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New Ethnic Cleansing Strikes Muslims in Banja Luka
Beating of a returning refugee’s family is
typical of new violence in Serb-dominated northwest Bosnia
By Kurt Schork
"We had 30 desperate people in our offices this morning who had been driven from their homes over the weekend. This is the biggest wave of evictions in the Banja Luka area since the Dayton agreement was signed."
Banja Luka is a Serb stronghold in north Bosnia and the centre of an area where about 500,000 non-Serbs were driven from their homes during the 43-month Bosnian war. Under the peace agreement signed in December 1995, refugees and displaced persons were supposed to be able to return to their homes. In fact, few have dared to cross tense ethnic boundary lines established during the war.
Janowski said the latest round of ethnic cleansing in Banja Luka's Vrbanja district was apparently triggered by the June 17 return of a Muslim man to his home from Ireland, where he had been a refugee "A group of men with sticks came to the man's home and beat his parents and expelled them," the U.N. spokesman recounted.
"The man, who was not home at the time, heard of the incident and contacted the police who gave him protection but refused to go to his house. Meanwhile men went to a nearby house and beat the man's uncle and aunt and his aunt's mother. Since then 30 other people have been evicted from their homes in similar incidents."
While the identities of those responsible for the evictions remains unknown, Janowski blame the incidents on Bosnian Serb ruling party leaders who, he said, were engaged in "ethnic propaganda day in and day out." Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, who has been indicted for war crimes, makes no apologies for his message of ethnic separatism.
Karadzic and his Serb Democratic Party (SDS) waged war to create "pure" Serb territory. They hold fast to that goal in peace despite the Dayton accord's call for a unified, multi-ethnic Bosnia. Continued SDS control of police, media and movement inside Serb-held territory gives it a near-monopoly on political power in the 49 per cent of Bosnia over which it rules. |
SARAJEVO, June 24 (Reuters) - Bosnian Serbs have expelled 30 Muslims from their homes in Banja Luka in the city's worst ethnic cleansing since the Dayton peace agreement signed last year, the U.N. said on Monday. "We are alarmed by a new wave of evictions of Muslims in the Banja Luka area," said Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
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