Amnesty International Report 1997 - Bosnia and Herzegovina

Dozens of prisoners of conscience and possible prisoners of conscience were detained in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Federation) and the Republika Srpska (RS) for weeks or months on account of their nationality; some were hostages. Some detainees were tortured or ill-treated. Displaced people and refugees were deliberately prevented, because of their nationality, from visiting or returning to their homes by violent attacks and the deliberate damage to, or destruction of, hundreds of houses. Members of minorities, particularly Muslims, were forcibly expelled from their home areas by violent attacks or threats. A small number of people "disappeared". At least one death sentence was passed. As a result of the implementation of a comprehensive cease-fire in October 1995, and the signing of the General Framework Agreement on Peace (the peace agreement) in December 1995, there was no armed conflict during the year. The military peace-keeping force, Implementation Force (IFOR), led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), was deployed quickly. However, the civilian organizations and functionaries mandated to oversee the implementation of the civilian aspects of the peace agreement – such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the High Representative, Carl Bildt, and the UN International Police Task Force (IPTF) – which were all involved in human rights monitoring, lacked resources and were slow to deploy their missions. In December, IFOR was replaced by a smaller NATO-led peace-keeping force, the Stabilization Force. Tension remained high between the authorities in the two entities created under the peace agreement, the Bosniac- or Muslim-Croat Federation and the RS. There was also significant tension between the Muslim and Croat authorities within the Federation. Despite the parties' general compliance with the military aspects of the peace agreement, little progress was made towards implementing those aspects relating to human rights, such as freedom of movement and the right of displaced people and refugees to return to their homes. Few people were able to return, and most people moving outside areas where their nationality was in the majority were only in transit. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) believed that up to 250,000 refugees or displaced persons returned during the year. However, most of these people returned to areas where they belonged to the majority nationality. Amnesty laws applying to people who had "served in enemy armies" or had committed other crimes connected with the war, excluding war crimes, were passed in the Federation in February and in the RS in June. In the Federation, desertion and draft evasion were included in the amnesty law, but both acts were specifically excluded from the law in the RS. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (the Tribunal) issued further indictments for crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. These included an indictment against three Bosnian Muslims and one Bosnian Croat for crimes perpetrated against Bosnian Serbs in a detention camp in 1992. However, the vast majority of indictments were issued against Bosnian Serbs for crimes perpetrated against Bosnian Muslims. In December, in the Tribunal's first conviction, Draºen ErdemoviD, a Bosnian Croat and former member of the Bosnian Serb Army, was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. He had pleaded guilty to participating in the shooting of an estimated 1,200 Bosnian Muslim men captured near Srebrenica in July 1995. The Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat authorities, and the Governments of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) failed to arrest people indicted by the Tribunal in areas under their control (see Croatia and Yugoslavia entries). Governments contributing to IFOR also failed to ensure that their troops fulfilled their obligations under international law to search for and detain individuals suspected of grave breaches of international humanitarian law. Despite an expressed NATO policy that IFOR troops would at least detain people suspected of war crimes if they encountered them, on many reported occasions IFOR troops encountered people indicted by the Tribunal, but did not arrest them. On other occasions they deliberately avoided such encounters. However, several people indicted for, or suspected of, war crimes were arrested by the Bosnian authorities in the Federation and by the governments of Germany and Austria and transferred to the Tribunal. The FRY transferred one suspect, Draºen ErdemoviD. Despite reports that others were at large in Croatia, the authorities only arrested Zlatko Aleksovski, who had been indicted for crimes against Bosnian Muslims in 1993. He had not been transferred to the Tribunal by the end of the year. Only seven of those indicted for crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina were in the custody of the Tribunal at the end of the year. In October, the FRY authorities arrested and charged one man in connection with the abduction of around 21 people from a train at štrpci in 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1994). In September, national elections were held under the new Constitution. Municipal elections scheduled for the same day were postponed to 1997 by the OSCE amid evidence of massive manipulation of registration procedures for absentee voters, which was mainly attributed to the Srpska Demokratska Stranka (SDS), Serbian Democratic Party. Numerous incidents of violence in all areas against opposition candidates and their supporters were reported during the run-up to the elections, and the opposition in all areas complained of other forms of discrimination such as lack of access to the media. The main nationalist parties, the SDS, the Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica, Croatian Democratic Union, and the Muslim Stranka Demokratske Akcije, Party of Democratic Action, retained power in the elections. The former President of the Republic, Alija IzetbegoviD, was elected the first chairperson of the collective presidency under the new Constitution. A range of human rights violations occurred in most areas of the country throughout the year. Dozens of prisoners were held by all sides without charge or trial; many were possible prisoners of conscience. Most were held because of their nationality and were detained as they travelled through an area controlled by another nationality. The prisoners were frequently offered for exchange or exchanged, making them hostages, and their detention was a deterrent to those seeking to exercise the freedom of movement set out in the peace agreement. The authorities frequently failed to notify international organizations, particularly the IPTF, about detainees and denied access to some of them, in violation of the obligations undertaken by the parties to the peace agreement. Among the detainees were Father Tomislav