MuseumDESCRIPTION:
On a recent visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Bosnian President Sulejman Tihic spoke with Jerry Fowler in the Darfur Display of the Wexner Learning Center about the major challenges facing Bosnia today, dealing with the truth of Bosnia’s history, accountability for war crimes, and returning displaced persons to their homes. They also discuss Bosnia’s responsibility in soliciting an international response to the crisis in Darfur.
TRANSCRIPT:
NARRATOR: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: This is a special episode of Voices on Genocide Prevention. It is an interview with Sulejman Tihic, one of the three presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now, I have to warn you, it was recorded under less than ideal conditions so the sound quality is not that great. But as always, a complete transcript is available on our web site which you can easily access by going to www.voicesongenocideprevention.org. While I am on the subject of the web site, there are two other things that I encourage you to check out there. First, the Voices on Genocide Prevention blog, which provides commentary and news in between interviews, and second, a listener survey, because we would like to learn more about you, no matter how long you have been a listener or how frequently you listen to this Podcast. Please take a few minutes and visit our web site at www.voicesongenocideprevention.org. You will find the blog and the listener survey link right on that page, and you can complete the survey anonymously. Now, here is my interview with Bosnian President Sulejman Tihic.
JERRY FOWLER: Our guest today is President Sulejman Tihic of Bosnia, Herzegovina. President Tihic is one of three members of the Bosnian presidency. Under the so-called Dayton Accords of 1995, which ended the war in Bosnia, the country was divided into two parts: a Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republica Srpska. The presidency has a representative from each of the three main communities: Bosnian-Muslim or Bosniak, Bosnian Croat, and Bosnian Serb. President Tihic is the Bosniak representative. During the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, he was detained at Bosnian Serb prison camps for about three months. President Tihic, welcome to the program.
It is 2006, over ten years since the end of the war in Bosnia, but the war was devastating; it split the communities. What are the major challenges that face Bosnia today?
PRESIDENT TIHIC: Bosnia-Herzegovina today is most challenging the economy issues, the reintegration of the society and communities, above all, it is about the reintegration, and all that happens because of a much more efficient and much more functional administration and government which will be able to resolve the internal issues in the country, and of course, to lead the community and the country to consider the European Union and NATO. A second challenge we are facing is finding those responsible for the war crimes, and I think the second one is an essential issue. It is about the action toward the war crime, in general, and it is about the punishment of the war criminal. Even in this regard, we have managed to achieve some progress.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me ask you about accountability for war crimes. The most infamous internationally of the war criminals are Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who are still at large. How important is it that they be apprehended and handed over to the tribunal in the Hague?
PRESIDENT TIHIC: It is about the destiny of our country; it is about a future for our country. It is the essential issue, not only because of truth and justice, but I am sure that the apprehension of Radovan Karadzic would release positive energy, specifically amongst the Bosnian Serb community, in the direction of building the country and building the nation, and of course, the acceptance of different cultures, ethnic and religious groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina. As long as these two are at large, we do not have the courage of the Bosnian Serb population to go on further, towards the positive direction, towards the future.
JERRY FOWLER: What are the prospects that they will be arrested?
PRESIDENT TIHIC: Within the last ten years in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the attitudes towards the war crimes and war criminals have been changed because until a recent period, until recent days, they were treated as national heroes, not like criminals. No one wanted to speak about Karadzic and Mladic’s apprehension. Today, it is a quite different situation. The people among the Bosnian Serb community are seriously speaking about it and trying to put forth efforts in order to resolve the issue. It is still not enough. Why is it important to apprehend these two through the ICTY? It is above all important for justice and for the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but it is also going to be important that the international community be stubborn on insisting that there is full cooperation with the ICTY.
JERRY FOWLER: I suppose one of the issues that is related to these questions of truth and accountability is having a shared and common understanding of what happened.
PRESIDENT TIHIC: Yes, you are right. The problem is about not having the common truth about the suffering in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992-1995. The people do have different truths if I can say so, as you mentioned in your introduction. I was captured in my native town, in Bashinkavitz, by a certain Zvezdan Jovanovic, a Serb who was the master of the death and the lies. He was mistreating us and he was beating us. The Bosnian Serbs in Serbia treated him as a national hero, but he was nothing but a criminal, a war criminal. After that, the Milosevic regime appointed him to be the chief of the special police unit in Serbia. Several years later, it has been proved that the very same Zvezdan Jovanovic assassinated the Serbian Prime Minister, Mr. Djindjic. There is vast proof that Zvezdan Jovanovic and the other people like him were not national heroes; they were the criminals.
JERRY FOWLER: How has this history been taught in the schools today? Is there a common narrative or story that is being conveyed to young people in Bosnia?
