2012-10-06 18:50:27

Muslims fears amid Bosnia elections


(Vatican Radio)-- Voters in Bosnia-Herzegovina go to the polls in local elections amid mounting ethnic tensions in especially the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, the site of Europe's worst massacre since World War Two. Stefan Bos reports: RealAudioMP3

Voting for municipal councils and mayors in Bosnia-Herzegovina have been overshadowed by fears among Muslims from Srebrenica that genocide and ethnic cleansing will be rewarded, at the ballot box.


Bosnian Serb forces executed some 8,000 Muslim men and boys after they captured the eastern town in July of 1995 during the final months of the Bosnian war.


For almost 17 years, Srebrenica Muslims who lived elsewhere after fleeing the town, were allowed to vote in the local elections there, ensuring the town had a Muslim mayor.

REFORMING LAWS

But after for the first they will not be able to do so this year after voting laws were reformed.

Muslims now fear that Serbs who have a slight majority in this town of currently 7,000 people, can vote in their candidate.

Srebrenica's acting mayor Camil Durakovic, who survived the killings in the town and hopes to be elected, says a Serb mayor's victory would mean an extension of the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s.

"You can not for somebody who is a victim of genocide, who survived here and now lives in [Bosnian capital] Sarajevo due to genocide, [to] come here to be part of a political life," he added, referring to the new election rules.

FORGETTING PAST?

Yet his Serb opponent, Vesna Kocevic, says Srebrenica’s past "has held it prisoner" and that "it is time to look forward" towards more investment and job creation.

The troubles in Srebrenica underscore international concerns over remaining deep rooted divisions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where voters are expected to vote again along ethnic lines.


Seventeen years after the Bosnian war ended, the country remains divided between a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation.


The international community fears it will take many more years to heal society's wounds of a conflict in which at least 100,000 people died and 2 million were displaced.








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