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

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Bosnia update, Friday, August 25, 2023
Protests: Violence against Women ~ Ongoing RS secessionism and conflict with the OHR...

I have written earlier that there's "no news in Bosnia"—only incidents and, in the longer run, trends that may eventually lead to real news. In the last couple of months leading to this (overdue) entry, at times it has looked like a crisis that's bigger than ever is taking place. But it looks that way two or three times each year. We'll see where this one leads.

Violence against Women

First, in the past couple of weeks Bosnia has been rocked by a series of incidents of violence against women, to the extent that ordinary people have mobilized in several places to protest the apparently unbridled endangerment of women. In early August the owner of a hotel in the central Bosnian town of Jablanica beat an employee after she asked for wages that were owed to her. The Center for Women's Rights in Zenica, which provides legal assistance to women subjected to domestic violence, noted that of one thousand clients served in the past year, 80% of them had suffered from violence at home. Many of them did not report the violence, but simply sought refuge away from their partners.

Then on Friday, August 11, a shocking attack took place in the northeastern town of Gradačac. There, the body-builder Nermin Sulejmanović killed his partner Nizama Hećimović. Sulejmanović had a record of numerous arrests for violent behavior, and Hećimović had recently gone into hiding. She filed a complaint with the police department about Sulejmanović's violence and requested protection. Unfortunately, the police department and local judiciary brushed aside her case. Hećimović went with her nine month-old baby to her aunt's home for safety, but Sulejmanović found her there. He beat her and then shot her, and also killed a father and son from Turkey. He wounded three other people including a policeman, and then committed suicide.

The bloodbath in Gradačac was so extreme that officials and ordinary civilians throughout the country and beyond were moved to protest. Officials in the Republika Srpska declared a day of mourning for Wednesday, August 16, and the Federation followed suit.

In the midst of this nation-wide expression of horror at the crime, Serb separatists found a way to express their anti-Bosnia stance. Upon a vote in the state-level Council of Ministers, the two Serb Ministers voted against the day of mourning being proclaimed at the state level; thus the two entities held the day of mourning officially, but it was off-record at the state level. The Serbs' explanation was that such a function was the responsibility of the entities, not the state.

Women led protests against femicide in Sarajevo, Tuzla, Mostar, Zenica, Banja Luka, and other cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and there were solidarity demonstrations in Novi Sad (Serbia) and in Zagreb, Croatia, as well.

The violence did not stop after this particularly dramatic incident. The Center for Women's Rights noted that in just two days in mid-August it registered 50 complaints about domestic violence.

There were a couple of especially disturbing aspects to the murder of Nizama Hećimović. The fact that a local judge had declined to impose a no-contact order against Sulejmanović was questioned; the judge involved claimed that the police had failed to provide evidence of the danger, submitting a blank complaint form. Nizama Hećimović had stated that her partner had beaten her when she cooked food that he didn't like. A commentator, after the fact, questioned how much "proof" a judge would need, when Sulejmanović already had a record of fourteen arrests for various acts of violence and mayhem around Gradačac.

Furthermore, there was a question about how Sulejmanović found Hećimović's whereabouts. There were rumors of a relationship between him and a woman police officer. After the murder, that officer was suspended.

All this brings up not only the out-of-control violence against women, but also the notoriously corrupt state of the judiciary at so many levels in Bosnia—and a similar problem with the police force. In so many instances, the underpaid police are eager to take bribes, and they are often in close relationships with criminal organizations.

Thus the murder in Gradačac provides an illustration of much that is wrong with Bosnian society, and it shows that, in a way, the 1990s war never ended. The aggression and corruption simply continue in other forms.

RS Secessionism and the Constitutional Court

The composition of Bosnia-Herzegovina's Constitutional Court has long been a point of resentment among leaders in the Serb-controlled entity. The Constitutional Court, defined in the Dayton constitution, is composed of nine members: two (Serbs) appointed from the Republika Srpska; four (two Croats and two Bosniaks) from the Federation; and three foreign judges appointed by the European Court of Human Rights.