PRESIDENT TIHIC: For the time being, we only have the common bases of the common [inaudible] in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and these bases are not dealing with the issues regarding the most recent history in the country, but the truth about Bosnia during the war in 1992-1995 is to be found and proved by the ICTY and the International Court of Justice regarding the charge of Bosnia-Herzegovina against Serbia-Montenegro for abusing the prevention on genocide convention. It is also the domestic courts in the whole region who are also dealing with the war crimes issues, and I think it would be advisable to have a single, national commission to find the truth of the suffering of the civilians of Bosnia-Herzegovina disregarding of their ethnicity, of their religion and anything else, just to find the truth of what was going on.
JERRY FOWLER: One of the characteristics of the violence was that large numbers of civilians, especially Bosniaks, were driven from their homes, which gave us this term, “ethnic cleansing.” What progress is being made to allow people to return to their homes?
PRESIDENT TIHIC: According to all of the data, at least seventy percent of the people killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina were the Bosnian Muslims, about fifteen percent were the Bosnian Serbs, and about five percent are the Bosnian Croats. Bosnian Muslims are mostly returning to their pre-war homes, in fact, they are still facing all of the problems, starting from security, economic issues, because the Bosnian Muslims simply have no alternative; they have no other homeland, and of course they are trying to reconstruct their homes, their religious capacities, the infrastructure; basically they are trying to rebuild the multi-ethnic society and the situation is improving. As I said, their return is also important for rebuilding or reestablishing a multi-ethnic structure of Bosnia-Herzegovina as it was before. We have, alas, bad results regarding the Bosnian Croats and the Bosnian-Serbs returning to their pre-war homes, because these two communities did have the alternatives. For example, Bosnian Croats did have the Republic of Croatia and a lot of family and better possibilities to settle in Croatia, rather than stay in Bosnia. And of course, it was a sort of policy led by Tudjman and Milosevic; in doing so they wanted to divide Bosnia-Herzegovina upon the ethnic basis, so the people were just following this policy and these two ethnic groups, Serbs and Croats, were settling in certain regions of the country where they were told to live. Serbs were mostly concentrated in the Republica Srpska territory; also, we had a lot of Bosnian Serbs living in the big cities, like in Sarajevo and Tuzla and Bihac, and they are returning to their pre-war homes, but not as much as the Bosnian Muslims.
JERRY FOWLER: I saw that you were quoted one time—this is in English, so maybe the quote was changed a little bit—but it was to the effect that you would not have survived if it were not for good Serbs. What did you mean by that?
PRESIDENT TIHIC: Exactly, because I have passed throughout the tortures in five Serbian concentration camps; I spent about four months in the concentration camps, and two of the concentration camps were in Serbia, and the guards in the concentration camps were the Serbs only; the Bosnians could not be the guards there, they could be the prisoners. There were good Serbs, as I said, because when the soldiers came to kill and assassinate the people, they put me away. They put me with the other group, or they put me to the basement; or sometimes, they put me away and I avoided to be beat severely. So many people died due to bad beatings, and they also gave me sometimes some food or some medicine. It was a huge thing if they allowed you to have a shower or to drink some water. The mere fact that they put me on the list to exchange me as a war prisoner allowed me to survive. Otherwise if they brought me back from Serbia to Bosnia to a concentration camp, I am not sure that I would have survived. And as I said, only the Serbs could help you in that way because they were the guards, they were the heads of the camps. And I could see some individual guards, Serbs, in these concentration camps who were very sorry about the torture, and were opposed to it, and they would sometimes secretly give some bread or some cake to us, or they would simply just let us have some sleep. That meant a lot to us.
JERRY FOWLER: Today, the world’s attention is, from time to time, focused on what’s happening in Sudan, in the Darfur region where, as ten years ago, you have a Muslim population that is under attack, although in this case, it is by its own government. What is the role of a country like Bosnia that has experienced mass ethnic violence in stimulating international response to the situation in Sudan?
PRESIDENT TIHIC: You know, the suffering and the violence in Sudan must be in the focus of the public throughout the world. It also must be the focus of the activities of the heads of the states who can help, and I think they should do their best either through the United Nations organizations or even unilaterally in regard of such actions that will stop the violence or prevent it, disregarding all the races, or ethnicities, or religions that the people practice. This time is real, because I think it was the essential duty of the United Nations, you know, to be able to react quickly to such a crisis. Unfortunately, the racism and genocide are being repeated even after World War II, and it is therefore important to keep these international courts to try not only the executors, but the political and the military leaders, those who had planned and organized such a crime, you know. It is not possible to allow the politicians or the military leaders just to stand behind some irresponsible individuals as they use to say.
JERRY FOWLER: Sulejman Tihic is the President of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mr. President, thank you so much for being with us.
PRESIDENT TIHIC: Thank you very much.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
