http://www.cdsp.neu.edu/info/students/marko/vreme/vreme5.html
When the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina (ABiH) decided in June 1994 to settle accounts with Fikret Abdic, some 45,000 people fled with him to the Republic of Srpska Krajina; Croatia refused to accept them, Europe as well; the refugees refused to return to the territory controlled by the 5th Corp ABiH and, these days, the majority of them celebrated the anniversary in the small area around Velika Kladusa which Fikret Abdic controls with help of the army of Krajina Serbs.
Outcast Bosnian refugees stage Xmas hunger strike
(c) 1995 Copyright Nando.net
(c) 1995 Reuters
KUPLENSKO, Croatia - Children of an outcast Bosnian Moslem group stranded in Croatia are waiting for Santa Claus to show up as their parents stage a hunger strike to alert the world to their misery.
"At the time of holidays and feasts we want to express our protest in this way, hoping that a solution for us can be found, a way out of this valley of horror," said Izet Latic.
He and 74 other refugees loyal to fallen Moslem warlord Fikret Abdic have been on a protest fast since Thursday, the day after NATO took over Bosnian peacekeeping from the U.N.
Abdic's "autonomasi" (the autonomous) are afraid to return to their homes in the Bihac region now that it is back under the rule of the Bosnian government whose army they fought.
A cordon of Croatian police confines 15,000 refugees to a shanty town built along a rutted country road. They cannot make their way to the Croatian capital Zagreb, 50 km (30 miles) to the north, or Germany, their dream destinations.
"If only they allowed visitors, over the holidays at least," said 36-year old Latic.
Abdic, a millionaire businessman, has retreated to comfortable exile in the Croatian port of Rijeka from where he lobbies for "salvation" for his followers in the Bihac area.
His wife and two children have remained among his disciples in tents and huts erected along a road winding through a narrow valley transformed by melted snow into a sea of mud.
Their "homes" are patched together with almost anything, from wooden planks to cardboard and roof tiles. They have wood-burning stoves but no electricity or running water.
Underneath a decapitated slaughtered cow hanging from a hook, blood mixes with the dark brown mud. Unguarded and uncared for, war-wise children play outside in donated Italian rubber boots. One rides a small, grey, mud-coated donkey called Mario, prodding him with a cane. A man from the British aid organisation Feed the Children stopped by the other day to hand out apples to the children, their teacher Bajrama Pehlic said.
The children claim cheerfully that they got candy and other presents too but those are only the fantasies of deprived little ones, Pehlic said sadly.
But there is a chance they will really get what they long for most -- chocolate, sweets, cookies and cakes -- at this year-end holiday which all Bosnians have traditionally celebrated regardless of their religion.
The U.N. relief agency (UNHCR) is hoping that the Italian government will soon send in a plane loaded with goodies for the children of Kuplensko camp. A UNHCR official told Reuters the handout could take place on December 31. That would still be in time for the holiday.
"We usually had Santa on the eve of the New Year, you know," said Pehlic.
During the Yugoslav communist era most Bosnians, except Catholic Croats, celebrated Christmas mainly around the New Year, not December 25.
About 7,000 Abdic refugees have returned to the Bihac-area town of Velika Kladusa, their former stronghold, since the August collapse of their separatist revolt.
But rumours of murder and harassment there deter those remaining in Kuplensko camp from taking the same route despite repeated official pledges of safety and equal rights from the Bosnian government in Sarajevo.
"Did you ever listen to Radio Velika Kladusa? If you did you would understand why we cannot go back there," said one bitter elderly man. "They call us traitors, they call us monkeys and they say we should not be allowed to walk down the main street with our chins up."
He said he lost two sons and two sons-in-law in the 1993-95 Moslem-on-Moslem conflict, a strange sideshow in Bosnia's war, ended in November by the Dayton peace agreement signed by Serbian, Moslem and Croatian leaders.
Fikret Abdic won the SDA leadership with 1,040,307 votes to Izetbegovic's 874,213. Abdic gave up the leadership after Izetbegovic promised that he would go for a negotiated settlement. 'begovic lied and being far more interested in building an Islamic state (this is information from various BosMos papers (and authors)such as Dani and Oslobodjenje publish after the war), sank the Lisbon agreement with the support of the US.
Then, to cap it off, after the war when elections were to be held, 'begovic and his cronies accused Abdic of 'war crimes' which the ICTY took note of and he was thus disqualified from being a candidate. It goes to show to what lengths 'begovic and his pan-islamicsts would go to keep Abdic out. Finally, Croatia handed over Abidc to be tried in a Bosnian court for war crimes - it seems as if the ICTY didn't want to touch this case with a barge pole....
VRN