Sarajevo Serbs Increasingly Mistreated by Muslims, U.N. Officials Say

Muslim harassment of this capital’s last remaining Serbs has taken an ominous turn by targeting the organization formed to protect minority Serbs, U.N. officials said Friday.

Leaders of the organization, the Democratic Initiative of Sarajevo Serbs, have found land mines planted in their front yards or have been stopped repeatedly by Muslim-Croat police for seemingly pointless questioning, the officials said. Two have been arrested for purported war crimes.

An estimated 8,000 Serbs remained in suburbs around Sarajevo that switched from Serb to Muslim-Croat control in March as part of the U.S.-brokered peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Many have been harassed, robbed and in some cases beaten by Muslim refugees who want to rid the area of Serbs and consolidate their control.

Neither the Sarajevo government nor the police have moved to stop the violence, and police officers have been implicated in several incidents, human rights monitors say.

The government’s failure to act has eroded belief in its commitment to ethnic tolerance, even though it preached the ideal of multiethnicity throughout the 43-month war.

“The voice of multiethnicity is pretty silent in Sarajevo these days,” U.N. official Alexander Ivanko said.

Violence against Serbs in suburbs such as Ilidza and Grbavica escalated about a month ago, when the ruling Muslim party began busing in angry refugees who had been “ethnically cleansed” from fallen eastern Bosnian towns such as Srebrenica, where thousands were reported massacred. Many consider themselves entitled to property, and small gangs, roaming at night despite an official curfew, have intimidated Serbs into leaving.

Ivanko said 72 Serbian families fled in recent weeks and others are considering doing the same.

In one incident about two weeks ago, a 63-year-old Serbian man was stopped by two Muslim police officers demanding his papers. They ordered him out of the car, forced him to take off his clothes and repeatedly insulted and threatened to kill him, according to a report filed with international police monitors.

The man was taken to a police station and beaten with a wooden baton--then forced to walk 16 miles home, according to the report. Police denied any wrongdoing.

There have also been numerous reports of Serbs leaving their homes to work in their gardens or go to the dentist and returning to find that a Muslim family has moved in.

Exasperated that Sarajevo officials are tolerating the abuse, Michael Steiner, a German diplomat in charge of carrying out the peace accord in the capital, said he was “ashamed” personally and for Sarajevo.

“I’m wondering why President [Alija] Izetbegovic is not talking about what’s going on here. And where is that pride of multiethnic Sarajevans?” Steiner said in a candid interview with the pro-government newspaper Oslobodjenje. “Nobody can tell me it is not possible to protect 8,000 Serbs against robberies, criminals and nighttime burglaries. . . . Nobody can tell me that a city that for four years defended itself against Karadzic’s troops is not able to protect 8,000 people.”

Steiner accused the Muslim-led government of carving out an ethnic enclave by bringing in refugees who will inevitably support the ruling party in this fall’s elections.

Also Friday, international officials condemned a decision by Bosnian Serb politicians to nominate indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic for president. The nomination is a direct slap at the peace agreement, which bans war crimes suspects from holding or running for public office.