June 1, 1996

Muslims in Sarajevo Take Over Homes of Serbs Who Fled War

By CHRIS HEDGES

ARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- In a policy that international officials here say is tantamount to ethnic cleansing and violates the Dayton peace agreement, the Muslim-led Bosnian government has expropriated tens of thousands of homes of city residents who fled during four years of war and is turning them over to Muslim refugees.

Most of those who fled and are losing their homes are ethnic Serbs or Croats, though some are Muslims. But the overwhelming effect of the policy is to prevent Serbian or Croatian residents from coming back, helping to keep what is now a largely Muslim city from returning to the melting pot it once was.

As families return after fleeing the besieged capital, or after leaving temporarily at the wrong time this year, they find their homes have been taken over by Muslims who were displaced from other parts of Bosnia or soldiers in the Muslim-led army. Other refugees may never return to Sarajevo when they learn their homes have been taken over.

Mehemed Kaltak, the city official in charge of allocating the 70,000 or so apartments now directly controlled by the government, has little sympathy for the distraught families who clog his waiting room.

"We have 30,000 people in this city who were forced from their homes in areas of Bosnia now controlled by the Serbs and the Croats. These displaced people have no place to live," he said, seated at a small desk covered with papers.

"These are the people who we must help, not the people who fled Sarajevo during the war. No one expelled people from Sarajevo. Those who left abandoned their homes of their own free will, so they have lost them."

International monitors here have repeatedly complained to the Bosnian government that the actions violate the Dayton accords as well as basic rights.

Branka Raguz of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said, "The government has pushed through a series of laws that are designed to carry out a silent, unseen campaign of ethnic cleansing."

Mrs. Raguz, whose office monitors human rights violations, said, "It was mostly Croats and Serbs who fled Sarajevo during the war, and as they return, they find they have no place to live. This is a direct violation of the Dayton agreement, that gives everyone the right to go home."

Branko Radanovic, a 41-year-old Bosnian Serb, haunts his old apartment building like a specter. On some nights he sleeps in the basement, on other nights a neighbor's couch. A few days ago, unable to resist the urge to visit his former apartment, he knocked on the door and was beaten up by the new tenant and his brother.

"Now," he says, "I don't go to my old floor."

The Sarajevo government in December, in a law that received little publicity, decreed that any Sarajevo residents who were outside the city had seven days to reclaim their homes if they were in Bosnia and fourteen days if they were out of the country.

The government also expropriated hundreds of apartments sold by Belgrade before the war to former officers of the old Yugoslav national army. These apartments were usually turned over to officers in the Muslim army. The two laws, in a single stroke, saw more than 130,000 people lose their homes.

But it is only now, as families drift back, that the magnitude of the seizures -- and the government's recalcitrance -- have become evident. Most of the 60,000 Serbs who lived in the five Serbian-held Sarajevo neighborhoods and suburbs that were handed over to the Muslim-led government earlier this year have also lost their homes to displaced Muslim families, many from eastern Bosnia. The few Serbs who have tried to return have encountered resistance from the government, human rights officials said.

"The government has rejected nearly every petition we have made on behalf of people who have lost their homes," said Mrs. Raguz. "The government makes no exception for people who were sick, had difficulty coming back or were not informed of the expropriation law. This is nothing more than government-sanctioned robbery."

Officials from her agency and other international groups here have filed numerous complaints to Muslim government officials. But they have, so far, held back from publicly condemning the government, hoping for a change in attitude, they said.

Lejla Curic, 51, who is a Muslim married to a Serb, said she was tossed out of her apartment in 1993 by five Muslim policemen. Her home and all its contents were given to Mufija Memic, a senior government official who now heads the government's Olympic Committee, she said. She has been unable to get her home back.

"At least on the Serb side, the officials say that everyone who is not a Serb should leave," she said. "Here the government pretends it wants to build a multi-ethnic society, while it is doing the opposite."

Demobilized Muslim soldiers receive carte blanche from their commanders to seize Serbian or Croatian homes, the troops said.

"A lot of my friends have taken over apartments, especially in the suburbs that the Serbs fled," said a soldier who insisted on anonymity. "We are not reprimanded for this, but I have refused to get an apartment for myself. It stinks."

Slavica Petrovski returned to Sarajevo two days ago after three years in Macedonia. On Thursday night she crept up to the door of her old sixth-floor apartment on Envera Sehovica Street. It is now inhabited by an officer in the Muslim army and his family.

Her eyes brimming with tears and her hands shaking, she flicked on a small lighter in front of the door. A plaque with the names of the new owners, Amira and Hajrudin Hasanovic, glimmered in the darkness.

"This is as close as I get to coming home," she said.