Killed While Attempting to Return Home
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Reuters) — Two Muslim refugees were killed and 10 injured while trying to return to homes in a Serb-held village in an incident that augured badly for the ethnic peace called for by the Bosnia accords. Muslims alleged that a Serb armed with a pistol shot dead at least one refugee during a clash. NATO reported that most of the injuries occurred when the Muslims skirted a NATO checkpoint and entered a minefield. "We confirm two dead and 10 wounded," said NATO spokesman Major Simon Haselock. "Among that number at least three are still lying in a minefield and we are attempting to extract them using helicopters."
The violence followed warnings from NATO officers that increasingly tense confrontations on the boundary line between Serb and Muslim-Croat territory were courting disaster. The incident cast new doubt on the credibility of the right for refugees to return to their homes which is enshrined in the Dayton accords that ended 43 months of war. In addition, it underlined that NATO's peacekeeping troops are ill-equipped for and untrained in crowd control.
Skirting a NATO Checkpoint
Muslims demanding to return to their village of Sjenina, five miles outside the northern town of Doboj had refused to stop at the NATO checkpoint which was set up to prevent the refugees from mixing with a hostile crowd of Serbs. After shoving and stone-throwing, the Muslims, who said they had permission to visit relatives' graves as part of the Muslim observation of Bajram, took an alternate route to the village of Sjenina where the most violent clash occurred.It was the worst in several weeks of confrontations that began when refugees started testing their rights to return and freedom of movement guaranteed under the Dayton peace accord. U.N. relief workers say both Muslim and Serb authorities have encouraged the confrontations for their own political ends despite the risk to civilian lives.
International mediator Carl Bildt, charged with implementing the civilian side of the peace pact, told reporters leaders from both sides would discuss the problem Tuesday in Sarajevo. The U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, John Menzies, discussed the confrontations with Bosnian Serb official Velibor Ostojic, who blamed the Muslim-led government for provoking the clashes.
Bosnian Serbs Prevent Movement
U.N. relief officials have been trying to work out an agreement between the former warring factions to ensure refugees can visit their old homes in an orderly manner. The hardline Bosnian Serb leadership, intent on preserving a separatist Serb territory, has been reluctant to allow Muslims to return to their homes and has not encouraged Serb refugees to try to visit their home towns. Serb leaders say they will refuse to permit Muslims to return until tens of thousands of Serbs are allowed to move back to their homes in the Krajina region in neighboring Croatia. The Zagreb government has yet to allow the refugees to return.In the central town of Trnovo outside Sarajevo, a crowd of mostly elderly Serbs wielding stones, clubs and shovels smashed the windows of buses carrying Muslim refugees trying to visit relatives' graves Monday, eyewitnesses said. One Muslim woman was treated at a Sarajevo hospital for a head wound from a stone thrown at her bus by the Serbs. The refugees then returned to Sarajevo and gathered outside the office of Bildt, protesting the failure of the international communty to ensure their rights under the Dayton peace deal.
Bildt met the speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament, Momcilo Krajisnik, in the Serb headquarters of Pale for talks on the clashes, the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA reported Monday.
Going Home Portrait of a Refugee Family by Chester King Vega
Apr 30 · Serbs Attack Muslims Attempting to Visit Homes
Apr 29 · 600 Muslim Refugees Try to Return Home
Apr 27 · NATO Bolsters Troops for Bajram Holiday
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