by Emir SULJAGIC
The village of Paunci, on the road between Foca and Gorazde, was almost totally destroyed in April 1992. Some of the villagers, those who survived, hid in the forest, some of them until September of that year. The married couple Frasto, Ibro and Sevala was among those who did not survive the "cleansing" of the village. He was born in 1911 and she in 1922. Ibro was killed in his yard by three unidentified persons. Sevala was cut down by a burst of fire from an automatic rifle. She was hit in the head and later buried in the garden; Ibro remained in the house, which was then set on fire.
While the physicians and technicians collected pieces of her scull, placing them in a plastic bag, the surviving members of the family fearfully peeked into the shallow grave, an elderly woman cried loudly, and two policemen with two-headed eagles on their blue hats [of the Republic of Srpska Police] set in shade behind her. Murderers still walk freely through Foca, only about ten kilometers away from the village.
The corpse was wrapped in the blanket in which the woman had been buried, or more correctly covered with soil in hope that animals would not dig her up. Just as the corpses of the three men buried across the road. The surviving witnesses say that the corpses were buried by Mate Burilo, a neighbor. They spoke silently and furtively, sending from time to time distrustful glances in the direction of the policemen and Slobodan Skrbo a member of the RS Commission for the Missing, who walked around, talking too loudly, making too strong and unnatural gestures, as if he wanted to desecrate graves of the people he did not know. For him that was work, as well as for the two IPTF policemen, one in a French and the other one in a Nigerian uniform. That day, only at that spot, nine people were dug up, the youngest of them born in 1942.
"You mean a tragedy?" I asked.
"Yeah, yeah, tragic, you'll write that this is... I heard what you asked that woman. It's my job to listen."
"And what is this if not a tragedy? Nine dead people, nine grieving families, and we shall make a tragedy. Are we supposed to dance on top of graves!?"
"Do you know how many Serbs are left in Gorazde?"
"I do not know, but call us when you exhume them, so that we can write about that."
"Ah, noooo. We just do the job and do not talk around about that."
The discussion that threatened to turn into something worse was interrupted by Kemo, one of the members of the [Bosniak] State Commission for the Missing at the beginning of another Skrbo's tirade: "You are inciting, and we shall again, if there is war," he said pointing with his finger at the Serb policemen, "shoot at each other, and you will keep the score!"
In the meantime Masovic with the remainder of his team reached a third common grave, then a fourth one. They were assisted only by Brenda Kennedy, a Canadian forensic expert working for the office of the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP):
"Has this ever become only a job for you?"
"I hope not."
The dossier of the missing in Bosnia-Hercegovina (BH) has a long time ago stopped being, if it ever was, a story about the number of the missing. That is a story about the people who miss them, their families, people who search for their remains, collecting them in fields, digging them from graves, both those dug up quickly and hastily to hide the remains from animals and inclement weather, and the deep ones dug up with the goal to hide the traces of crime. That nevertheless does not change the fact that the death statistic is higher on the Bosniak side. The graves in Paunci, says doctor Nermin Sarajlic, a member of the expert team, were shallow. Graves dug with the heavy mechanization are often four meters deep, and sometimes even deeper. "Some of them go down seven meters."
Figures that aren't: According to the data of the International Red Cross in Bosnia-Hercegovina, at this moment among the missing (although the associations representing families strongly oppose the use of that term) include 16,862 Bosniaks, 2,522 Serbs, 711 Croats, 35 Albanians, 11 Montenegrins, 19 Roma, six Ukrainians, four Slovenians, and two Hungarians. In spite of everything, these figures are questionable. Three Bosnian commissions for the missing still claim that the actual numbers are higher. "The criteria used by the Red Cross for the reporting of the missing are very strict. Only an immediate family member can report disappearance, while we collected data from all possible relevant sources: surviving witnesses, neighbors, friends, acquaintances," says Amor Masovic, the president of the body that still goes under the name the State Commission for Missing Persons. However, some of the so far identified remains were not even in the ICRC database for several reasons: the whole families disappeared, so that no one could report their disappearance, while others did not know where to report the disappearance of their loved ones. Namely, Masovic estimates that the number of missing Bosniaks, as well as Serbs and Croats, is higher: "We've had 31,105 reported disappearances. However, those reports were not updated, although certain individuals were found, some had never disappeared, although they had been reported..." He, on the other hand, believes that the current figure is about 28,000.
According to the estimates made by knowledgeable individuals, most of the people who disappeared in 1995 were reported, but many crimes committed in the first year of the war, mostly in Bosnian Krajina, remain unreported.
A large number of those who survived do not live in BH anymore. It is estimated that only 30 percent of the missing have been reported. (According to the book Due to no guilt on their part: the book of missing persons from the Prijedor Municipality, which was published this month by PIC Patria Lusci Palanka and the Association of Women of Prijedor Izvor from Sanski Most, only in that municipality 3,227 persons were listed as missing). The RS Commission for Missing has 4,000 names in its lists. As its president Jovo Rosic has resigned, and Milorad Dodik still hasn't accepted that resignation, Dani could not obtain an official reaction.
