. And just as significant as the ongoing denial is the failure of the ICTY and other international criminal tribunals to see fit to acknowledge genocide anywhere other than Srebrenica.

Several high-level war criminals were charged with genocide elsewhere other than Srebrenica, but they were not convicted. Radovan Karadžić was acquitted of that one charge, as was Ratko Mladić. The appeal in Mladić's case is still pending, and it's anyone's guess whether he will even live to see a final conviction, with delays piling up due both to his poor health and to logistical complications caused by the corona epidemic. But it is very doubtful that there will be a reversal in his acquittal for genocide outside of Srebrenica. My hypothesis is that the international community is content to boil the atrocities of the Bosnia war down to one symbolic venue in order, among other things, to evade the guilt that goes along with having allowed so many vicious war crimes to happen.

So, honors to Reis Kavazović for speaking the truth. And for that matter, a resolution has also been introduced in the Canadian Parliament recently, acknowledging that genocide took place in Prijedor municipality.

The annual commemoration at the former concentration camp at Omarska took place on August 6, that being the only date of the year when authorities allow survivors to visit the mining compound. More than 6,000 men, and a few dozen women, had been confined at Omarska, and at least 700 were killed there. This year the commemoration was sparsely attended, again due to the constraints of the epidemic.

There was also a commemoration on the anniversary of the revelation of the existence of the concentration camp at Trnopolje, just across the highway from Kozarac. Some 23,000 people had been held there, mainly women, children, and older people. Compared to Omarska, survival was more possible at Trnopolje but still, many people were raped or beaten there, and there were periodic murders as well. The commemoration, usually held on the grounds of the former concentration camp, was held this year in Kozarac for reasons of public safety due to the virus.

Denial and Rewarding War Criminals

The denial of wartime atrocities continues to thrive, with the historical revisionists continuing to turn out books glorifying the crimes. The gallery of convicted luminaries including Radovan Karadžić, Vojislav Šešelj, Biljana Plavšić, Milan Lukić of Višegrad notoriety, Fikret Abdić, Vinko Pandurević, and Jadranko Prlić have all written books justifying their wartime behavior. I'm reasonably sure most of them would have been shot or hung, had they been tried at Nuremberg in the 1940s. Instead, they are authors—and some of them are already out of prison. (For more on this, see "State of Denial: The Books Rewriting the Bosnian War.")

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the denial industry. There's much more, which you can research at the Balkan Witness site here. Meanwhile, of late there's also been a rash of unwarranted honors bestowed on war criminals. For example, Croatian President Zoran Milanović awarded Zlatan Mijo Jelić, a retired general in the Bosnian HVO (Croat Defense Council) recognition for his "contribution to the liberation of Croatia."

Jelić had been indicted by the Bosnian state prosecution for war crimes in the Mostar region, including ordering the use of Bosniak prisoners from the Croat-run Heliodrom concentration camp to be used as human shields and for forced labor during fighting between separatist Croats and Bosnian government forces. At least 50 prisoners were thus killed and nearly 200 wounded. Jelić went on the lam to Croatia in 2012 and renounced his Bosnian citizenship, and has thus not been available to face justice in Bosnia. When President Milanović was criticized for this affront to justice and to the feelings of the Bosnian victims of Croat war crimes in the Mostar area, he responded, "Not everyone who has received punishment at The Hague is a war criminal."

Milanović's award to Jelić took place in the context of the Croatian commemoration of Oluja (Operation Storm), the anniversary of the military operation in which Croatian forces liberated part of Croatia from Serb separatists occupying the area around Knin. Liberation is one thing, but Croatian forces also expelled some 200,000 indigenous Serbs from that region: these people ended up in parts of Bosnia and Serbia, and most have never come back. Some dozens of elderly people who refused to leave their homes in this operation were murdered, and soldiers torched hundreds of houses as a way of saying, "Don't come back." Numerous soldiers were convicted of arsons and looting, but prosecution for war crimes has been minimal.

For more on this history, see "Court Records Reveal Croatian Units’ Role in Operation Storm Killings."

For the most part, the annual August anniversary commemorations of Oluja have been a time of flag-waving and nationalist exultation for Croatia, and mourning for Serbia. This year, in an unusual move toward tentative reconciliation, Boris Milošević, a Croatian Serb who is Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia, attended the commemoration. His grandmother was one of those killed during Oluja. Milošević and his Croat colleagues expressed the hope that this could be a first step toward gentler relations between Croats and Serbs region-wide—although Milošević received serious criticism from Belgrade for his action. But if the move heralded reconciliation between Croats and Serbs, Milanović's rewarding Zlatan Mijo Jelić could only chill relations between Croatia and the Muslim population of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In nearby Serbia Svetozar Andrić, a Bosnian Serb and former commander of the Birač Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, was elected to Parliament in Belgrade. As commander and later Chief of Staff of the Drina Corps, Andrić was personally responsible for some atrocities and crimes against humanity in the region around Zvornik and Vlasenica. He ordered the expulsion of the Bosniak population of Zvornik, some 10,000 strong, and he gave the order to establish the brutal Sušica concentration camp near Vlasenica. There, around 160 people were murdered, and many people were raped or tortured.

