[ALBSA-Info] Bosnian protests over Serb violence

[Iris Pilika]

Bosnian protests over Serb violence

Thousands of Bosnian Muslims have been protesting against Serb violence

May 9, 2001
Web posted at: 1528 GMT


SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Thousands of Muslim protesters have demanded 
an end to harassment of returnees in Serb-held areas of Bosnia.

The protests on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, which swelled to 
thousands, were prompted by Serb riots over the weekend which prevented 
groundbreaking ceremonies for two mosques.

On Tuesday night demonstrators stopped outside the office of Bosnia's top 
international official, Wolfgang Petritsch, to highlight what they see as 
world indifference to their plight.

Sarajevo police formed a human shield in front of Serb Orthodox churches in 
Sarajevo, fearing revenge attacks, but the Muslim protesters walked by, 
chanting: "We won't do anything, this church is also ours."

On Saturday, a Serb mob threw stones at Muslim dignitaries and diplomats 
attending a ceremony to lay a new cornerstone for the Osman Pasa mosque, 
which was destroyed in the 1992-95 war, in the southeastern town of 
Trebinje.


Stone-throwing Serb mobs torched buses in Banja Luka
There were even worse scenes on Monday in the biggest Bosnian Serb town, 
Banja Luka, with up to 2,000 stone-throwing Serbs torching vehicles and 
keeping diplomats and Muslim visitors trapped for six hours.

Dozens were injured in one of the biggest Serb nationalistic outbursts since 
the Bosnian war ended in 1995.

At one point protesters stormed the police cordon and climbed atop the 
Islamic community centre, ripping down the flag, burning it, and hoisting 
the Bosnian Serb flag in its place.

Dignitaries trapped included Jacques Klein, United Nations mission head, 
Werner Blatter, who heads the U.N. refugee agency in Bosnia; and officials 
from the British, Swedish and Pakistani embassies.

Police said they had identified 42 suspects so far and several police 
officials had been dismissed.

The ceremonies were part of a project of ethnic reconciliation and the 
return of refugees, including providing for the reconstruction of some of 
the more than 600 mosques blown up in Serb-held areas.

The reconstruction of the mosques was ordered in 1999 by the Human Rights 
chamber, an international human rights commission. Bosnian Serb authorities 
then reluctantly issued a permit for the restoration of the Ferhadija 
mosque.

Former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic predicted in an interview that if 
Serb violence continues, the Bosnian Serb mini-state "will cease to exist," 
adding that extremism "has no perspective."

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica told reporters during a visit to New 
York that he was "very concerned and unhappy with the... violence and 
religious intolerance in the case of Banja Luka."

Some churches and mosques should not be rebuilt because they "might provoke 
these incidents," he said after talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi 
Annan.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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