/DAY OF THE DISAPPEARED/: 40,000 Still Missing in the Balkans

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Aug 29 2003 (IPS) - More than 40,000 people are still missing since wars tore apart what was Yugoslavia in the 1990s, says the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

The ICMP was established in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1996 after the wars in Croatia and Bosnia ended. It will mark August 30, the International Day of the Disappeared, with simultaneous events at four places to draw attention to the missing persons.

The custom of marking this day comes from Latin American countries, where it was started by the Federation of Associations of Families of Detained and Missing people from Latin America (FEDEFAM), Aldijana Buhic from the ICMP says.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, hundreds of families of the missing will meet in Kalesija, a small town near the border with Serbia. Kalesija is close to the spot called Crni Vrh where a mass grave with 700 bodies was found only last month.

The International Committee of the Red Cross puts the number of people still missing in Bosnia at 18,015. In many cases bodies have been discovered but not identified.

Those officially described as missing in Bosnia include some 7,500 men believed killed by the Bosnian Serb army in the small town Srebrenica in July 1995. Some 5,000 remains of these men were found in mass graves around Srebrenica in recent years. Others are still not accounted for.

Only DNA analyses can help identify the remains. So far the remains of about a thousand have been identified in labs run by the ICMP in Bosnia and in the Serbian capital Belgrade.

In Croatia, families of the missing will meet in front of a department store in Vukovar town. The town of 50,000 was turned into rubble in November 1991 when it was overrun by what was then the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA). The Red Cross puts the number of missing in Croatia at nearly 3,000.

In the southern Serbian province Kosovo, populated by ethnic Albanians and administered for the past four years by the United Nations (UN), families of missing persons will meet in the small town Fushe Kosovo. Some 10,000 ethnic Albanians went missing in 1998-1999 during the course of fighting with Serbian police and paramilitary units.

In Belgrade, families of missing persons will hold a round table at the local media centre. The round table will be dedicated to the memory of more than 2,000 missing Serbs, most of them from Kosovo.

"Finding out the truth about the fate of missing persons is crucial for the closure that it will bring to the families," Serbian official Nebojsa Covic said in a recent interview. "It should also help in reconciliation, if possible, among the former warring nationalities – Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, ethnic Albanians."

The wars in former Yugoslavia left about 200,000 dead in a population of 23.5 million. Most of the dead were civilians.

The leaders that took their nations to war have not been in power for years now, but Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs and ethnic Albanians seem no closer to reconciliation.

"There can be no multiethnic environment in the Balkans or rule of law unless the painful truth about missing persons is finally established," leading human rights activist Natasa Kandic told IPS. "The truth will also lead to justice for those who committed war crimes, in an environment that tends to minimise them, especially in Serbia."

The wars in former Yugoslavia started in 1991 with an independence drive by two of its six republics, Slovenia and Croatia. They wanted liberation from the orbit of Belgrade, capital of the biggest republic Serbia. Bosnia-Herzegovina followed in 1992.

The war in Slovenia lasted just six days with minimal casualties, but wars in Croatia and Bosnia lasted until 1995. They ended with the internationally sponsored Dayton peace agreement.

The independence drives were opposed by Belgrade, where Slobodan Milosevic was in power. He summoned all pro-unity forces including the JNA to "keep Yugoslavia together." The enterprise turned into wars against non-Serbs.

The problem for those who wanted independence from Belgrade was that a large number of 8.5 million Serbs lived outside Serbia. More than two million lived in Croatia and Bosnia. Milosevic described his war effort as "defence of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia."

Milosevic and the other leaders that took to independence through wars, all played on the differences among people living in former Yugoslavia. Serbs were Orthodox, but Slovenes and Croats were Catholics, Bosniaks were Muslims, as were ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Milosevic’s repression of ethnic Albanians led to the 11 weeks of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing of Serbia in 1999.

But mass graves that contain bodies of victims do not just speak of nationality or religion, says Kandic. "They simply call for justice."