Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Republika Srpska, Bosnia-Herzegovina December, 2001 Monitored Media: Dailies: Oslobodjenje (Sarajevo), Dnevni avaz (Sarajevo), Nezavisne novine (Banja Luka), Glas srpski (Banja Luka) Weeklies: Reporter (Banja Luka), Dani (Sarajevo), Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo) Radio-television stations: Radio-television of the BiH Federation (FTV), Radio-television of Republic of Srpska (RTRS), News agencies: ONASA (Sarajevo) Missing Persons In addition to the large number of people killed during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, approximately 25,000 people went missing. According to the available documents, there are over 6,000 missing persons from Republika Srpska, RS, and almost 19,000 from the Federation of BiH. It is thought that most of these people were killed and their bodies hidden in mass graves throughout BiH. Both entities in BiH have commissions for missing persons, but the families of the missing are generally dissatisfied with their work. There are open and justified suspicions that daily politics take precedence, resulting in manipulation and even trade-offs in the authorities' dealings with these people. Non governmental associations dedicated to finding the missing stress these problems, but are usually ignored by the authorities. Moreover, a lack of funds and modern laboratories for the analysis of remains found in mass graves further impedes work in this field. The media in both entities do regularly cover the issue. Although they pay most attention to the location and excavation of newly discovered mass graves, they do also publish appeals from citizens' associations and demands from families of the missing that the authorities take a more active role in the search. Features on this subject tailed off during December, when the exhumation programme was suspended for the winter in the middle of the month. In Dnevni avaz, Oslobodjenje and Nezavisne novine there were at least seven pieces, five in Glas srpski, and one each in weekly magazines Dani, Slobodna Bosna and Reporter. The Federation of BiH Television, FTV, ran four items and Radio-Television of RS, RTRS, three. Coverage of the issue was mainly professional, despite an occasional tendency to make accusations against "the other side" wherever possible. The search for the missing: Six years after the signing of the Dayton peace agreement in 1995, the tragedy continues for the families of the missing. Relatives experience trauma and uncertainty when attending the exhumation of body parts, or examining recovered clothes hoping to see something familiar. The exhumation of a mass grave in western RS at the Jakarina Kosa surface coal mine, in the Ljubija mining complex, was attended by Reporter journalist Danijel Kovacevic. Approximately 400 Bosniaks from villages near Prijedor in western RS were killed and buried in this "secondary" grave - the largest so far discovered. The bodies were probably transferred there towards the end of 1994. Kovacevic's article "Four hundred dead" was published on December 17. "The spectacle of a opened grave at Ljubija, sacks full of bodies and the odour of death, defies all alibis... As we try to find terra firma, for the soil constantly slides, we hear a scream, 'Stop... Stop...A body!' An excavator has hit another corpse. In the earthmover, the team find the remains of a human skeleton. 'I think it is an arm, I think I saw some fingers', says the operator. 'No, these are ribs', the other worker replies." He described the response of the watching journalists. "Suddenly we feel uneasy, sick and slightly dizzy; we've seen it all in the past ten years, but there are certain things a man can never get used to. Still, we can't take our eyes off the newly uncovered body." Kovacevic summed up the tragedy of the dead and their families, the responsibility of political leaders and the slow pace of justice, in the following passage: "War crimes have no nationality, religion, or skin colour, and all war criminals - from whichever side - must be punished. How many times have we heard the same from BiH politicians, and nodded our heads? We all agree in theory, but only up to the point where we start talking about concrete crimes, specific names and locations. Then most of us use the excuse that only when 'the other side' starts discussing crimes committed against our people (whoever they are), will we do the same. And on and on it goes. In the grey area of everyday life, we find the most absurd alibis to flee from the ghosts of the past. The reality is different." On December 27, Dnevni avaz's E Tabakovic revealed that 373 Bosniak bodies had been exhumed from Jakarina kosa, and "they were all brutally killed in the summer of 1992". Only 14 - mostly elderly - victims had been identified, the oldest being Husein Hukic, born in 1911. On December 4, Dnevni avaz ran a story about another mass grave in Sultanovici, near Zvornik (eastern RS). "The grave is in the yard of Rahmana Sultanovica, just off the road. It is twenty metres long and holds the remains of people from Srebrebnica killed in 1995. There are no complete skeletons in the grave. Judging by their condition, they were cut into pieces before being transferred to this location. So far, approximately 100 sacks of human skeletons have been collected" reported Almasa Hadzic. Dnevni avaz reported again on December 28 that a Mrs Esma Palic had successfully sued the RS government over the disappearance of her husband, Avdo. According to a November 2000 decision of the BiH Chamber for Human Rights, the RS Government was meant to pay Mrs Palic DM 65,000 in compensation, but delivered the sum only in December 2001. As a colonel in the BiH Army, Avdo Palic went to Zepa on July 27th 1995, to negotiate under UN guarantee with the RS army. There has been no trace of him since. Civilian and military authorities in RS claimed they knew nothing of his fate. In both entities, the issue of the missing has been manipulated by parties seeking to gain or hold on to positions of authority. Some politicians deliberately exaggerate the number of victims from their own nation. In an interview for Slobodna Bosna published on December 6, Mirko Banjac, deputy president of the Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, and a deputy in the BiH parliament, stated that "20,000 Serbs were killed in Sarajevo during the war. They are considered missing, because they were killed, thrown in Kazani (a pit on the Trebevic