War Criminals Used as Campaign Tool in Bosnia Election

When the leader of the Serb Democratic Party, SDS, Vukota Govedarica, who is running in Sunday’s countrywide polls as a candidate for president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, held a pre-election gathering in the town of Pale recently, he told his audience that he wanted to “look like” Radovan Karadzic.

“When [Karadzic’s daughters] Sonja and Ljilja speak to their father and husband and our first president tonight after the end of our rally, I would like to ask them to convey our greetings to him and tell him that the future president of Republika Srpska said he would look like him and not like the person leading Republika Srpska today,” Govedarica said.

Karadzic’s daughter Sonja Karadzic-Jovicevic is also running in the elections for the Republika Srpska parliament on behalf of the SDS, using the slogan “Let’s return [Republika Srpska] to the people”.

Her father – Republika Srpska’s first president and the founder of the SDS – was convicted by the UN court in The Hague of genocide in Srebrenica, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage, although he is now appealing against the verdict.

The Central Election Commission fined Govedarica 5,000 Bosnian marks (about 2,560 euros) and the SDS and its electoral partner, the Party of Democratic Progress, PDP, 3,500 marks (about 1,790 euros) for using the language that might lead someone to incite violence or spread hate. But the commission didn’t explain whether or not the fine was imposed because of Govedarica’s speech in Pale.

This was not the only incident during the campaign in which candidates have used war crimes defendants as a promotional tool, obviously believing that such a strategy will win votes from their own ethnic group.

A campaign billboard depicting the Bosnian Serb Army’s wartime Jurisni (Assault) Unit was installed last month in the town of Vlasenica. It also included images of the mayor of the municipality, Miroslav Kraljevic, and the former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hague Tribunal for committing similar crimes to Karadzic. Mladic is also appealing.

In response to the billboard incident, the chief of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bruce Berton, wrote on Twitter: “Glorifying war criminals? Promoting revenge instead of justice? How will this help the economy, healthcare or education?”

Berton said that he wanted voters and candidates to focus on issues that are important for their everyday lives.

“Glorifying war criminals certainly does not help the reconciliation process in this country, but it actually represents a distraction from politicians who are not willing to speak about the actual problems,” the OSCE mission chief told BIRN.

“I wanted to urge the citizens, voters and leaders to solve the important issues, such as health, education and corruption,” he added.

Only two of the country’s political parties responded to BIRN’s inquiry about whether it is right to use the names of people sentenced for war crimes during the election campaign.

“Mentioning persons suspected of or sentenced for war crimes during the campaign is legitimate as much as it is when there is no campaign, provided they are mentioned in an appropriate context within a politically correct speech which cannot be qualified as a hate speech and incitement, of course, and without invalidating the presumption of innocence if we are speaking about suspects,” said Nasa Stranka (Our Party).

The Croatian Party of Rights said it has no rules dealing specifically with sanctions for the “glorification of totalitarian regimes and criminals”, but that the matter is covered under the party’s statute, which has been “adapted to democratic norms and standards”.

Nationalist rhetoric is often seen by Bosninan politicians as a vote-winner. But political experts pointed out that war criminals are also being glorified when there is no election campaign going on in the country.

Vehid Sehic of the Forum of Tuzla Citizens said that it showed that there is no empathy towards the victims of the 1992-95 conflict.

“This proves that we are far from genuinely coming to terms with the past, no matter how often politicians say that war criminals are war criminals irrespective of their ethnicity, and that victims are victims irrespective of their ethnicity,” Sehic said.

Aleksandra Letic of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Republika Srpska argued that any kind of reconciliation process disappears completely when an election campaign begins.

“It is evident that not only are we not facing the past, but that facing it is not a topic of the elections, that the rights of victims of other ethnicities are not included in political programmes, but are being consciously trampled upon in election campaigns, buried even deeper, and what is going on is a competition about who will become the protector of national [ethnic] interests,” Letic said.

Five months after revisions to Bosnia’s Strategy for Processing War-crime Cases were agreed, the country’s Council of Ministers has not discussed the issue and now will not do before the elections.

The original strategy was adopted in 2008, and specified that the most complex cases would be solved within seven years and all the other cases in 15 years. But these targets weren’t been met and revisions were considered essential to expedite the resolution of the many remaining cases.

According to the proposed revised strategy, the new deadline for resolving all cases will be five years.

But the revised strategy has been hit by delays. The Ministry of Justice submitted it to the Council of Ministers in May this year, but it has not yet been put on the council’s agenda.

The Ministry of Justice did not respond to a question about when the revisions might be put on the agenda or when the Council of Ministers will adopt them.