| Bosnia and Herzegovina |
- Lone preacher: the Serb mayor who is trying to heal Bosnia's
scars of war
Published: 9:00AM BST 01 Aug 2010
- A reconciliation project in a town that was once notorious for its atrocities has made
its mayor a target for politicians trying to exploit old hatreds, reports Colin Freeman
in Foca
The grenade that he thought might one day come his way has yet to be tossed into
his mayoral parlour, but Zdravko Krsmanovic still takes a certain civic pride in being
one of Bosnia's most controversial politicians.
The 52-year-old boss of the eastern Bosnian enclave of Foca, he is the mastermind
behind what is arguably one of the most daring town hall equal opportunities
programme ever.
Since coming to power five years ago, he has turned what was once a notorious
scene of ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serbs back into to a town where Bosnian
Muslims feel safe to live again.
Previously described as a "black hole" in the Balkans, where the only outsiders who
got a warm welcome were fugitive Serb war criminals, Foca is now a model of
harmony between the former factions.
Today, Mr Krsmanovic's office is lined with certificates from the outside world
congratulating him for spreading "European values", while Foca's newly-integrated
citizens have rewarded him with a second term in office. However, fellow Bosnian
statesmen have been rather slower in dishing out plaudits – quite the opposite, in
fact.
Instead, in a region where politicians have long been known for their love of hatred,
his conciliatory message has made him little short of a bête noir within the country's
ruling class.
"My political dream is to expel the hate from Bosnia, and if I can do it here, so can
everyone else," said Mr Krsmanovic, who received threats from hardliners in Foca
when he first took office. "The problem is that the ruling political parties still have an
interest in spreading nationalism, and they see me as a threat because equality
does not suit them." That men like Mr Krsmanovic are still effectively lone preachers
in Bosnian politics is just one reason why Western diplomats are becoming
increasingly worried for the future of the multi-ethnic state, formed by the 1995
Dayton Peace Accord after a civil war that cost more than 100,000 lives.
Rather than coming closer together, the country's Serb and Muslim leaders are
fanning the old flames of nationalism, threatening a collapse of the political
framework set up to prevent a return to armed conflict. Overlooked in the past
decade because of the focus on Iraq and Afghanistan, Bosnia has once again been
identified as a priority by both Britain's new Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and
Baroness Ashton, the new European Union foreign policy chief.
Their concerns have been heightened by threats 10 days ago by the Bosnian Serb
prime minister, Milorad Dodik, to hold a referendum on whether the Serb portion of
Bosnia, known as the Republika Srpska, should form a breakaway state. He was
speaking in response to a declaration by the International Court of Justice that
backed the right of Kosovo to secede from Serbia proper, a move most Serbs resent
as a loss of their heartland.
Yet these days, Mr Dodik needs little provocation to talk the language of separatism.
Once considered a moderate by Serb standards, he is accused of spending much of
the last decade unpicking efforts to make the Republika Srpska integrate with its
Muslim and Croat partners, hobbling the hugely costly international project to return
Bosnia to its melting-pot past.
Foca, which sits amid forest-covered slopes and gorges on the river Drina, is a
shining example of the kind of reconciliation that the rest of the country has so far
failed to follow.
In 1992, it was one of the first towns to be ethnically cleansed by Serb nationalists,
who infamously used its sports centre as a "rape camp" to abuse Muslim women.
The rest of the town's 20,000 Muslim population were forcibly expelled, and a mass
grave of some 350 bodies was later discovered nearby.
Moreover, in the years that followed, the townsfolk defiantly refused to show any
remorse. Women who tried to erect a plaque in memory of the rape camp in 2004
were chased out, and its populace, who renamed it "Serbina" in honour of its blood
sacrifices for their ethnic "Fatherland", were suspected of hiding Serb leader
Radovan Karadzic during his years on the run for war crimes.
Such was Foca's recidivism that Washington imposed "sanctions" on the town,
refusing it reconstruction cash for its moribund communist-era timber factories and
coal mine.
Gambling that most of Foca's people were secretly fed up with isolation, Mr
Krsmanovic, an ethnic Serb himself, embarked on an aggressive facelift program.
He rebuilt some of the 14 mosques that had been destroyed, banned Serb Orthodox
Church iconography from municipal buildings, and visited Sarajevo, 45 miles east, to
invite Muslims back.
Some 4,000 have now returned, while the ending of "sanctions" has helped him
build schools, a theatre and a new sports centre, cementing his appeal to both
communities.
"At first, some former soldiers and people who died in the war accused me of
dishonouring their sacrifice by working the Muslims," said Mr Krsmanovic, who also
changed Foca back to its old name. "There were times when I thought I might get a
grenade through the window. But I know the people well here, and now they support
me."
Mr Krsmanovic now has other fans in people like US vice-president Joe Biden, who
singled him out for praise last year during a visit to the Sarajevo parliament, where
he scolded the rest of Bosnia's MPs for failing to work together. But right now, he
says, he needs all the powerful friends he can get. His progressive agenda, and his
calls for Bosnia to merge its Serb and Muslim-Croat mini-states into one proper
federal unit, have made him bitter enemies within the nationalist camps.
