(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:
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.