ETHNIC SELECTION OF BOSNIAN REFUGEES

AIM Zagreb, February 19, 1996

Spring cleaning has begun in Croatia - of ordinary people, who are out of ordinary only for the fact that they are not Croats. Before the symbolic celebration of spring and new life, when the Muslims rejoice at Bairam, and Christians at Easter, the Office for Banished Persons and Refugees of the Government of the Republic of Croatia decided to participate in its own way in the holiday spirit and, under the slogan of concern for people and the state budget, (re)move Bosnian refugees (the Muslims primarily) from camps, railway carriages and former workers' cabins, where they had lived during the past few years, into the refugee camp "Gasinci" near Gasinci, not far from Djakovo. The clutch is in the fact that the ultimate goal is to return the refugees back to B&H at all costs, regardless of the conditions there - no matter whether it is possible to live there at all and whether it is safe.

The Croat Helsinki Human Rights Committee (HHO) has unveiled the whole affair concerning the so-called "passive" forcible measures against refugees, since it was the first to indicate that the authorities were publicly and secretly carrying out ethnic selection with the intention to reach a final solution cencerning the "Muslim issue" in the space of Croatia. So far, it was established that nearly two thousand refugees have been moved, although official sources cite the exact figure of 1329 persons. In its public statement, the HHO clarifies that minority of these people were moved to the refugee settlement "Gasinci", in fact not more than two hundred of them, and that the number of those who were returned, more precisely, forced to return to B&H is much larger. There was a little less than a thousand people. The rest have allegedly found private accomodation or have gone to the "third countries".

What is the problem when everything is done voluntarily? The clutch is in the fact that the moving and the "return" are mainly not voluntary. However, the Office for Banished Persons and Refugees claims that the return is voluntary, in other words that the refugees "themselves have suggested this possibility", because they allegedly did not feel like remaining in "Gasinci". They are allegedly refugees who have "voluntarily returned" to their homes. In this sense, as the utmost cynism of the regime, the HHO states the fact that homes of many who have gone (the "Office" is constantly and intentionally falsely repeating that it is the Federation of B&H) are actually in the Republic of Srpska and that it is very difficult to believe that their return was voluntary, when one knows, for example, that during the "voluntary" moving of Bosnian Muslims from the refugee camp in Velika Gorica (near Zagreb) to "Gasinci", about 15 policemen (ten of them members of the special forces) were close by just in case something unexpected happened, such as, for instance, if these people happened to refuse to leave the camp. Fortunately, all the refugees were loaded into buses, so that this time, the policemen just stood by watching.

Apart from that, according to sources of the HHO, only some fifteen odd refugees (out of almost a thousand) agreed voluntarily to come to "Gasinci". The rest of them came and remained, because they were in no position to refuse the "offer" of the regime. On the other hand, great concern for the state budget and the issue of "economic rationalization (...) and reduction of total expenses" (Zoric) is mere sophism and deception invented to conceal the real intentions. Namely, it is a notorious fact that most of the money for accomodation of refugees from Bosnia & Herzegovina comes from Islam and other humanitarian organizations, so that setting great store by this problem is mere talking nonsense.

In the same statement for the public, the Office for Banished Persons and Refugees of the Republic of Croatia claims quite innocently, although data of the HHO speak in favour of quite the contrary, that "banishment of refugees from Croatia or deportation, or moving into any kind of collecting centres" is completely out of the question. Besides, the team from the "Office" states that it was all done for the sake of better accomodation of refugees. But although a few sentences above, concern for the state budget is stated as the reason, all at once, like a "deus ex machina", property reasons emerge on the surface of the swamp of motives and objectives, in all its greed and bleakness. Namely, allegedly for quite some time now, construction enterprises have been claiming their property back, mostly half-decayed workers' cabins.

As in some cases, refugees were told even a week or two in advance what was in line for them, many have managed to go abroad or find private accomodation. The HHO states the collection centre on the island of Obonjan near Sibenik as an interesting example, from where about 260 persons had left before the police tried to "convince" them to do it.

Actually, everybody that can be moved, and almost all of them can, if the authorities from Pantovscak say so, are in "Gasinci", a camp which serves as a "Collection Centre" which will, "regardless of the quality of the offered humanitarian services, be used as a 'springboard' for forcible return of B&H refugees to the unknown, unchecked and uncertain" (Drago Pilsel, member of the HHO and columnist of "Novi List").

In order to deny the facts that the HHO almost daily investigates and publishes, the Office for Banished Persons and Refugees, speaking in terms of sports, took the initiative and passed the ball to its part of the field. Namely, after HHO's writing about violations of human rights of Bosnian refugees (Muslims) whom the regime is getting rid of by expelling them using "passive" measures of coercion, even to the Republic of Srpska, the Office challenged the HHO to a political duel and offered a paid one-day visit to "Gasinci", in order to enable Cicak & Co. to see for themselves that everything was actually beautiful and idyllic. The fact is however, that the HHO has neither written about "Gasinci" nor about reduction of expenses of accomodation of refugees, but warned against "applying the so-called 'passive' measures of coercion against refugees from B&H". This turns the joint excursion with the members of the HHO (with family and friends, to make cynism even greater) organized by the Office a political boomerang which slowly but surely returns to those who consider political lies to be a virtue, and terror a means for national entertainment.

If the HHO keeps its promise and offers the public an insight into all the documents and data it collected concerning this problem, and the Office for Banished Persons and Refugees responds with silence, lies or a new sophism, it may bring about an intensification of the conflict which lasts for quite some time now between the state and the HHO. In the meantime, possibilities are diminishing for the Bosnian refugees to choose between remaining in Croatia and returning to their homes, mostly among neighbours who, not in the least "passively", clearly explained to them back in 1992 that they did not wish to have them neither in the form of dust nor in the form of graveyards. And all that because someone has decided to do away with the Federation B&H, which was found out even by Kasim Trnka, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Ambassador in Zagreb, who addressed a protest to RH Vice Premier, Ivica Kostovic, demanding that all brutalities and forcible measures against Bosnian refugees be interrupted. Croatia chose to "look into the matter", certain that everything would remain as before - "pasive".

ALEN ANIC