Bukovica, a Stain on Montenegrin Conscience

The Forgotten People

After full seven years, why does not it suit some in Montenegro that the whole truth about the persecution of Muslims from the village of Bukovica in the north of Montenegro come in the open and why is not the government doing anything to enable these wretched people to return to their homes

AIM Podgorica, 11.01.2001.

The snow, late in coming this year, is not the only obstacle preventing around 800 inhabitants of Bukovica, country-people of the municipality of Pljevlja, from reaching their homes.. For nine years in a row, as far as the Muslims, Bosnian villagers from hamlets in the Bukovica region are concerned, the "snow falls not to cover the hill, but for every beast to show its trail".

In February '93 - enduring the beatings and blows of the rifle butts of his neighbors from adjoining villages in Bosnia wearing uniforms of the Yugoslav Army - ninety-year-old Latif Bungur trod the Bukovica snow bare-footed. To this day, no one knows if old Latif-aga could not or would not leave the threshold of his home to fight his way barefoot through the snow. According to the court report drawn up half a year after the slaying, a part of the body was found in the hallway of the house, head in the bedroom, a thigh at the door-step... Beasts, more merciful than “the unknown perpetrators of the murder”, tore the old men's body asunder for an entire half a year before, in the autumn of '93, the Montenegrin state authorities finally decided to collect the parts and transfer them to the mortuary.

Eight and a half months after the murder, on October 30, 1993, the remains of Montenegrin citizen, inhabitant of the hamlet Ravni in the Bukovica region, Latif Bungur, were put to rest at the town cemetery in Pljevlja. On February 16 of '93, the day Latif Bungur was killed, the very same uniformed men kidnapped eleven natives of the villages Ravni and Seliste, women and children. Beaten up and frost bitten, they were escorted to Cajnice. The then Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic and former Yugoslav president Dobrica Cosic intervened and a month later, six of the kidnapped were returned to Pljevlja. The remaining five abducts were brought back after an exchange of prisoners during the war in B&H. Among the first group was Sevda Bungur, at present a refugee in Pljevlja, just a stone's throw from the door-steps of her home. She describes her recent memories of these days in this manner: "A group of reservists from the neighboring village of Trpinja in Bosnia, lead by Nedo Masic, eight of them, broke into our house. They brought along two women and three children they had previously picked up in Seliste. They beat us up. Two of my ribs were broken and I was covered in blood. They took us to Seliste. They took our gold, threatened to cut off our fingers....There was no one to protect us, no one willing to give us a helping hand. The reservists from Pljevlja were even worse than our tormentors. I still run across some of them in Pljevlja. Whenever I chance to stumble upon the one Radmilo Danilov, I spit on him, just to let him know they will never be able to do what they did to us again. When they brought us back to Pljevlja after 25 days of captivity, we didn't dare go back to Bukovica, just as we can't go back there today. But, I'd give anything to return, and some day I will", Sevda Bungur concludes her story.

Her husband, Musan Bungur, working in Germany for thirty years now, engaged in a lawsuit against the Montenegrin state for the past three years, says: "Of the government of Montenegro I expect a reimbursement for my damages and for it to secure us a safe return home." His son, Sefko Bungur, adds: "If Montenegro is not willing to join Europe, then neither do I have to go back to my native Bukovica!"

Out of the 170 banished Bukovica households, most are scattered over a number of West-European countries and B&H. Only ten families, intent on returning to their homesteads - unsuccessfully up to now - remain in Pljevlja. Fear of nationalistic excesses is still too strong in the straggling villages spreading over a surface of 104 square km. A Muslim charitable society, the Merhamet, made an attempt to arrange the return of these people and, with the aid of a Swiss humanitarian organization, managed to repair six houses. The chairman of Merhamet, Sukrija Hadzisacirovic, explained the reasons for postponing the undertaking until the coming spring by the fact that the completion of the reconstruction was ill-timed since it corresponded with the onset of winter; deprived of basic necessities of life such as livestock, hay and the like, the returnees would have had a slight chance to survive.

Jakup Durgut, holder of keys (ceremoniously handed over to him) to one of the repaired houses, elucidates the causes for postponement: "Just ten days after our homes were repaired, 'unknown perpetrators' demolished them once again. And this happened in the presence of the authorities, the army and the police. It is therefore illusory to hope for Bukovica refugees to return to their homes. For the third time in this century, my people are victims of a pogrom. To this very day, we still run into the worst of our tormentors in the streets of Pljevlja and, yet, the government is doing nothing to imprison or punish them".

A memorandum signed by the commissioner of the Montenegrin Refugee Commissariat, Djordje Scepanovic, illustrates only too well the status of the displaced villagers of Bukovica and the attitude of the Montenegrin government to them: "In keeping with the regulation of the government of Montenegro, persons presently displaced within the boundaries of their native municipality, as is the case of the inhabitants of Bukovica presently residing in the municipality of Pljevlja, are not entitled to the status of refugees. The said displaced persons, as any others, are entitled to humanitarian aid in food and health services...", runs the official letter of commissioner Scepanovic.

The chairman of the Refugee Association of banished and displaced inhabitants of the Pljevlja region, Mr. Milan Prusac, regards the attitude of the state officials as being, to say the least, inadequate. As far as the odds of Bukovica refugees ever returning to their homes are concerned, he believes that: "The problem, as complex as it is, cannot be solved by pilot-projects involving just six households. What people need is an assurance that their lives will not be endangered and that they will not be denied the basic necessities of life."

As for the present state of safety, it is depicted by the incident of the six looted and demolished houses, but even to a greater extent by the fact that in the instances of six murders and two suicides committed under dubious circumstances, which is the final count of the Bukovica victims, only one man, Vreco Majos, has been called to account and sentenced to 4,5 years of imprisonment for the brutal slaying of fifty-eight-year-old Dzafer Djogo. The murderers of: Hajro Muslica (80), Ejub Muslica (30), Latif Bungur, Hilmo Drkenda (77), and Dzak Bijela (70) and batterers of Himzo Stovraga (67) and Hamed Bavcica (75 ) who have, according to the forensic report, committed suicides, have never been found, nor have these cases ever been investigated seriously.

Precisely because of this, the change of the political atmosphere in Montenegro is slow in reaching, if at all, the citizens of Bukovica. Wounds inflicted by the killings, beatings, looting, arson and demolition of nearly two hundred of their homes, all three mosques and several cemeteries are still sore. To this very day, much clearer than all the fine talk on ethnic equality, the words of General Damjanovic who said he was "99 percent convinced that Muslims are blowing up their own houses in order to accuse the Serbs for it" echo in their ears. Nor can they forget the huge graffito "adorning" a Pljevlja facade for years: "Be gone Turks before it's too late!" and the opinion of the then president of the Pljevlja municipality, Momcilo Bojovic, that " the Muslims constitute an unstabilizing factor" in the region.

Too many similar "trifles" have piled up on one side of the Bukovica "scales" to make it possible for a single, declarative statement such as "Montenegro is a democratic state" to turn the balance to the side of justice. In the words of one Fikro, porter at the Pljevlja market place, a refugee: "They had driven away my grandfather, but he came back, they did it to my father, but he came back and now they've driven me away and my infant child was born a refugee... Still, what cows I had there! You could sit on their backs and play cards!"

SEAD SADIKOVIC

(AIM)