Karadzic: Moving Out Non-Serbs

On the second day of her testimony at Radovan Karadzic’s trial, a Hague Prosecution expert witness says that authorities in municipalities under Bosnian Serb control organised the removal of the non-Serb population.

Dorothea Hanson, an expert witness who drafted a report on the establishment and functioning of Serb crisis committees and wartime presidencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that municipal authorities confiscated property from the non-Serb population, creating conditions in which “the stay of non-Serbs was unimaginable”.

“As far as the moving of people is concerned, the point was not just to relocate people during the course of the war. They worked on substantially changing the composition of a municipality’s population.

“Wartime presidencies in municipalities said that property was only temporarily confiscated, but I think this is not a fair way of putting it, because their intention was to make those people leave for good,” Hanson said.

Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska, is indicted before the Hague Tribunal for having participated in a joint criminal enterprise with the aim of permanently moving the non-Serb population from the parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina claimed by Bosnian Serbs, by committing genocide, persecution, extermination, murders and deportations.

Among the participants in the joint criminal enterprise were members of the Bosnian Serb leadership; members of the Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, and bodies at the republic, regional and local level, including crisis committees and wartime presidencies.

During the course of cross-examination, indictee Karadzic said that Serb authorities did not persecute people, but “enabled those who wanted to leave to do so voluntarily”. Expert witness Hanson rebutted this claim.

“I believe that the Trial Chamber has heard witnesses who said that they did not leave voluntarily. I have not followed this trial, but I know that the general atmosphere was such that people said they wanted to go because the only other options for them were to be killed or imprisoned.

“I do not see that municipalities wanted to relocate people to a safer place, but move them out. We know that those who left did not come back later on,” Hanson said.

The expert witness explained that in many RS municipalities, non-Serb civilians were forced to sign a document prior to leaving stating that they were going voluntarily and letting the municipal authorities use their homes.

“Before leaving, people were allowed to take a maximum of 300 German marks, so they left a fairly big property behind. The wartime presidencies then sealed and seized this,” Hanson said.

Karadzic said that municipal authorities in RS acted “in accordance with the law”, adding that expert witness Hanson was “accusing the authorities of deporting all non-Serbs without evidence”.

“I have a problem with the word ‘accusing’. I just presented what I saw being done. I have never said that the authorities deported each and every non-Serb. It is possible to see that the authorities wanted to move enough non-Serbs out to allow Serbs to take full control over the territories they wanted, but it is not my job to accuse anyone,” the expert witness said in response.

Cross-examination of expert witness Hanson is due to continue on Wednesday, June 15.

D.Dž.