These apartments are earmarked for Serb refugee families, which currently live in Bosniak and Roma houses in Bijeljina. These families have already stated that they do not wish to return to their homes on the territory of the Federation Bosnia-Hercegovina, where they lived before the war. Once they move into newly built apartments, pre-war inhabitants of Bijeljina will be able to return to their homes.
The coordinating team of the German Government and the Bijeljina municipality has already established contacts between the families that wish to return to Bijeljina and those currently living in their homes. Thus, this project will be realized with cooperation of and in agreement with both sides. Already, an agreement with 17 families has been reached. The first phase of the project began three days ago. Namely, in the Bijeljina suburb Pet Jezera [five lakes] construction of five buildings with 36 apartments in total has begun. The total cost of the apartments is about DM1.3 million and the constructions should be finished in four months. That means that at the same time 36 refugee families from Bijeljina will return from Germany to their homes.
The municipal authorities have given firm guarantees for the personal safety and protection of the property of all returnees. The local authorities also guarantee that the returnees will easily obtain personal documents, including passports. Besides, as far as the return of the refugees to the Bijeljina municipality is concerned, is can be concluded that until now nothing has been done regarding that. True, there are individual returns and so far several hundreds of pre-war inhabitants have returned. Most of them are Roma.
Several returnee families managed to move in to their houses. Some now share their homes with Serb refugee families, while others have paid refugees to move out of their homes. Serb families find accommodation with their relatives, because there are numerous cases that members of one family occupy two and even more non-Serb houses. Some of the Serb refugees are emigrating and are giving up their current accommodation to those who pay best. So far, the authorities have not persecuted the returnees if they were able to find accommodations on their own. The returnees usually encounter long waits for personal documents, but do finally obtain them.
Translated on 1/30/99