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Absentee Muslims take Srebrenica by ballot box
October 9, 1997
Web posted at: 9:41 p.m. EDT (0141 GMT)In this story:
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- Bosnian Muslim parties have swept to victory in the eastern town of Srebrenica, a community that fell to the Serbs two years ago and has few, if any, Muslim residents.
The Muslims won a majority of seats on the town council when Muslim refugees who used to live here were allowed to cast ballots from elsewhere in Bosnia and abroad.
CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports
2 min., 23 sec. VXtreme streaming video
The Muslim victory was expected after registration figures showed that absentee Muslim voters outnumbered Serbs who had moved into the area. The Muslim coalition for a United and Democratic Bosnia-Herzegovina won 24 of 46 seats on the council. An independent Muslim candidate won another seat.
The nationalist Serb Democratic Party won 12 seats and its ally, the Serbian Radical Party, nine.
As a result, Srebrenica is the only town controlled by the Serbs where Muslim parties control -- in theory, at least -- the town council.
"According to the Dayton accords, we will have to accept them," says the town's Serb mayor. "But I can't predict the people's reaction."
The Serbs living in Srebrenica are themselves refugees who were displaced from their own villages during the 3 1/2-year war that broke out in the former Yugoslavia in 1992.
Serbs oppose Muslims' return
They have settled, however, in a town that was badly damaged by the war, and has a bloody and infamous history.
In the final months of the war, the Serb army led by Gen. Ratko Mladic stormed into Srebrenica. Thousands of Muslims were expelled and many were slaughtered and buried in mass graves.
As many as 7,000 Muslims are still missing in what human rights officials called Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
The Dayton peace accords gave all refugees -- not just Muslims, but Serbs and Croats, as well -- the right to return to their pre-war homes.
But implementing the results, as Srebrenica's mayor suggests, may be difficult if not impossible. Serbian nationalist leaders are unwilling to reverse the results of territorial conquest and "ethnic cleansing."
The rules say the new town council must convene within 30 days to be legally certified. And peace mediators say that towns failing to meet the deadline could face economic sanctions.
"It's fantastically important that election results be implemented," says Kris Janowski, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "If they are, we see a unique opening for displaced people across the country."
'We cannot live together'
SFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force, patrols regularly in the area, and officials warn that any resistance by the local Serbs to the return of Muslims will be dealt with sternly.
But short of a major relocation program that would substantially reshape the composition of Srebrenica's population, it is difficult to imagine that many Muslims will move back to enjoy the fruits of their election victory.
As one Serbian woman put it, "There will be genocide again if the Muslims come back. We cannot live together."
Correspondent Christiane Amanpour and Reuters contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- Next test for Bosnia: Enforcing election results - September 15, 1997
- Organizers call Bosnia elections a success - September 14, 1997
- Heavy turnout, few problems in Bosnia balloting - September 13, 1997
- NATO: Coup attempt against Bosnian leader thwarted - September 9, 1997
- Bosnian hard-liners stage defiant rally - September 8, 1997
Related sites:
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- NATO - official site
- Operations IFOR & SFOR provides information relating to NATO's role in bringing peace in the Former Yugoslavia
- OSCE: Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina - providing information about the OSCE's activities, particularly as they relate to the elections scheduled for September 14, and to assist refugees to vote
- Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina - from CARE
- BosniaLINK - the official Department of Defense information system about U.S. military activities in Operation JOINT GUARD, the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
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