mountain) and burned in the Zenica (central Bosnia) and Sisak (Croatia) steelworks. The smell of burning bodies hung over Sarajevo". Gojko Beric responded to these allegations in Oslobodjenje on December 13. In a piece entitled "Goebbels on our streets" he wrote: "Mirko Banjac has confronted readers with a new display of foolishness and morbid lies, by alleging a genocide of Serbs. The odour of burned Serbs must have been so strong that it reached even Mirko Banjac - who was in Banja Luka at the time. Poor Joseph Goebbels - even Hitler's propagandist would have been overshadowed by Mirko Banjac." Nijaza Durakovic, a member of the Social Democratic Party leadership, also responded to Banjac's allegation, commenting to the FTV radio programme "Talk show" on December 9, that that "Serbs in Sarajevo had a better time than they deserved". The news agency ONASA commented on December 22: "The families of the missing are the biggest losers of the war and the peace. Neither those we have been searching for, nor their family members, feature in our constitutions, laws or other regulations. They have been kept at the margins of life and their pain is further increased by the misunderstanding they face from officials and their own communities." The authorities have also been accused by the families of failure in the search for the missing. This discontent prompted a protest on the streets of Banja Luka, reported in Nezavisne novine on December 10. In "Fed up with promises and lies" G Tomic wrote that "The RS Government should be asked why the families of killed and missing soldiers and civilians have still not been accorded the status their missing fathers and sons entitle them to." He quotes Radojka Boric, who is still searching for her husband, "We are promised only that either the search for our beloved will continue, or proof of death will be obtained - and nothing else. Is that all we are entitled to?" Glas srpski published articles on the exhumation of Serb citizens killed by the BiH Army. In the December 1 article "They even killed children", author D Simovic revealed that 12 bodies found on Treskavica mountain in central Bosnia had been identified as Serb civilians. "Among them were children - Milutin, 2, Dragomir, 10, and Danijela Tesanovic, 12, and Sladjana Sekulic,13. Bullet wounds were found on their bodies. Only Dejan Vasic, 14, survived this mass murder. He was wounded and pretended to be dead. Even today, Dejan will not talk about what he saw and experienced." The exhumation of Serb victims buried in mass graves in Sarajevo's Lav cemetery prompted an article in Nezavisne novine on December 5 "Victims with a political subtext" in which author B Jovanovic accused the Federation authorities of obstructing the search for missing Serbs in Sarajevo. "A misunderstanding between the two commissions [in RS and Federation] for missing persons has persisted since the beginning of the exhumation at the Lav cemetery. The RS Commission is still searching for the remains of Serbs killed in Sarajevo during the war. The number of victims has not yet been established. So far, 207 bodies have been exhumed. Most of the remains have not been identified, due to lack of money and technical equipment." The International Commission for Missing Persons, ICMP, has assisted the search and identification of missing and exhumed persons. The organisation has also supported the opening of a laboratory in Sarajevo for testing the DNA of victims' remains. "The new laboratory will try to help thousands of families who do not know the fate of their missing members and will reward their patience during the painful process of finding their beloved." (Nezavisne novine, December 5, A Sisic) "The search for and identification of missing persons will last a long time and will be painful for surviving family members," wrote Dnevni avaz commentator Sead Numanovic, in "A painful truth" on December 3. He gave the example of a recent discovery in Sarajevo of the remains of two German soldiers killed during World War Two, to stress how long it can take to discover bodies. "The painful truth is that some of the missing will never be found. Nevertheless, so long as there is hope and strength, the search will not be stopped. Waiting for the results is extremely painful and heartbreaking for thousands of families. Discovering the fate of the missing is not only medicine for the soul, but also reveals the truth about the victims - and the perpetrators, who will be punished." Those still missing after the war in BiH - and media coverage of the issue - is yet another dimension of the huge tragedy which has befallen all the communities in BiH. It is a sad fact that the authorities in both entities manipulate this tragedy and are supported in this by some elements of the media. In most cases, the media show concern only for the victims of their own nation. They often quote politicians who exaggerate the number of victims from their nation, blaming the other side as far as possible. The media in the Federation generally mention only Bosniak victims. Oslobodjenje and Dnevni avaz generally publish features on the suffering of Bosniak civilians found in mass graves in RS. The only coverage of Serbs killed in Sarajevo was the story relating to the Lav cemetery. Oslobodjenje published statistics on December 3 claiming that out of more than 27,000 persons missing in BiH, over 90 per cent are Bosniaks and about 95 per cent of those are civilians. Most of them come from Podrinje (eastern BiH), Bosanska Krajina (western BiH) and eastern Herzegovina. Glas srpski is only interested in the suffering of Serbs in the Federation. Their articles attempted to show that Bosniaks committed large-scale crimes against almost 3,400 Serb civilians, mostly those remaining in besieged Sarajevo. Nezavisne novine and Reporter have been the most objective, describing the tragedy, the search for and the identification of victims, regardless of nationality. Of the TV stations, RTRS generally covered the issue when it concerned the suffering of Serbs, while FTV was mainly interested in cases affecting Bosniaks. This kind of presentation of such a tragic aspect of the war in BiH clearly demonstrates that most media prioritise their own nations and the political interests of their entity. To them, only the victims from their own nation are important, and their suffering is often misused. Victims on the other side are less important, or completely ignored. For this reason, the truth is very hard to find - on both sides.