He accuses Mr Dodik's Serb Democratic Party of trying to have him impeached, and
claims it has also instigated police to investigate him for any whiff of scandal.
True, touring around Bosnia today, it is hard to see outward signs of sectarianism.
Sarajevo, the capital, is a cosmopolitan place, its violent past marked only by the so-
called "Sarajevo Roses" – mortar shell craters filled with blood-red concrete as
memorials to the four year Serb-led siege in which 10,000 civilians died.
British soldiers in Eufor, the peacekeeping police, say there are none of the
sectarian street flare-ups that still dog Northern Ireland, and Sarajevo feels as
cosmopolitan today as any other European capital.
"Bosnia should be united, as we are stronger together," said Edin Mujezinovc, 22, a
Muslim drinker in Mash, a smart Sarajevo bar. "I have Serb friends and Croat
friends, although I don't really take that into account when I meet them." Instead,
analysts say, the problem lies not in the street but with Bosnia's politicians, for whom
crude nationalism remains the easiest card to secure a core constituency.
Part of the problem is the original Dayton arrangement itself, which tried to soothe
ethnic divisions by giving rotating political posts to each ethnic group. As a result, a
country of approximately four million inhabitants has some 140 different ministers, a
recipe for political patronage that offers little incentive to think outside ethnic boxes.
That has stymied proper reform of the police and schools, which still educate
children in separate ethnic groups, and has currently led to the farcical situation of
the Bosnian national football team facing expulsion from Fifa. The sport's world
governing body says that unless Bosnia's football federation drops its insistence on
having a rotating three-man leadership selected on ethnic lines, it will not be eligible
for the 2012 European Cup.
Many observers say that while Fifa has got tough, the international community has
not. The Office of the High Representative, the US and European Union-backed
body set up to oversee the country, retains extraordinary powers to suspend
Bosnian politicians if they do not work together properly, while Brussels also wields
the stick of denying hoped-for EU membership.
Yet in recent years it has failed to knock heads together on vital areas like police
integration, partly, critics say, because of complacency within Europe that all is now
well.
Among those concerned is Lord Ashdown, who acquired a reputation for toughness
during his time as High Representative, but who says his successors have not been
given the political backup they need.
"Bosnia was once the posterboy for international intervention," he told The Sunday
Telegraph. "But I think Europe has lost interest in it, and the dynamic among some
of its politicians is now more toward dissolution than unification. European aid, for
example, should have been withheld if politicians work against Europe's policies by
breaking up the Bosnian state."
With general elections due in October, the nationalist talk is gaining in volume. In
remarks last week after the Kosovo ruling, Mr Dodik played to Serbs' long-standing
sense of being bullied by the West, saying they were "the stereotype of bad guys
and a bad state".
So far, his threat of a referendum remains purely rhetorical, but even the prospect
of it is enough to make Bosnian Muslims feel threatened. Not only would it mean the
loss of a huge chunk of what they regard as their spiritual territory, it would amount
to a return of the old Karadzic-backed plan to divide Bosnia – the very thing which
sparked war back in 1992.
"The bottom line is that Europe cannot stands aside and absent-mindedly allow
Bosnia to be broken up," said Lord Ashdown. "If it does that, then it is becoming the
instrument of the policies of Karadzic."
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bosnia/7920311/Lone-
preacher-the-Serb-mayor-who-is-trying-to-heal-Bosnias-scars-of-war.html
| Bosnia's Catholics Nearly Gone Cardinal Rodé Notes Growth of Islam, Orthodoxy in Former Yugoslavia SARAJEVO, Bosnia, JUNE 26, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The Muslim population is growing in Bosnia to such an extent that Sarajevo is a "practically Muslim city," according to Cardinal Franc Rodé. The prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life affirmed this when he spoke with Vatican Radio about his June 19-21 trip to the Balkans. The prelate stated that Catholics were the main victims of the war and many fled the country, heading to Croatia or far-away nations like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. He explained that many had their houses burned and others fled for their lives. Many priests and religious were killed, and churches and monasteries destroyed. "Numerically, they have diminished a lot," he said after his visit at the invitation of Cardinal Vinko Puljic. There are only 17,000 Catholics in Sarajevo, he noted, a city of 600,000. "In the Diocese of Banja Luka, before the war between 1991 and 1995, there were 150,000 Catholics; now there are only 35,000." An opportunity Nevertheless, Cardinal Rodé affirmed, the Catholics desire to remain there and offer ecclesial services, particularly social services and education and formation made available to everyone, Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim. In Banja Luka, Bishop Franjo Komarica is planning a Catholic university to be distinguished by interreligious dialogue. "The Church I found in Bosnia and Herzegovina, though numerically reduced, is a living Church, full of hope," the cardinal said. "[It] is a very motivated Church, and priestly and religious vocations are not lacking." Meanwhile, more than 100 mosques have been built in recent years, the prelate added. "There is, in fact, the will to Islamize the region of Sarajevo," as well as the will "to make the Serbian Republic an Orthodox nation." In Serbia, Cardinal Rodé noted, the government is constructing Orthodox churches. He observed how the leaders of that nation are today openly Orthodox. In this context, the Vatican official expressed his hope that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there will be "relationships of tolerance and, if it's possible, of respect and a certain affinity and collaboration." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8130042.stm |
End of the road for mercy missions
Friday, June 19, 2009, 07:30
RETIRED bus driver Mick Plunkett has been forced to end his aid
missions to orphanages in Eastern Europe after suffering a spinal
seizure.