Serb nationalist leaders object to the presence of the foreign judges, who pretty regularly side with the Bosniak judges in decisions. This is not because of a prejudice against Serbs or Croats on their part, but because it is the Bosniak judges who consistently oppose moves to weaken state institutions. Thus, against the wishes of the Serb separatists, the Constitutional Court in recent years has opposed the RS selling off state-owned property and the RS declaration of January 9 as an entity holiday, among many other things.

Events started to come to a head when one of the Serb judges on the Constitutional Court retired, and the RS declined to replace him. Then President Dodik, via the entity's parliament, urged the remaining Serb judge, Zlatko Knežević, to resign, and Knežević announced that he would do so by the end of 2023. In mid-June the Constitutional Court decided to thwart the undermining of the institution by altering its quorum requirements, allowing decisions to be made without a representative from each ethnicity. At the end of June, the Republika Srpska National Assembly (RSNA) responded by passing a law stating that the Constitutional Court's decisions shall not be applicable in the RS.

Another long-term complaint held by RS leaders is the presence of the German politician Christian Schmidt as High Representative. Dodik and his colleagues insist that Schmidt is not a legitimate High Representative, because his appointment to the position two years ago was not approved by the UN Security Council. However, it is the Dayton Peace Implementation Council, not any other body, that is responsible for appointing the High Representative. But Dodik has been relentless in ignoring this fact. Thus on June 21, the RSNA passed a law stating that Schmidt's decisions would be ignored, and they would not be entered into the entity's Official Gazette, which make them binding.

In sum, by the end of June the decisions of the RS parliament led to an extreme heightening of tension around the country, with people evaluating those moves as decisive steps toward secession. Some Bosniak and Western officials called for increased international troop presence in the country. Some officials in the Federation hinted at military conflict if other responses did not work. France, Germany, and other Western countries criticized the RS's secessionist measures.

In response, High Representative Schmidt decided on July 1 to block the two above-mentioned laws adopted by the RS Assembly, decreeing also that failure to comply with the Constitutional Court, and failure to register the High Representative's decisions in the RS Official Gazette, would be criminal actions.

This created a dilemma for RS officials: they were under threat of criminal prosecution from within the entity if they disobeyed the two NSRA laws, and similarly under threat of state prosecution if they obeyed them.

In response to Schmidt's annulment of the RS laws, entity officials doubled down on their secessionist rhetoric. Dodik announced, "We will strengthen the inter-entity line. We will declare that the Court and the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH and SIPA [the state-level investigative agency] do not have jurisdiction in the RS. We will strengthen the police of the RS." He also announced that no "Muslim" judge should have the right to deliberate over legal questions in the RS. Dodik then filed a criminal complaint against the Schmidt in the Banja Luka district court for "posing as High Representative."

Schmidt, meanwhile, noted that the entities did not have the power to annul decisions from any higher court or state institution. Dodik responded by saying that Bosnia-Herzegovina does not have sovereignty over the two entities "because sovereignty is given to the entities, and the state only has partial, derived sovereignty." The entities, according to Dodik's irreal formulation, control all competencies pertaining to finance, border service, the judiciary, and the military—all in contradiction to Dayton's actual provisions and those of subsequent legal decisions.

Amplifying his rhetoric to the point of absurdity, Dodik asserted that the RS and the Federation existed before Bosnia-Herzegovina, as they were created during the war, and Bosnia-Herzegovina was "a protectorate put together at Dayton."

Sanctions and Indictment

After continued escalation by RS officials, at the end of July the US placed sanctions on four of Dodik's colleagues "for attacks on Dayton and the Constitution." Targeted were Chairman of the NSRA Nenad Stevandić, Prime Minister of the RS Radovan Višković, Serb member of the state-level presidency Željka Cvijanović, and Miloš Bukejlović, RS Minister of Justice. All of these prominent RS politicians had promoted the June passage of the anti-Dayton, secessionist laws.

