Still too many injustices ” “

Almost ten years have gone by since the end of the Serb-Croatian-Bosnian conflict and the Dayton accords, which de facto “designed” the contours of the new Bosnia. But the road to peace and reconciliation is still long: “Today we are having to cope with the crystallization of the injustices caused by the war”, says Monsignor Ivo Tomaseviç , secretary of the bishop of Sarajevo Cardinal Vinko Puljic during the years of the city’s siege (1992/95) and now secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina. “A re-organization of the State – he continues – is necessary and called for by all sides: but not with these premises”. The Dayton accords (21 November 1995) gave birth to a new Bosnian federal State, composed of a Moslem-Croat Federation (comprising 51% of the territory, including Sarajevo and Mostar) and the Serb Republic, with a Serb Orthodox majority. CATHOLICS, CRITICAL SITUATION. The Catholic Church in Bosnia has no national newspaper, no television station, and a language effectively boycotted by the State. Altogether, the situation of Catholics in Bosnia, one of the three ethnic groups that compose the intricate jigsaw puzzle decided at Dayton under the supervision of the international community, is becoming increasingly critical. “We need to act, and act quickly – is the appeal of Msgr. Tomaseviç, a journalist who has also established a press agency in Sarajevo –. Catholics are continuing to leave the country, and mass emigration is dramatically underway: the Church is losing its faithful and, without the Church in Bosnia, the whole of the West is at risk”. The problem of Catholics, almost entirely of Croatian origin, is that of being reduced to a minority almost everywhere with the country’s frontiers: a minority in the presence of the Muslim majority at Sarajevo and in the rest of the territory of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and a minority in the Serb Republic (with its capital at Banja Luka), where the Orthodox Serbs have obtained a de facto enclave from the international community. Only at Mostar are the proportions reversed, though there a system of “institutional parity” is in force that assigns to the Catholics, in spite of the fact that they are more numerous, the same political weighting as the Muslims and the Orthodox. The preferred goals of Catholic refugees are – apart from neighbouring Croatia – Austria, Germany and Sweden, and also Canada, the USA or Australia, where families can count on kinship ties or – ever more frequently – “easy” residence permits, mainly for reasons of work (the most requested professions are nursing and technical). “The problem – says Tomaseviç – is that the process is irreversible. In the majority of homes those who leave never come back again: it’s sad to say so, but the fact is that life is easier for a Catholic abroad than in Bosnia”. THE APPEAL OF THE CHURCH. Hence the appeal of the Church, which asks the world to take stock of the forms of discrimination still being practised in the Balkan area and at the same time to stop the ethnic cleansing that, albeit in a non-violent way, does not yet seem to have ceased ten years after the war in Bosnia. “In the first place – points out the secretary of the Bishops’ Conference – the problem of equality of rights needs to be tackled. Formally the three ethnic groups are at the same level, but the reality is very different. And the examples of this are legion: why, for example, is our right to speak and write in Croat not recognized? It is an autonomous language that needs to be protected by the institutions. Another enormous form of discrimination is in the world of the mass media, almost entirely divided between Serbs and Muslims. The result? In the rare cases in which a Catholic Mass is transmitted, the commentator is of Islamic faith”. ETHNIC IMBALANCES AND THE ECONOMY. According to Tomaseviç the economic problems (unemployment is around 50%) and the political problems, with a puppet government that does what it is told to do by the high representative of the international community, have a common root and cause, namely the ethnic imbalances: a continuous deadlock that blocks the daily life of the country, as exemplified by the lack of agreement – announced on 17 May – on the setting up of a single police force, with powers throughout the national territory. “The ethnic problem remains unresolved. And it cannot be overcome – concludes Tomaseviç – until all the players involved have the courage to clarify the current state of affairs. It also requires an effort to recognize rights and to promote mutual forgiveness, as always invoked by John Paul II. Without forgiveness there can be no trust and no future”.