Mick Plunkett has visited the Balkans more than 30 times since
founding Bosnia Relief Aid and The City of Derby Humanitarian Aid
Convoy in 1995.
The groups were disbanded four years later, but Mr Plunkett continued
to travel to the area and estimates he has taken millions of pounds
worth of aid donated by Derby people.
But on a recent holiday to the Philippines, the 61-year-old suffered the
seizure, which left him paralysed for four days.
He was rushed to hospital before being transferred to specialist spine
unit at a private rehabilitation unit in Iloilo – where he remained for the
next three weeks.
He underwent gruelling physiotherapy but was eventually allowed
home on an aircraft fitted with beds to keep his spine immobilised.
Now recovering at his Alvaston home, Mr Plunkett said the experience
had forced him to reevaluate his life and make the tough decision to
stop the aid journeys.
He said: "For the first four days I was in immense pain and unable to
stand or even walk.
"I have enjoyed every minute of every trip. Seeing the children's faces
makes it so worthwhile. But due to my mobility problems, and the
threat of more seizures which could leave me paralysed, a decision
has been made to cease taking aid to the area after 14 years."
Mr Plunkett, of Burnside Street, was moved to act after watching
scenes of the aftermath of the three-year Balkan war, which broke out
in 1991. He said he felt he had to go out and help.
The enterprise grew over the years, culminating in the biggest trip last
year, which saw Mr Plunkett take more than 600 boxes filled with
sweets, clothes, toiletries, shoes, toys, bedding and medical supplies,
all donated by local schools, churches and companies.
Mr Plunkett, along with friend Brian Kite, 57, of Stanhope Road,
Swadlincote, drove more than 3,000 miles in a van that was fully
reconditioned for free by Derby Tyres and Derby Truck and Van Repair
Centre.
Mr Plunkett said he wanted to thank people that had supported his
venture over the years. He said: "Derby is a caring city with caring
people. It is a sad day."
Aid already collected by Mr Plunkett has been donated to the Balkan Aid
Relief Foundation, based in Lincolnshire.
http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/news/End-road-mercy-
missions/article-1090631-detail/article.html
Friday, June 19, 2009, 07:30
RETIRED bus driver Mick Plunkett has been forced to end his aid
missions to orphanages in Eastern Europe after suffering a spinal
seizure.
Mick Plunkett has visited the Balkans more than 30 times since
founding Bosnia Relief Aid and The City of Derby Humanitarian Aid
Convoy in 1995.
The groups were disbanded four years later, but Mr Plunkett continued
to travel to the area and estimates he has taken millions of pounds
worth of aid donated by Derby people.
But on a recent holiday to the Philippines, the 61-year-old suffered the
seizure, which left him paralysed for four days.
He was rushed to hospital before being transferred to specialist spine
unit at a private rehabilitation unit in Iloilo – where he remained for the
next three weeks.
He underwent gruelling physiotherapy but was eventually allowed
home on an aircraft fitted with beds to keep his spine immobilised.
Now recovering at his Alvaston home, Mr Plunkett said the experience
had forced him to reevaluate his life and make the tough decision to
stop the aid journeys.
He said: "For the first four days I was in immense pain and unable to
stand or even walk.
"I have enjoyed every minute of every trip. Seeing the children's faces
makes it so worthwhile. But due to my mobility problems, and the
threat of more seizures which could leave me paralysed, a decision
has been made to cease taking aid to the area after 14 years."
Mr Plunkett, of Burnside Street, was moved to act after watching
scenes of the aftermath of the three-year Balkan war, which broke out
in 1991. He said he felt he had to go out and help.
The enterprise grew over the years, culminating in the biggest trip last
year, which saw Mr Plunkett take more than 600 boxes filled with
sweets, clothes, toiletries, shoes, toys, bedding and medical supplies,
all donated by local schools, churches and companies.
Mr Plunkett, along with friend Brian Kite, 57, of Stanhope Road,
Swadlincote, drove more than 3,000 miles in a van that was fully
reconditioned for free by Derby Tyres and Derby Truck and Van Repair
Centre.
Mr Plunkett said he wanted to thank people that had supported his
venture over the years. He said: "Derby is a caring city with caring
people. It is a sad day."
Aid already collected by Mr Plunkett has been donated to the Balkan Aid
Relief Foundation, based in Lincolnshire.
http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/news/End-road-mercy-
missions/article-1090631-detail/article.html
Bosnian town of Foca Zdravko Krsmanovic is trying to turn the town of Foca, best known for wartime atrocities and harboring war crimes fugitives, into a center for sports and tourism. Photo: Mahir Vranac |
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