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Vote in Srebrenica shadowed by its horrific past
Shooting is over, but enmity lingers
September 12, 1997
Web posted at: 8:47 p.m. EDT (0047 GMT)SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- In 1991, 36,000 people lived in the Srebrenica, and three-fourths of them were Muslim. Today, there are 20,000 residents, none of them Muslim.
In the ugly war that engulfed the former Yugoslavia, Srebrenica stands as a symbol of the worst of its excesses. And as Bosnia goes to the polls this weekend to elect municipal officials, in no place is the notion of democracy more ironic than here.
Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serbs in 1995 after a brutal three-year siege. An estimated 8,000 Muslims were executed by the Serbs in its aftermath, and the rest fled.
But as Srebrenica goes to the polls this weekend, there are thousands of Muslims on the voting lists. Enough, indeed, to capture a majority.
They are on the lists because while they do not live here, the terms of the peace agreement specify that those who did live here before 1991 are entitled to vote in local elections.
CNN's Mike Hanna reports.
"It can't be!" says an angry woman when told how many Muslims are on the lists. "It will never happen. There are enough Serbs to win even through Muslims registered dead people."
"There will be problems," said a local man. "There are people on these lists with their hands covered in blood."
OSCE says there will be no fraud
Posters everywhere in this town bear the image of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadazic, although he is not a candidate in this weekend's local election. In fact, he has been indicted by an international tribunal on war crimes charges -- in part because of the actions of Serb soldiers who forever changed the composition of this town.
Now that they have a majority, at least of those who actually live in Srebrenica, Serb party workers have studied the lists to find evidence of Muslim voter fraud. They say names are duplicated, identity numbers are duplicated and that there are Muslim voters on the rolls who have been listed as missing since 1995.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are adamant that there will be no voter fraud. But what also interests them is how certain the Serbs are about the fraud, and how familiar they are with the voting fraud tactics.
"All the leadership here suspects the other side of hanky- panky," said Jacques Klein, a deputy high representative for OSCE. "Dual voting, triple voting ... that's how they've done it in the past. So it is interesting when you ask them, 'how do you know so much about how that's done?' It's because that was the way they used to do business."
A Muslim victory in Srebrenica would not be accepted by the Serbs, that much is clear. There is too much hate and distrust. And in what remains of this battered town, such notions as democracy, equal rights and redress of the evils of the past are too far-fetched to contemplate.
Correspondent Mike Hanna contributed to this package.
Related stories:
- In Bosnia, ethnic cleansing scars are difficult to heal - August 31, 1997
- U.N. police evacuated in troubled Bosnian town - August 28, 1997
- U.S., German officials: Attacks in Bosnia must stop - July 27, 1997
- Summit leaders turn up heat on Bosnia - June 21, 1997
Related sites:
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- NATO Official Homepage
- BosniaLINK - Department of Defense
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