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Wrong Time for Bosnia’s Elections
say Human Rights Groups
‘Bosnians in villages around Teslic are being
By Steve Pagani
Senior figures of the U.S.-based Helsinki Human Rights Watch organisation criticised the United States and key European nations for insisting on strict adherence to the Dayton peace accords which envisage a Bosnian election by September 14.
"They are saying the situation for free and fair elections is not perfect but good enough to go ahead in September. The true picture is grim," Lotte Leicht, the director of Human Rights Watch's international office in Europe, told Reuterss.
The organisation's monitors in Bosnia have catalogued a disturbing list of ethnic violence and discrimination since January and said IFOR (the NATO-led implementation force) was going out of its way to avoid arresting indicted war criminals. "The Dayton agreement spells out there should be a politically neutral environment. But Bosnian refugees trying to return to Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb territory) are beaten by mobs, beaten by police and told to leave," Human Rights Watch executive director Holly Cartner said.
Leicht and Cartner were in Florence to lobby ministers from some 40 countries, gathering for a two-day conference to review compliance with Dayton, to delay the elections. The human rights group said it was evident huge pressure was bearing down on the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), charged with organising the Bosnia poll, to recommend elections for September.
Cartner said morale was low among OSCE observers in Bosnia who filed reports to the mission's headquarters in Sarajevo saying conditions did not exist for free elections only to find negative details excised before the documents were passed on to the OSCE's permanent council in Vienna.
"These elections will be based on a lie," Leicht said. "Carl Bildt (the major powers' chief envoy in Bosnia) should be honest and stand up at this conference and say the time is not right for elections." Cartner said the situation around the northern Serb town of Teslic provided a stark example of how far removed reality was from the statements by foreign governments.
"Bosnians in villages around Teslic are being ethnically cleansed at the moment. Hand grenades are thrown into houses, people lose their jobs and shops are burnt down," said Cartner, who arrived in Florence after a monitoring trip to Bosnia.
Observers had also recorded beatings of Muslims by Bosnian Croat police in Mostar and said Serbs who remained in Sarajevo suburbs which switched to Bosnian government control were subjected to beatings and kicked out of their homes.
"By pushing for elections to go forward the international community is playing into the hands of people who support partition of Bosnia," Cartner said.
The nationalist mood among Bosnia's three former warring factions made it almost impossible for anyone to express views backing a unified state, removing any foundation for free and fair elections, she added.
Human Rights Watch accused the 60,000-strong IFOR mission of doing nothing to apprehend indicted war criminals such as Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic -- one of the supposed preconditions for an election to go ahead. Leicht said Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic had recently visited Belgrade with the knowledge of IFOR. "That was a slap in the face because it showed that (Serbian President Slobodan) Milosevic is not complying with the Dayton agreement and handing these people over," she said.
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FLORENCE, Italy, June 13 (Reuters) - Major powers should come clean and admit ethnic violence is still stalking Bosnia instead of pushing for a September election that could risk partition of the state, international human rights monitors said on Thursday.
BOSNIA’S ELECTIONS
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FLORENCE, ITALY
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