The four officials targeted did not express great concern about the sanctions. A week or so later, Germany cancelled 105 million euros' worth of RS infrastructure projects it had planned to support, including a wind park and a hydro power plant, stating that it could not donate to the RS as the entity was working toward secession. In response, Dodik asserted that Germany had stopped the projects "due to their own economic problems."

On August 11 the Office of the Bosnian Prosecutor filed an indictment against Dodik and Miloš Lukić for the criminal act of failing to execute the decisions of the High Representative, as required by Schmidt's recent decree. The indictment targeted Dodik as the author and main proponent of the disobedience, and Lukić as acting director of the RS Official Gazette, for failure to enter the HR's decisions into the publication.

Violation of Schmidt's decree incurs a punishment of six months to five years imprisonment, along with a possible prohibition against further participation in politics.

A revised version of the indictment was submitted to the Bosnian Court on August 24. Dodik has already engaged a legal defense team, which includes Goran Petronijević, who earlier served as a member of Radovan Karadžić's legal team. For a time, the Belgrade-based Petronijević was barred from entry into Bosnia as a threat to the public order and to the state's security.

Dodik termed the indictment "political violence," and secessionist groups such as "Čast otadžbine" (Honor of the fatherland) demonstrated in protest against it. Dodik's lawyers asserted that in order for the charges against him to stick, the state would have to prove that Schmidt was indeed the legitimate High Representative. And Dodik filed a complaint against the chief prosecutor for "abuse of office." As of late August the case moves slowly toward the courtroom.

Defamation Law

As the push-and-pull between the RS secessionists and the state continued, Dodik's entity leadership instituted a threatened heightening of autocratic rule, in the form of a libel law. In late July the entity's parliament adopted amendments to the criminal statutes making libel no longer just a civil infraction, but a criminal violation. This pertained to any publication of photo, video, or recording of another person without that person's consent. Violation of the new law is termed a "crime against one's honor and reputation." Punishment includes monetary fines or imprisonment of up to two years.

The new libel law can be directed not only at journalists, but at any citizen using social media. It can also lead to the prosecution of people not residing in the Republika Srpska.

Srebrenica and Prijedor

On July 11, the 28th anniversary of the fall of the Srebrenica enclave and the genocide, another reburial of identified remains took place. This time, the remains of 30 victims were reburied. The youngest was 15 at the time of the genocide, and the oldest was 63.

There have been about 80 mass graves discovered in and around Srebrenica municipality. Of these, only eight were "primary graves"; the rest were secondary or even tertiary, that is, remains had been moved from their first place of burial to another place to conceal the crime.

It has become customary, after each year's funeral, to open some graves for "re-association." That is, more often than not, only partial remains are buried, and later additional parts are discovered and identified. This year there were over 75 re-associations. A friend of mine's brother's remains were re-exhumed so that part of his skull could be added to the grave.

The total number of remains buried at the Potočari cemetery is now 6,751. However, a thousand more remains have been identified. Some of those are buried in other places, and some await completion or at least additional parts before the family consents to burial.

Leading up to the funeral, the now-traditional Marš mira, the 100-kilometer March of Peace, traced the 1995 escape route back into Srebrenica. A thousand people participated.

And it is also customary for separatist Serbs based in the RS and Serbia to escalate their glorification of the genocidaires around this time. In nearby Vlasenica a billboard appeared showing the photographs of two soldiers who were convicted of participating in the massacre of 1,300 prisoners at Kravica during the fall of the enclave. And in Srebrenica, on the day of the funeral, provocateurs sang Serb nationalist songs in front of the Orthodox church.

On July 20 the annual burial of victims of mass murder in Prijedor took place in Kamičani near Kozarac. Identified remains of two victims were buried. In the Prijedor municipality the murder of 3,176 Bosniaks, Croats, and others has been tallied. This includes 102 children and 263 women. The remains have been discovered in hundreds of locations, including 73 mass graves. Eighty per cent of those killed have been exhumed, and there are still 500 more missing.

Before the war, some 50,000 Bosniaks lived in Prijedor municipality. By the end of the war that number was down to 2,000.

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