COLUMN ONE : Buying a Way Out of Terror : A Bosnian city controlled by Serbs offers a view of ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Muslims must pay for their own deportation. Those remaining are fired and need permission to walk the streets.

Next door to the padlocked and bullet-riddled central mosque here, defeated Slavic Muslims like Sabiha Lovic line up at a charity office to plead for loans to buy their freedom.

They are would-be victims of “ethnic cleansing,” ready to capitulate to Serb militants’ brutal efforts to drive them out as soon as they can scrounge the money to pay for their deportation.

Like the European Jews required to purchase their own passage to World War II-era extermination camps, Bosnia’s repressed Muslims in this roughest of rebel strongholds must cover the costs of their own mistreatment.

“We’ve been trying to leave since summer, but it is difficult because we need money for all of the letters and guarantees,” Lovic, a 30-year-old lawyer, said of the numerous documents that must be bought from Serb authorities to secure permission to escape. “We want to go to Sweden, or Denmark, anywhere where our refugees are still accepted.”

Lovic and her family have given up any hope that their Bosnian homeland will ever be wrested from the Serb extremists who staged a swift armed takeover of Banja Luka last April and have since rid the surrounding towns and villages of all but Serbs.

About 30,000 Muslims and Croats are believed to remain in Banja Luka, Bosnia’s second-largest city, which had a prewar population of 195,000. Some have stayed on because they refuse to be forced from their native land, while others, like the Lovics, simply lack the resources to get away.

Serb extremists armed and dispatched by Belgrade were able to rout Muslims from smaller communities in northern Bosnia with relative ease. Throughout last spring and summer, truckloads of heavily armed rebels moved from one village to the next, shooting or firebombing each house to compel terrified residents to flee. Detention of Muslim men and gang rapes of women were also effective in forcing out non-Serbs from the nearby regions of Prijedor and Sanski Most.

But Banja Luka, like other large cities in Bosnia, was too thoroughly integrated to yield to the same terror tactics. Most Muslims here live in apartment buildings among the more numerous Serbs, making it difficult for the gunmen to shoot or burn them out without endangering their own people.

Those deterrents to the more effective means of ethnic cleansing have encouraged the rogue Serbian government to resort to administrative rather than military methods for urban expulsions.

Almost any Muslim encountered in the city has been fired without severance pay or explanation. Their homes are subject to summary search by unruly paramilitary gangs, and they must carry written permission from city defense authorities for the privilege of walking the streets.

Non-Serbs are prohibited from passing through any of the armed roadblocks ringing the city, and in some neighborhoods of single-family housing, they are required to mark their homes with white flags.

In the nearby village of Celinac, Muslims have been living under Nazi-like restrictions since a July edict by local authorities forbidding them to drive, swim, fish, visit restaurants, make out-of-town phone calls or leave their homes between 4 p.m. and sunrise.

“Every night they break into our apartments. They take away the men and demand our money,” said one 40-year-old Muslim woman, too frightened to disclose her name.

Drunken vigilantes who identified themselves as followers of Belgrade warlord Vojislav Seselj broke into the home of her aunt and uncle in mid-February and beat up two draft-age cousins as a warning that the family should leave, the woman recalled.

“How can we stay here? We have no jobs and no way to survive,” said the fired sales clerk, who has two teen-age sons to feed.

Mujo Memic, a 47-year-old elevator repairman until his dismissal last year, said that living conditions under the ruling extremists are increasingly intolerable, even for many Serbs.

“Everyone is intimidated. My Serb neighbors want to maintain our friendship, but it has to be at a distance,” he explained. “Even if we stop to speak only briefly in public, they know the contact will be noticed.”

The official pressures aimed at eviction of the Muslims have instilled such an atmosphere of tension in Banja Luka that few civilians are seen plying the streets among the ubiquitous, camouflage-clad gunmen.

This Ramadan season will be the first in centuries of Bosnian history to pass without evening prayers, because the city’s mosques have been bombed or booby-trapped, said Sead Hadzagic, a vice president of the Merhamet aid agency that now serves as a kind of shadow social service for jobless and hungry Muslims.

