Amnesty International Report 1996 - Bosnia and Herzegovina

Muslims and Croats were forcibly expelled from the areas in which they lived by Bosnian Serb forces. There were reports of torture and ill-treatment, including rape and sexual abuse, in the course of such expulsions. Thousands of people were abducted by Bosnian Serb forces, many of whom were believed to have been deliberately and arbitrarily killed. Civilians were deliberately targeted by artillery, mortar or sniper fire, mainly by Bosnian Serb forces. Hundreds of prisoners of conscience were held by the various parties to the conflict. Most were detained solely on account of their national group. Conscientious objectors were also imprisoned. Many detainees were reportedly tortured, ill-treated or made to perform forced labour in dangerous conditions which amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Houses were deliberately destroyed as punishment. The war between the Vojska "Republike Srpske" (VRS), Army of the "Serbian Republic", on one side and the mainly Muslim Armija Bosne i Hercegovine (ABH), Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Hrvatsko Vijeµe Obrane (HVO), Croatian Defence Council, on the other, continued until November. Supporting the VRS were rebel Muslim forces, the Serbian forces of the "Republika Srpska Krajina" (RSK), "Republic of Serbian Krajina", in Croatia, and paramilitaries from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The ABH and HVO were supported by the Croatian Army. At the start of the year the VRS controlled around two thirds of the territory of the country. Despite attempts to introduce internationally brokered cease-fires, military activity was intense until the introduction of a comprehensive cease-fire in October. The different forces gained and lost control of significant areas of territory in the fighting. In particular, the HVO, the Croatian Army and the ABH took large amounts of territory in the west from the VRS. In May limited air-strikes against the VRS by forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were ordered by the UN after the VRS failed to answer an ultimatum to comply with a 1994 UN Security Council resolution which ordered the VRS to desist from artillery attacks on Sarajevo and to remove heavy weapons from the area. In response, VRS forces detained some 400 UN military personnel, many of them unarmed, in areas under its control and used them as "human shields" to deter NATO from further air-strikes. In July the VRS overran the UN-declared "safe areas" around Srebrenica and Ûepa. In July a UN Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) equipped with heavy weapons was deployed in the Sarajevo area. In September sustained NATO air-strikes and RRF artillery bombardments were used after the VRS failed to comply with a further UN ultimatum to desist from attacks on Sarajevo and to remove heavy weapons. In October, by which time the area controlled by the VRS had fallen to approximately 50 per cent of the country, a comprehensive cease-fire agreement was reached. In November an agreement was signed in Dayton, Ohio, USA, by the Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegoviç, and the Presidents of Croatia and Serbia. The agreement provided for a comprehensive peace settlement and new constitutional arrangements. The state was to consist of two "Entities", the (Bosniac- or Muslim-Croat) Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Republika Srpska (Serbian Republic), in a loose federal relationship. The UN peacekeeping force, UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR), was to be replaced by a multi-national Implementation Force (IFOR), which was to be established under NATO supervision to oversee the disengagement of the armed forces and the implementation of the terms of the agreement. A civilian international human rights monitoring mission, a UN Civilian Police monitoring operation and an internationally supervised national human rights commission were also to be established. The Bosniac-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was established in 1994, had made little progress towards full integration although one important human rights institution, the Ombudsman, became operational during the year. In March Bosnia-Herzegovina ratified the (First) Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. All sides accused each other of breaches of international humanitarian law. Monitoring and verification by international observers of abuses proved difficult, as access was frequently restricted by all sides and witnesses were often reluctant to speak for fear of reprisals. All sides also placed restrictions on the movement of UN personnel and the delivery of humanitarian aid. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia issued further indictments during the year, bringing the total number of individuals indicted to 52. Most were Serbs accused of war crimes against Muslims and Croats. The judicial authorities of Bosnia-Herzegovina deferred to the Tribunal criminal proceedings against Radovan Karadziç, leader of the Bosnian Serb de facto authorities, and Ratko Mladiç, commander of the VRS. In July the Tribunal issued indictments against them, accusing them of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war. A further indictment against them relating to the fall of Srebrenica was also issued in December. Indictments were also issued against seven current or former HVO commanders, including Dario Kordiç and Tihomir Blaskiç. They and four others were accused of crimes related to the killing and forcible expulsion of Muslims from the Lašva valley in central Bosnia in 1993. Pre-trial proceedings against the only person indicted by the Tribunal who was in its custody, Dušan Tadiç, a guard in a detention camp controlled by the Bosnian Serb de facto authorities in 1992, opened in April and were adjourned. Abuses against non-Serbs in VRS-controlled areas took place throughout the year. Individuals were attacked in their homes by soldiers or armed civilians. There were numerous reports of people being raped, beaten, threatened or killed in the course of forcible expulsions to Croatia or to territory controlled by the HVO or ABH. There were also reports of many abuses against Croats and Muslims following the arrival of displaced Serbs or Serbian refugees from Croatia fleeing after offensives by the Croatian Army, HVO and ABH. For example, a Croatian Roman Catholic nun, Cecilja Grgiç, and