MatanoviD, a Bosnian Croat Roman Catholic priest, and his elderly parents, who had been detained by police in August 1995. The RS authorities acknowledged that they were detained, but failed to give reasons for their detention, the place of their detention or to ensure their release. Others detained during the year included a Bosnian Croat man who was arrested by the RS authorities near Priboj in February. He was reportedly made to sign a blank piece of paper which was used for a false confession to war crimes and he was then offered for exchange. Both men were released in December. In July and September, four Bosnian Serb men went "missing" on roads near Sarajevo in two separate incidents. The Federation authorities denied knowledge of the detention of the four men until October, when international organizations found them imprisoned in Sarajevo. The authorities admitted that they had been detained and they were released shortly afterwards. In June, four Bosnian Serbs were detained by Bosnian Croat police close to the Inter-Entity Boundary Line near GlamoF, in the Federation, where they had driven to inspect their former homes or places of work. The men were taken to a police station in GlamoF but were concealed for 11 days from IPTF officers and IFOR soldiers who sought to visit them. International agencies were only able to gain access to them after they had been transferred to a prison in Mostar. The men were released in a prisoner exchange in July. In all these cases, the available information indicated that the detainees were prisoners of conscience. Some detainees were tortured or ill-treated in detention. Seven Bosnian Muslim men who were detained near Zvornik, in the RS, in May were reportedly beaten severely in detention in Bijeljina in order to extract confessions. In August, a Bosnian Muslim, Hasan KovaFeviD, died in custody in a police station in Banja Luka. According to the post-mortem examination, he had sustained fractured ribs, most likely as a result of beatings he received in custody. Displaced people trying to visit or return to their homes, particularly Muslims to the RS or to Bosnian Croat-controlled areas of the Federation, were frequently obstructed and physically attacked on many occasions. For example, in late April, when a large group of Muslims attempted to visit their village near Doboj in the RS, local Serbs attacked them, but the RS police who were present did little to restrain the attackers. Two Muslims were killed and others injured when they ran into a minefield while attempting to flee. Many other attempts to return, including some by Bosnian Serbs who wished to visit their homes in Bosnian Croat-controlled areas of the Federation, were obstructed by road-blocks, demonstrations or police officers who refused to guarantee people's safety. Although some of the pilot projects sponsored by UNHCR to ensure the return of Muslims and Croats within the Federation succeeded, key projects such as the return of 200 Muslims to the Bosnian Croat-controlled town of Stolac failed as a result of obstruction and violence by the Bosnian Croat authorities. In October and November, actions to prevent the return of displaced people included the widespread destruction, as punishment because of their nationality, of the houses which people, mostly Muslims, were to repair and wished to return to. For example, on one day in October, 94 Muslim-owned houses were destroyed in the RS. All were reportedly on a list of houses which displaced people wished to visit which had been passed to the authorities by UNHCR. Bosnian Serbs' and Muslims' houses in several Bosnian Croat-controlled towns in the Federation were also destroyed. Some Croats' houses in Muslim-controlled areas of the Federation, such as Bugojno, were also reportedly damaged. Some 60,000 Serbs fled the suburbs of Sarajevo before these were transferred from the RS to the Federation between January and March under the peace agreement. Most fled because of fears for their safety, caused by propaganda from the RS authorities and the deliberate harassment of those unwilling to leave by gangs of Bosnian Serbs. Following the transfer, Serbs who remained were subject to harassment, including beatings and arson, by Bosnian Muslims. The Federation police failed to provide adequate protection for them in the period immediately following the transfer. There were also frequent reports of forcible expulsions of members of the minorities who remained in other areas. Between April and June, there were frequent reports of violent attacks by armed men against Muslims in their homes in villages near TesliD in the RS. At least 94 people left for the Federation, apparently as a direct result of harassment. From September, UNHCR organized the evacuation of at least 100 Muslims from the Vrbanje suburb of Banja Luka after RS police failed to protect them from violent attempts to evict them from their homes. There were frequent reports of Muslims and Serbs being evicted from their homes in Bosnian Croat-controlled west Mostar. The victims were forced to seek shelter in Muslim-controlled east Mostar. Some information came to light on the fate of the "missing" and "disappeared" during the year, mainly as a result of exhumations of mass graves, new witness testimony and tracing operations by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Around 6,000 people, mainly Bosnian Muslim men, were still reported "missing" from Srebrenica (see Amnesty International Report 1996). The exhumations and new testimony from Draºen ErdemoviD (see above) reinforced fears that most of them had been deliberately and arbitrarily killed. A small number of new "disappearances" occurred during the year. For example, at least two Bosnian Serb prisoners of war who were seen in detention in Zenica by fellow prisoners in January remained unaccounted for after the release of their fellow prisoners; the Federation authorities had offered no information on their whereabouts by the end of the year. At least one death sentence was passed during the year, despite a commitment by Bosnia-Herzegovina under the peace agreement to implement Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms concerning the abolition of the death penalty. In March, Ivan StjepanoviD, a Bosnian Croat, was convicted in a court in Banja Luka in the RS of involvement in the killing of eight Bosnian Serb civilians in 1992. He was later released in a prisoner exchange. Amnesty International addressed the authorities, governments and organizations involved in the implementation of the peace agreement on a variety of concerns during the year. In March and April, the organization appealed to governments contributing to IFOR to fulfil their obligations under international law to search for and arrest individuals suspected of war crimes. In June, Amnesty International issued a report, Bosnia-Herzegovina: The international community's responsibility to ensure human rights, which made extensive recommendations, including one for a comprehensive human rights action plan.