“We have restrictions on our movements. We cannot go anywhere from Banja Luka,” said Hadzagic. “Almost all Muslims in Banja Luka have been fired from their jobs. To walk around town, we must carry special papers.”

In their continuing quest to conquer Bosnian territory for annexation to neighboring Serbia, the rebel Serbs running this region have issued conscription orders to virtually every adult male--including the Muslims and Croats still loyal to the Sarajevo government and the ideals of integration and tolerance.

Lovic’s husband, for instance, faces charges of desertion for failing to respond to two mobilization orders issued by the Serbian rebel army last year.

“He cannot go out of the house or he will be arrested and taken to prison,” said the weary and emaciated woman, whose family has been without income for 10 months. “We cannot bear it any more. There’s nothing left for us but to leave.”

Among the documents that departing families must secure is a notarized statement attesting to their “voluntary and permanent” decision to transfer ownership of their property to the local Serb authorities.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic assured Western mediators last August that his forces were no longer compelling Muslims to give up their homes, cars and other valuables as the price for escape. But the hundreds thronging the Merhamet office for help in buying their way out of Banja Luka insisted that the property renunciations were still among the dozen documents required.

Others require attestations from local police, utility companies, even the public library, that the departing family leaves behind no outstanding bills and possesses nothing of interest to the authorities. Such written assurances from the issuing agencies, all controlled by the occupational authorities, often require hard-currency bribes in addition to the posted fees.

There are now agencies for arranging departures that charge the equivalent of about $130 per person, roughly eight times the average monthly salary, Hadzagic said of the official escape racket.

But to escape, one also has to pay the expenses of traveling and, in order to obtain a Croatian transit visa, show the means of supporting oneself abroad.

Bosnia is geographically enclosed by Serbia and Croatia. Non-Serbs fear seeking refuge in Serbia, where a nationalist fever and vicious propaganda have poisoned public attitudes toward the other ethnic groups with whom Serbs lived during the 74-year life span of Yugoslavia. Croatia was long the sole escape route for fleeing Muslims, but the Zagreb government suspended further acceptance of Bosnian refugees last September on the grounds that it was already struggling to care for more than 700,000 made homeless by the Balkan war.

Muslim community leaders say they despair over the growing numbers of people giving up on the future of Bosnia and paying the extortionate prices for the chance to seek a new life abroad.

“We are against this forcing out of our people. This is our country too,” said Jana Kapetanovic of the Muslim community council that seeks to help families in need. “But we get some donations from abroad to assist people, and we try to use this money to help families that are already divided.”

The few Croats still left in Banja Luka face the same repression, especially those prosperous enough to live in free-standing houses that lack the protection of Serb neighbors vulnerable to ricochets.

Slavko Lipovac, who built a spacious stucco villa on the outskirts of town nearly 25 years ago, was rousted from his bed one frigid February night by automatic gunfire shattering his front windows. Lipovac, his 75-year-old mother and sister all escaped injury, but their home is now exposed to the cold, and every wall, ceiling and cabinet is gouged with bullet holes.

“There is no explanation for this except that the people with guns want us to be afraid,” said the 52-year-old Croat fired last year from the wholesaling job he held for 30 years. “Of course we’re afraid, but we do not intend to leave. My family has lived in this city for 400 years.”

Banja Luka’s Serbian rulers, like its self-styled mayor, Predrag Radic, categorically deny all accusations of repression, echoing their patrons in Belgrade in blaming the widespread reports of harassment on an alleged international plot to discredit all Serbs.

Banja Luka and the vast Serbian-held area surrounding it has been repeatedly singled out by human rights agencies for criticism, and it is here that the officially sanctioned discrimination against Muslims has most often invited comparison to the policies of Nazi Germany.

One humanitarian relief worker who visited Banja Luka earlier this year reported charges by local Muslims that they were at times required to wear white armbands so they could be easily identified by Serbian police.

Hadzagic said he knew of homes being marked in rural communities but said he was unaware of any official attempts to identify individual Muslims.

Expressing resignation that even more blatant discrimination may lie ahead, Hadzagic said of the armband report: “We are not like the Jews, yet.”