Displaced Bosnians Are Suing to Regain Homes--and Winning

Her story starts out like thousands of others in this part of Serb-controlled Bosnia, a region synonymous with some of the war’s most vicious and systematic “ethnic cleansing.”

The uniformed men with guns broke into Meliha’s house six months ago, grabbed her by the arm and shoved the 62-year-old Muslim woman into the street. Her home was now theirs. She was being expelled like so many Muslims and Croats before her.

But here her story takes a new and remarkable turn. Instead of fleeing, she fought back. Meliha sued. And she won.

Reversing nearly four years of official compliance with ethnic-based banishment, a court here awarded Meliha her home, ordered the Bosnian Serb occupiers out and helped her move back in.

In the last few weeks, 33 other Muslim and Croatian families have been similarly restored to their Banja Luka houses and apartments, according to the court’s president and U.N. officials who have verified some of the cases.

“This is a very encouraging development,” said Steven Corliss, protection officer for the U.N. refugee agency in Banja Luka. “We hope it will be the first steps in the return to the rule of law. It is remarkable that a minority could turn to the legal system, given the history of this country.”

Compared with the estimated 500,000 non-Serbs who have been driven violently from northern Bosnia-Herzegovina since the Serbian takeover in 1992, the number of those who have regained their homes is minuscule. Throughout most of Bosnia, the dream held by nearly 3 million displaced people of returning home remains elusive. Still, human rights advocates say they see a glimmer of hope.

During the war, Banja Luka--the second-largest city in Bosnia before the conflict--came to symbolize the use of terror to rid a region of unwanted minorities. Bosnian Serb militiamen evicted Muslims and Croats with impunity, often entering homes at night, raping women and shooting men until entire families fled. Mosques, including a 400-year-old one in downtown Banja Luka, were destroyed.

From a prewar population of 530,000 Muslims and Croats in the Banja Luka region, only about 60,000 remained by the start of 1995. Then offensives by Muslim and Croatian forces began defeating Serbian forces elsewhere in Bosnia, and the Banja Luka minorities again paid the price: An additional 40,000 or so were evicted to make room for tens of thousands of Serbian refugees from Croatia and Bosnia.

Five to 10 families a day were being evicted as recently as November, Corliss said. Now, however, with a peace treaty more or less in force, the number of expulsions has dropped.

In addition to the 34 families who have gone home under court order in recent weeks, 177 lawsuits have been filed, said Judge Vukasin Boskovic, who presides over the district court here. All are Muslims or Croats, most of whom were expelled last year.

The first lawsuits were filed before the Dayton, Ohio, peace agreement was drafted in November, Boskovic said, but the trend certainly received a boost from the formal end of the war with the accord’s Paris signing last month. In only 10 working days in January alone, 61 cases were filed, he said.

“This short period of peace has made a difference,” said Boskovic, a career jurist who was born in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro and was named to head the court seven months ago. “Peace came, and people feel safer to address the court.”

Boskovic said he will continue to hear the cases even though the results are unpopular among the Bosnian Serb nationalists who control the half of Bosnia now called the Republika Srpska.

“We create a new problem this way, but . . . ,” Boskovic said, shrugging his shoulders. “The Serbs we are expelling are so bitter. There is lots of crying and shouting. People don’t want to move out. They can’t believe they’re being expelled by Serbs.”

In Meliha’s case, things were complicated by the fact that the man who seized her home was powerful. He was a close aide to Milan Martic, a leader of the rebel Croatian Serbs who were driven from Croatia in a Croatian government offensive last year.

But Meliha was luckier, and more persistent, than most. Her 25-year career as a lawyer who specialized in property cases gave her an edge, in both what and whom she knew. From the moment she was ousted from her home--a three-story apartment building she built in 1985--she hounded officials and judges until she could make her case.

“I am strong,” said the 5-foot woman with a worn face, still-vibrant eyes and a head of strawberry blond curls. “I have to fight. There is no life without fight. . . . They call me Joan of Arc.”

To sue, an expelled family has to know the name of the person who expelled them and the court has to be able to deliver a summons. Both requirements make it difficult to bring suit.

Meliha, who asked that her last name not be published because of her lingering fear of retribution, got satisfaction about two months after she filed her demand in court.

When she returned home, accompanied by police guards and a judge executing the order, the Martic aide had fled. Meliha’s apartment was in shambles.

The Serbs had taken everything except heavy furniture. Most of her legal books and files were missing or destroyed; a framed inscription from the Koran was shattered and stuffed behind a radiator.

Every photograph of her--during a high school reunion, visiting Sarajevo with her brother--had been chopped into pieces.

“We needed a month to clean the place before we could live here again,” she said.

Meliha, who previously withstood grenades tossed at her front porch and explosives planted in her garage, has turned to helping others suffering a similar plight. She plans to sue on behalf of an elderly Muslim couple expelled at gunpoint four months ago whom she has given shelter in her cellar.

There over the weekend, the couple--Safeta, 75, and her husband, Ibrahim, 85--sat huddled around a wood-burning stove, sharing a single cup of coffee. They have been thrown out of apartments by Bosnian Serb gunmen twice in two years, yet they remain determined not to leave Banja Luka.

“They can kill me, but I will stay here,” said the woman as her husband rested his forehead in his hands.

“Everyone has left,” he said. “But where to go? I am 85. I wait for my destiny.”

Both seemed doubtful they will live long enough to see their home again.

Wilkinson was recently on assignment in Banja Luka.