Muslims bitter over anti-mosque violence

SARAJEVO, (AFP) - Bosnian Muslims expressed bitterness on Tuesday over violence by several thousand mainly Christian Serbs against the rebuilding of a mosque destroyed during the war that tore the country apart in the 1990's.

The violence on Monday, in the mainly Serb city of Banja Luka, left at least 30 people injured, and saw international officials blockaded inside a house for eight hours.

An association of people who survived the war's worst massacre, when Serb forces killed some 7,000 Muslims in the enclave of Srebrenica, said that the anti-Muslim riots in Banja Luka, capital of the Republika Srpska (RS), "was no surprise."

The statement said the RS "was created by killing more than 200,000 people, by destroying over two thousand religious facilities and by turning more than million and a half people into refugees."

Individual Sarajevo citizens expressed similar feelings, with some saying Monday's events in Banja Luka reminded them of the 1992-1995 war.

"The war leaders are still active behind the scenes and this is the same as during the war," said Selma Basic, a 26-year-old artist.

The Bosnian Serbs "attack the weak and helpless and the international community just expresses outrage, but without taking any measures," she said.

During Monday's violence several senior officials and foreign envoys together with over 300 Muslims were trapped in a building while outside an angry Serb mob was beating everybody who they thought was a Muslim.

It was the second incident of its kind in Bosnia in three days.

On Saturday, similar protests in the Serb-dominated city of Trebinje prevented plans to start rebuilding a mosque there.

"This is nothing new, it is just that we want to believe in peace too much so we do not expect things like this to happen," said 26-year-old lawyer Dzermin Pasic said.

"What can you expect when the ones who were killing people in Srebrenica have still not been punished?" he said.

"They raped and killed us for years and now we are open to living with them and they greet us with violence," said his 24-year-old friend Aida Kamberovic, clearly very upset.

Since the Dayton peace accords left Bosnia divided into two entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb-run Republika Srpska (RS) -- the RS authorities have failed to arrest Bosnian Serb leaders indicted for war crimes, notably over the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.

The indicted leaders include wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his commander Ratko Mladic.

This article is from The Revival's first website, where its publication date was not recorded. The date shown above is approximate.