Their protests had begun several months before in the village of Vozuca, near the town of Zavidovici [in north-central Bosnia]. For days the refugees demanded better conditions for themselves and their children, more food, clothing, shoes, appropriate accommodations and health care. There are approximately 1800 refugees from Srebrenica in Vozuca. The buildings in the village are destroyed since the village had until recently been a frontline [between Bosnian government and Bosnian Serb forces]; consequently the refugees lived without electricity, schools, a clinic... Dissatisfied and feeling deserted by the authorities, Srebrenica refugees blocked with their bodies the road Tuzla-Zavidovici-Zenica, demanding that the Bosnian officials resolve their status.
SACKING OF A RED CROSS BUILDING: The authorities started some activities in order to improve the situation of the refugees living in Vozuca, but everything ended with feeble attempts. At the end of the last and beginning of this month, thousands of refugees from Srebrenica, living in the counties around Tuzla, organized demonstrations in front of the International Red Cross building in Tuzla. The protesters demanded from ICRC the truth about the missing men from Srebrenica; after hearing the reply that the employees of ICRC "are working on that", the protesters broke into the offices of this institution and demolished the first floor of the building. ICRC employees locked themselves up on the higher floors of the building; all roads leading to Tuzla were blocked for hours; some ten cars, one truck and one bus, whose drivers tried to push through the crowd have lost all semblance to motor vehicles.
After giving vent to their dissatisfaction with international organizations because of the missing men from Srebrenica, the refugees "remembered" those responsible for their difficult situation.
"We understand everything! They did not let us leave in order to use our suffering to collect humanitarian aid and money. The received donations were not used to provide accommodation and food for us, but were kept by the authorities. The authorities are using humanitarian aid as a vehicle for some sort of their capitalism, all at our expense. You know, we will demonstrate until the authorities tell us how much humanitarian aid and donations were received from abroad and what they were spent on. That money wasn't spent on us! We are hungry, thirsty, sleep in tents in the middle of a winter; we lack clothing, shoes, food...," tells us Zejneba Mesic from Srebrenica, now living in the school building in Zivinice [near Tuzla].
Among the protesters, there were several men in uniform, obviously soldiers who survived Srebrenica calvary. They also accused SDA [ruling party in Bosnia and the largest party representing Bosnian Muslims] and the government for stealing and embezzlement; their political message was that they would not vote for SDA in the future but for Haris Silajdzic and the opposition.
This sharp criticism of the authorities and social and political demands of the refugees from Srebrenica were, naturally, ignored by the pro-government media. All the information about the demonstrations which appeared on the government controlled RTV Bosnia-Hercegovina and in the pro-SDA papers were presented as the anger of the refugees at the international community because of the missing. For days, the demonstrators were ignored by the authorities; nevertheless, in the last spate of demonstrations one could discern the involvement of a hidden director. The demand for clarification of the way in which the humanitarian assistance was spent was slowly drowned by the the demands regarding the missing Srebrenica men, and the anger at the authorities was more and more replaced by the anger at the international institutions.
Nevertheless, persistent demands in connection with the social and political problems resulted in a pre-approved visit of a refugee delegation to Sarajevo, more precisely, to the president of SDA and Bosnia-Hercegovina, Alija Izetbegovic.
GOVERNMENT STONED: However, instead of promised seven buses, cantonal authorities provided only one bus, which set out, with carefully chosen travelers, towards Sarajevo. This additionally angered the refugees from Srebrenica so that they demanded from the cantonal authorities, made up of SDA leaders, to provide another seven buses for the trip to Sarajevo. After the cantonal authorities ignored their demand, the refugees renewed their demonstrations in front of the canton government building; however, this time the strongest demands were in connection with the social and political situation. While they were stoning the building, the demonstrators swore at virtually all members of the current Bosnian leadership shouting: "We will vote for the opposition, Siladzic even Kljuic [a Bosnian Croat politician] if we have to!"
The accusations regarding the sellout of Srebrenica and embezzlement of the foreign financial aid were heard again. Fifty years old Habiba Dzananovic from Srebrenica, at the moment living in Lukavac, claimed that seven trucks full of aid for the refugees had recently arrived to Lukavac, but that none of the aid was given to the refugees. Rejha Mehmedovic claimed that Bosnian leaders were all thieves, that they sold the humanitarian aid for foreign currency while the refugees got two small fish cans, two pounds of peas, several ounces of oil and a little washing powder for a whole month, or only 100 grams of bread per day! Uniformed men were shouting "SDA-thieves", or "Alija, God willing you will perish like Srebrenica"; consequently, the ruling circles accused the opposition of organizing the demonstrations since the demonstrators were shouting political slogans!?
After the meeting of the chosen Srebrenica inhabitants with Alija Izetbegovic, domestic media tersely reported that the authorities "support justified demands regarding the fate of missing men; the social situation of the refugees was also discussed."
It is a somewhat strange that the government of the Tuzla-Podrinje canton knows to the last penny how much money non-governmental humanitarian organizations, which finance their project independently (instead of through the government), spend (organizations like Norwegian peoples aid and Norwegian churches assistance) while at the same time they do not know what happens with their own money. For example, what happened with $5 million donated by the Dutch government to the refugees from Srebrenica; the authorities are keeping quiet; they still haven't revealed the amount collected through the funds earmarked for the aid to Srebrenica, for example the SDA party account. Canton president, Izet Hadzic, one of the SDA leaders, claims that half of the money donated by the Dutch government was spent on the renovation of the buildings in Brcko and Srebrenik for the accommodation of the refugees. He is keeping quiet about the other half, $2.5 million. Still, it is known that the SDA president, Alija Izetbegovic gave a personal donation of DM 2 million (!) for the refugees in Vozuca, but those funds had been frozen for months because no one wanted (or knew how) to spend them.
Finally, it seems that the Bosnian authorities have underestimated the problems facing refugees, since the return of refugees, despite the [Dayton] Agreement, in practice still hasn't started. In Tuzla, people from Srebrenica showed that they had "had enough". It is reasonable to expect that the volcano of dissatisfaction will erupt in other towns in Bosnia-Hercegovina.