The statistics about the number of missing for each war year proves that many of the victims will never find their way to the official registries. Thus, in 1992 9,640 people disappeared. In 1993 - 1,069; in 1994 - 345, and in 1995 - 9,282. The last number includes the missing from Srebrenica and Serb soldiers disappeared in the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina operations on the Ozren mountain and in Krajina. There were less missing in 1994 because by that time the process of ethnic cleansing had already been completed, and the figure from 1994 mostly includes the soldiers from all three armies missing in action, while the missing from 1993 include civilians and a few soldiers disappeared in the clashes between the HVO and Army BH. The overwhelming majority of the missing from 1992 are Bosniak civilians. And that is the problem in the blackest statistics from this war. The State Commission in cooperation with the Hague Tribunal has so far exhumed 8,150 sets of human remains, while only 7,000 missing residents of Srebrenica are still being sought. In addition, there are about 2,000 missing from Foca, Gorazde, Visegrad, Cajnice, and an undetermined number from Bosnian Krajina. That means that at this point the Commission has already found 1,000 sets of remains more than have been officially reported to the ICRC.
The news about the construction of a laboratory center for DNA analysis in Tuzla (and later in other cities) has brought some hope to the families of the missing, because that is today the most reliable method for the identification of human remains. The ICMP is behind this project, and its officials stated that that laboratory will in the next five to seven years be able to examine 20,000 bone samples and 100,000 blood samples. But more somber analyses claim that by then, the number of available remains could be far smaller. Besides time, which destroys remains left on the surface, frequent moving of mass graves additionally, probably deliberately, destroys the remains protected by the soil.
Too frequent forest fires: For example, the International Tribunal in the Hague has recently returned to BH remains of 140 persons exhumed in Kevljani near Prijedor. Among these remains there were only 72 whole skeletons, the rest were partial sets of human remains: bones broken by bulldozers during the displacement from a different grave. This information is that much more significant because that grave most likely contains remains of camp inmates from Keraterm.
In one of its first exhumations this year in the Bratunac region, at the spot where last year it found several tens of human remains deep in soil, the State Commission again found roughly the same number, but this time on the surface. The fact that they were on the surface indicates that in the meantime the remains had been moved to an already "cleansed" location. One of the returnees to the villages around Bratunac made that discovery by chance by literally stepping on a skeleton in the forest. At the same time, the number of forest fires, exactly along the path taken by the inhabitants of Srebrenica who tried to break through to Tuzla in 1995 is alarmingly high. According to very reliable sources, there were almost ten fires during the last few days!
All at the time when the associations of families of the missing from Srebrenica are intensively lobbying for the construction of a memorial center in Potocari [near Srebrenica]. But, their idea, above all thanks to the SDA from Srebrenica, got unnecessary, dirty and at times creepy background. Namely, everything started with the poll conducted by the Association "Mothers from the Enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa" conducted among the families of the missing. In the poll, they were given the possibility to pick a place where the remains of their loved ones would be buried: Potocari, Kladanj-Ravni Stanovic, and Canton Sarajevo. The following results were obtained: 7,944 respondents circled Potocari on their ballots, 1,414 Kladanj, and 459 Sarajevo. Based on the agreement signed by Momcilo Krajisnik, Kresimir Zubak and Hasan Muratovic in September 1996, "the will of families is to be respected regarding the burial of the remains". However, during the conduct of the poll, the hawks from the municipal SDA tried to convince the refugees from Srebrenica to abandon the idea of burial in Potocari and accept the burial in Kladanj. When the results of the poll were already known, Bosniaks from the Srebrenica local authorities did another "favor" to the families: the executive council of the Srebrenica Municipality at a session held on April 4 this year, in spite of the mentioned agreement, formed a four-member commission, two Serbs and two Bosniaks, "who within a week have to offer four locations" for the construction of the memorial center.
"We shall accept only Potocari," said Munira Subasic, the president of the mentioned association, "because otherwise it would turn out that we lied to the families." This story got another bizarre twist when it turned out that Sreten Petrovic is one of the members of that commission, elected with the agreement of the SDA's members of the executive council. In July 1995 he was noticed among the civilians in Potocari. "I saw him, he looked as if he were wounded, because his arm was bandaged and he held it on his chest," says one of the members of the Association, who requested that her name be withheld.
None of our interlocutors dared predict how long would be needed to bring this process to an end. Masovic answered that question in the following way: "I can only tell you that recently, searching for the missing from this war, in a ravine near Nevesinje we found remains of about fifty German soldiers from WWII. Should I add anything else!?" After all, only one thing is almost clear. Most of those who are still missing are most likely dead. As is also clear that not all of them will be found, in spite of the iron will of the families to conclude the search for their loved ones. Their will was once already crushed by the tanks and tons of steel and lead. The families of the missing are today living remains of stolen lives, hoping that their sons are alive, knowing at the same time that a decent funeral is all they will one day be able to do for their children.
(Irfan Horozovic, "Due to no guilt of their own", the preface to the "Book of missing persons from the Prijedor Municipality")