Читать книгу Post-War Identification - Torsten Kolind - Страница 7

The war started officially in April 1992, when Serbian forces occupied Stolac. But many people sadly recall an incident six months earlier, when a war memorial from World War Two commemorating fallen Partisans was blown up.⁴ The monument was located in front of the school. Today on the same spot the Croats have placed a bust of Ivan Musić, who was a leading Croat resister in the Herzegovinian revolt (1875-1878). The Serbian occupation of Stolac town did not meet any resistance. The Serbs set up their military camp outside town, but there was no fighting, and there was hardly any looting or killing as was the case in areas occupied by Serbs in eastern Bosnia during the same period. The occupation of Stolac had severe consequences though. Most of the Croatian population fled overnight, fearing the Serbian forces. The whole Serbian population of Stolac joined the Serbian army either compulsorily or voluntarily, and the Muslims secretly arranged a number of local defence units in order to protect their families if necessary. Some Stolac Croats have subsequently accused the Muslims of not having resisted the Serbian occupational force, but according to my informants resistance would have been suicidal, as the Muslims were too badly equipped to face what was the fourth largest army in Europe.⁵

Two months after the Serbian occupation, Croatian forces (the HVO and the HOS) conquered Stolac almost without a fight, and the Serbs withdrew to the mountains and hills east and southeast of Stolac.⁶ Many of the Muslims regarded the Croatian takeover as a relief. They hoped and thought things would improve, and many believed the Croats’ explicit statements about their desire for Muslim and Croatian coexistence, although on the other hand they also regarded the massive Croatian presence as a new occupation (vlast). Many Muslims from Stolac joined the forces of the Bosnian Croats (the HVO) because there were no units of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia Herzegovina (Armija BiH) in town: the closest was around Mostar, and service here would have meant separation from one’s family. Soon after the Serbian withdrawal, the Serbs started shelling Stolac, which caused several casualties, and fighting between HVO and the Serbs resumed.

The Muslims and Croats joined forces from June/July 1992 and for almost a year, though as mentioned above it was a marriage of convenience. There was sporadic fighting between Croat and Bosnian forces several places in Bosnia Herzegovina, though not in the Stolac area. Then in April 1993, the Croats started arresting leading Muslim intellectuals and local Muslim politicians in and around Stolac, as well as the few Muslims who held more responsible positions in the HVO. The arrests continued, and on the 1 July all adult Muslim men from Stolac were arrested, interrogated, beaten and driven to prison camps (logori). According to my sources the oldest person arrested was 90 years old, and the youngest 13. A few managed to escape through the mountains, and a few hid in the hills. According to my informants, the whole operation was carried out systematically by troops from the HVO and the HV (Hrvatska Vojska, the Croatian army).⁷ To the Stolac Muslims the mass arrest came as a surprise. Although they had had a feeling that something was going to happen, my informants had generally been ‘naïve’ enough to hope that ethnic cleansing was not going to happen to them. Nevertheless, the Muslim men were forced into prison camps known as Dretelj and Gabela after the villages of the same name outside Čapljina, not far from Stolac. The camps were former JNA (Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija; the Yugoslav People’s Army) hangars and ammunition warehouses, totally unfit for human habitation. The Muslims were crammed together in these extremely hot and totally dark buildings. They were beaten, threatened, starved and offered extremely low rations of water. And they were forced to listen to and also sing Croatian nationalist songs.

Women and children continued to stay in Stolac for about one month after the men had been expelled. It was a month of fear and uncertainty. Croats looted and burned down old Muslim houses, and terrorised the Muslim civilians. And the women and children had no information about their husbands, fathers and brothers. Then on 3 and 4 August, the women and children (and the men who had hidden themselves) were picked up in their homes, escorted to the school or a local factory where they were robbed, and then transported to the borders of Croat-held territory, from where they were forced to walk to the Bosnian-held territory of Blagaj. In Blagaj people searched for places to stay, in private homes, or abandoned houses: many families lived together in a few square metres.

Throughout the following year (1993-94) the women, children and elderly lived under miserable conditions. Both Croatian and Serbian forces shelled them, there was hardly any food to be obtained, and many contracted infectious diseases. Some managed to smuggle money or some basic food supplies past the Croatian search in Stolac, but these resources only lasted a short time.

Following the expulsion of the Muslims, Croatian forces started looting Muslim property in Stolac and destroying all signs of the town’s Muslim heritage: the town’s four mosques were blown up and the remnants were removed. Old houses, the town market, the town café, which had been built in traditional Ottoman style in 1986, and an office complex from 1990 were burned. Libraries, private as well as public, were burned, collections of carpets and rugs and other old irreplaceable antiques were destroyed.⁸ The destruction of Stolac formed part of what can be seen as a general ‘urbicide’ (destruction of urbanity) in Bosnia Herzegovina (Coward 2002).

For the first three months after the internment, the prison camps were kept secret, but their existence was brought to public attention after the visit of the journalist Ed Vulliamy to the camps on September 1993 (Vulliamy 1995: 277-86) and the visit of the Red Cross the day before. After the visit of the Red Cross, around 500 of the prisoners in the poorest condition were released, but only on condition that they were to be transported to territory outside Bosnia Herzegovina – that is, mainly European countries and the US. The rest remained in the camps. In the following month more were released, but many remained imprisoned until March 1994, when the Washington deal was signed. They could then rejoin their families in Blagaj and other areas; for a period of one year, they had not had any information about one another.