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Q&A: Laying to Rest the Ghosts of the Past – With Truth

Vesna Peric Zimonjic interviews MIRSAD TOKACA, founder of the Regional Documentation Centre

SARAJEVO, Jun 13 2010 (IPS) - This year marks 15 years since the bloody war in Bosnia – Herzegovina (BH) ended. Apart from the 44-month siege of the capital of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces there was the massacre of some 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys after the United Nations-protected enclave of Srebrenica fell into their hands.

During the war, the three involved ethnic groups, Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims (Bosniaks), were merciless towards each other in other regions as well – in western and northern regions of Banja Luka and Prijedor, around the Herzegovina town of Mostar etc.

The war ended with the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. It administratively divided BH into two entities – Republic of Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. This sealed the divisions between three ethnicities and forced people to resettle in areas where they were in strength at the end of the war.

The country was left with devastated infrastructure and with two million of its pre-war 4.3 million population displaced, either within the country or through emigration to neighbouring Croatia, Serbia or other countries. There still are no exact figures on how many people now live in BH.

It is also not known how many had died. All three ethnicities, particularly Bosniak Muslims, insist on numbers reaching up to 400,000 victims of war, vying for sympathies and badly needed international aid that came not only from a stunned Europe and the United States but also from the rich Middle Eastern and large Muslim nations.

It was 12 years ago that Mirsad Tokaca founded, with the help of Scandinavian and other countries, the Research and Documentation Centre (RDC) in Sarajevo that has been painstakingly working on establishing the number of victims of war. So far, the Centre has confirmed 97,207 dead (with 21 sets of data, including names, places of death and circumstances), causing outrage among Bosniak politicians and passionate local nationalists.

The presentation of the RDC’s ‘Bosnian Book of Dead’ has been continuing all over BH since 2007, with data updates. It says 60 percent of the victims were civilians and 40 percent soldiers. Bosniaks make up 83 percent of the civilians and 54 percent of victims among soldiers, Serbs 10 and 36 percent respectively, and Croats five percent in both categories. The remaining victims were Roma, Jews and others.

Tokaca has faced death threats because of his unbiased findings. In an interview with IPS in Sarajevo, he spoke of his desire to bust the political monopoly on truth and bring reconciliation to the people of Bosnia.

Q: How did you get the idea of creating the Centre? A: I’ve worked in the state-run war crimes commission for a while since 1992. By doing the job and analysing some international experiences, I came to the conclusion that facing the past will be a long-term process, and that there should be no short-lived and ad hoc (onetime use) commissions. Due to the nature and character of the war, its seriousness, deep wounds and traumatic effects we needed the long-term approach. That’s one thing. The other is that the process has to be maximally if not completely de-politicised, democratic and de-monopolised.

Q: Why and what does that mean? A: I based my idea on the negative experiences we had here (in former Yugoslavia, where WW II atrocities among its nations were pushed under the carpet by the communist regime). After the WW II you had that deeply politicised, ideological process where the truth was the exclusive right of the regime. The whole process of facing the past was not because of the victims but aimed at promotion of the heroic achievements of the regime.

Q: And why is the new approach important? A: I believed we should not repeat such mistakes and that any effort to build a myth surrounding one nation’s victims, keeping them in the position that serves political goals, represents in fact the new crime against victims. The process of building the historic memory of one society should lie on fact-based truth. We were in a somehow perverted situation that as the years went on, the number of victims (claimed by Sarajevo) grew, up to 300 or 400 thousand, with no memory about them being cherished. We wanted to keep the memory of them alive, to establish the lists with names, and reconstruct the events if we honestly wanted to face the past. Only when the past is put behind with truth we can look to the future.

Q: And how does that serve the reconciliation in BH and in the region? A: Reconciliation will be a long and trans-generational process, not to be obtained as the international officials said: “Just sit down, talk and think about the future, it will all be done in a year or two”. That is absurd, even arrogant. But the rule of law, arrests of perpetrators and their facing of justice, teaching and educating the people who did not start the war but their elites did, that is the way. That is why we’ve started the project named ‘Positive Stories’ that describes the mutual help and solidarity people from all three ethnic groups provided to each other during the war, sometimes risking or losing their lives. Such examples will bust the stereotypes on inter-ethnic war that allegedly happened here. After all, there are no distinctions between people who live here – we look the same, dress the same, share the heritage and customs.

Q: But what has led to war, to atrocities? Is there such threat for others, abroad? A: The war in Bosnia was the war between political elites, who fought for power and overpowering or dominating each other. They abused ethnic feelings which is the case now as well – the war remains prolonged in another manner, by keeping the tensions and fears alive. It’s not hatred now, but fear of “others”. Similar things can happen anywhere in the world today. Prior to war, 200,000 people protested here in Sarajevo against the threat of it. You can organise similar demonstrations anywhere – millions will attend in Afghanistan, Iraq…But those who decide about the war have the force, and will certainly use that force no matter how many people go to protests against it.

Q: One of the burning questions here is the census, which Sarajevo refrains from, 15 years since the end of war. Is that because of the collapse of the idea of a multiethnic BH, as we see that Sarajevo is almost a completely Bosniak city? A: I always stood for it (the census). It would show the real human loss in BH, and what the ethnic cleansing produced here. We’d see that Muslim Bosniaks, who made two-thirds of population in eastern Bosnia (now the Republic of Srpska), make less than six percent now. The same goes for Serbs from Sarajevo. There were 130,000 before the war, and more than half have fled or left since. But ethnic divisions that were introduced during the war persist and are being promoted until today.

Q: People here are divided by ethnicity and everything seems to be linked to ethnic representation and proportion. Is that the solution for BH? A: I don’t like being limited to my ethnicity, I believe in the right of every person to enjoy human rights – safety, employment etc. I wouldn’t like BH to be graded down to the level of ethnicity; I’d like it to be the state for citizens who live in it, regardless of ethnicity. And that is hardly achievable under current circumstances. That is what the Dayton Peace Accords verified – first you belong to ethnicity and you’re not a citizen. I’d like to be a citizen. Young people strongly stand against that now – they feel limited to the ethnicity only, they have crisis of identity as the ethnic identity is not sufficient. They grew up ethnically, creatively and humanly restricted.

Q: You faced eruptions of hatred by nationalists and death threats because of your engagement, and non-nationalist views. How do you feel about that? A: When you have the experience of living under siege in Sarajevo, facing death every day, you begin to think differently. You don’t think about death, but about your goals. Yes, there were verbal attacks and threats, but I’m not afraid. That is because one attacks myths and lies and then one can expect responses. It’s bad to “bid” with number of dead, which was the case here. To all those I say, “Just imagine a football stadium with 100,000 people and they are gone, dead. That should be enough to sober you up, present the real picture and stop your bidding”.