a priest, Father Filip Lukenda, reportedly died in a fire after their church was blown up in May. Many people were forcibly expelled by being taken from their homes and made to board buses. Men of military age were frequently separated from women and children before women and children were made to cross front lines, sometimes having to walk through minefields. Money was frequently extorted from victims for "permission" to leave or for the promised release of detainees. In July, as the VRS overran the Srebrenica enclave, ABH soldiers, other draft-age males and some women and children attempted to flee through the forest towards ABH-controlled territory. Those who reached it reported systematic ambushes by the VRS on the groups of soldiers and civilians, and the capture of large numbers of people, including civilians. There was strong circumstantial evidence that many of the 3,000 people who were reported to have fallen into the hands of the VRS and another 5,000 people who were also unaccounted for had been deliberately and arbitrarily killed by VRS forces or paramilitaries from Serbia. US intelligence photographs showed signs of possible mass grave sites in the area and a US journalist reported seeing what resembled a human bone, documents belonging to Muslims from Srebrenica, and spent ammunition at one of the sites. Other civilians from Srebrenica took shelter at an UNPROFOR base at Potozari. VRS forces which reached Potozari separated men from women and children. Some men were killed in the vicinity. For example, witnesses reported having seen near the base the bodies of at least nine men who had been shot in the back. Some women were taken away from Potozari and there were allegations that some had been raped. Many other corpses were seen in the area with indications that the victims had been unlawfully killed. A small number of the missing from Srebrenica were later discovered to be in detention but the vast majority remained unaccounted for at the end of the year. Although most Serb civilians fled ahead of the advances of the Croatian Army, HVO and ABH in western Bosnia-Herzegovina in September and October, and access to captured areas was restricted, there was evidence that serious human rights abuses occurred. For example, in September the bodies of two women were seen near the village of Vrtoze, an area controlled by the HVO and Croatian Army. Both appeared to have been shot in the head. Two Bosnian Serb journalists, Íasa Kolevski and Goran Pejnoviç, were detained by the ABH in September and were reportedly killed in custody. All sides, particularly the VRS, deliberately targeted civilians with artillery, mortar or sniper fire. For example, in May more than 68 people were killed when a shell fired by the VRS hit the centre of Tuzla. The same month HVO or ABH artillery hit the hospital in Bosnian Serb-controlled Doboj. There were numerous killings of civilians in Sarajevo in August attributed to VRS fire. The killing of 37 people in the centre of Sarajevo by a mortar bomb on 29 August was attributed to the VRS by the UN and NATO. Hundreds of detainees, some of them prisoners of conscience, were detained, and all sides held detainees. It appeared that most were held by the VRS. Many were combatants but others were civilians who had not used or advocated violence and had been detained solely on account of their national group or their political or other beliefs. International organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross were frequently denied access to places of detention. Detainees were often made to perform forced labour in conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, such as digging trenches close to front lines. Most civilian detainees were held on account of their perceived national group, but some individuals were detained for other reasons. For example, journalists and humanitarian aid workers were detained because of their activities. Nine members of the Merhamet Muslim aid organization in Banja Luka and Prijedor were arbitrarily detained by the Bosnia Serb de facto authorities from February and charged with "spying". At least some of the detainees and their relatives were beaten by soldiers. Among the journalists detained was Namik Berberoviç, a Bosnian Muslim. Marija Wernle-Matiç and Simon Gerber, both Swiss citizens, were briefly detained in two different incidents by the VRS early in the year because of printed materials found upon them while passing through VRS-held areas of Sarajevo in UN vehicles. None of the armed forces which mobilized men offered any civilian alternative to armed service. Conscientious objectors were imprisoned by the Bosnian Government: most were Serbs, but they also included Jehovah's Witnesses and adherents of other pacifist religious groups. Draft resisters and deserters, who may have included conscientious objectors, were prosecuted by the Bosnian Serb de facto authorities. In September and October Serbian paramilitaries tortured deserters from the VRS who left front lines in northwest Bosnia. Draft-age refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were mobilized by the VRS in collaboration with the Yugoslav authorities (see Yugoslavia entry). In November, following the signing of the Dayton Agreement which would hand the town of Mrkonjiç-Grad from Croatian to Serbian control, there were reports of the systematic destruction and burning of houses belonging to Bosnian Serb families by HVO troops. There were no confirmed reports of judicial death sentences having been passed or carried out during the year. Throughout the year Amnesty International raised concerns with the Bosnian, Yugoslav and Croatian Governments and with the de facto authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. From July it appealed to the Bosnian Serb de facto authorities to protect individuals arbitrarily detained by the VRS during and after the fall of the Srebrenica "safe area" and to account for the thousands of missing persons. In September Amnesty International published a report, Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Missing of Srebrenica. From October it renewed calls upon the governments of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia and the de facto authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to take action to resolve the fate of people who "disappeared" or went missing between 1992 and 1993, and published a report, Destination Unknown: The "disappeared" in former Yugoslavia.