Andrić is just one example of many convicted or accused war criminals among the Serbs and Croats—and a few Bosniaks—who have not only been honored by their peers, but elected to public office.

Further afield, a prominent British denier of wartime atrocities has also been honored. That is Claire Fox, whom Prime Minister Boris Johnson just awarded a life peerage to the House of Lords, the upper chamber of British Parliament. It should be scandalous enough that Johnson also similarly awarded his own brother, and the businessman son of a KGB spy, the peerage. But Fox is a particularly shameful case. She was a member of the (Trotskyite) Revolutionary Communist Party, then became a Brexit Party member and, in between, worked as co-publisher of the Living Marxism magazine (LM).

This last is what particularly bothers people who care about human rights and memory in Bosnia-Herzegovina, because it was that magazine that published notorious war crimes denials and distortions of the history of atrocities around Bosnia, especially pertaining to the concentration camps around Prijedor. LM had published articles denying the genocide at Srebrenica, as well as an article by a German writer distorting the nature of the Prijedor camps. When the media outlet ITN (Independent Television Network) sued LM for libel, the magazine lost and was forced to go out of business. But Fox continued to take the side of the genocidaires, saying that Serbs were "routinely demonized" and that Serbia was treated as a "pariah nation." She never apologized for her attacks on the truth.

Corona update

For the first couple of months of the pandemic, control of people's behavior in Bosnia-Herzegovina was strict and spread of the virus was kept notably below that of most of Europe. A "state of natural disaster" had been declared during that time, but it was lifted in late May. In the ensuing period, just as was seen in many other countries—and a number of US states—a "second wave" or spike in infections took place in Bosnia. This coincided with the onset of summer weather and, as elsewhere, a simple fatigue from observing intelligent safety measures.

The result was a sudden uptick in infection cases that has lasted to today; in recent days between 250 and 300 new cases have been registered each day. By late July Bosnia had taken the unhappy position of having the highest number in Europe of registered cases of infection per million people. To date nearly 15,000 people have been infected, with about 475 deaths. This in a population of somewhat under three million. For a regularly updated tally of infections and deaths worldwide and by country, click here.

Prime Minister of the Federation Fadil Novalić was quoted as saying eloquently, "The situation with the spreading of the coronavirus is bad and we will have to do something." But the Federation's Assistant Minister of Health Goran Čerkez stated that there will be no "lockdown" (a word that has been assimilated directly into the Bosnian language) because "no economy in the world would be able to withstand a new lockdown." Čerkez declared that the biggest problems are large gatherings such as religious observances, disco club events, and weddings. He particularly pointed to groups of 300 or 400 people, saying that events must be restricted to 50 people indoors, and 100 outdoors.

On the positive side, it was noted that the epidemic has prompted an increase in agricultural production around the country, because anyone who owns even a little land—and who probably has more spare time than before—is tending to that land and growing food.

Bosnia is also buzzing with news that a Russian vaccine against the coronavirus will be available soon, as we have also heard here in the US. The response in Bosnia is another illustration of the chaos and idiocy that develops when politics intervene in public health matters. That is, in the Republika Srpska, authorities such as entity Prime Minister Radovan Višković are promoting the idea of the use of the vaccine. But in the Federation, authorities such as the above-mentioned Goran Čerkez are saying that they are not interested in the insufficiently tested Russian vaccine, and that they will follow the lead of the EU in selecting a well-tested vaccine, if and when that should arrive.

Meanwhile, employers in Germany are complaining because of a shortage of workers due to restrictions in immigration because of the epidemic. As I've noted elsewhere (see here and here), people from Bosnia and much of the rest of the Western Balkans have been making an exodus to Germany and other parts of central and western Europe for many years in search of employment and a more stable life. But Germany is now limiting the influx of workers from the region to 25,000 per year—and employers are worrying that with 150,000 German workers due to retire in the next few years, many projects will simply have to shut down or will never be started. Labor shortages are particularly felt in construction, medicine, and software development. One analyst stated that foreign workers produce one third of the entire gross domestic product of Germany.

And you might wonder what became of the case of the corrupt use of 10.5 million KM in funds that the Federation allocated to buy ventilators from China (with a significant kickback to the purchaser)? Well, as I've said before, "This is Bosnia." At last recounting, Federation Prime Minister Novalić, along with Fahrudin Solak and entrepeneur manque Fikret Hodžić were arrested on suspicion of corruption, and placed under restrictive measures. Now on August 5 the Bosnian Court released the three from those measures—without discussing the move with the prosecution. State prosecutors, in turn, appealed the move, but the embezzlement case remains on that room-temperature back burner of justice until further notice.

There has been one other development in the case of the ventilators. Recently the state-level Institute for Metrology (Institut za mjeriteljstvo) determined that the ventilators that were purchased under shady conditions are in fact usable in hospitals, although the Bosnian prosecutorial office originally asserted that they were light-duty machines only suitable for use in emergency vehicles. It turned out that the prosecutors had employed an unauthorized analyst to make this determination. Now, the ACM812A respirators, manufactured by the state-owned Chinese company Beijing Aerospace Changfeng, are being allocated to hospitals throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina. But meanwhile, the Chinese corporation is threatening to sue Bosnia for millions in damages to their reputation.  

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