Bosnia Is Our Motherland

``A campaign has been started against the Sandzak Muslims. The authorities are trying to destroy the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), the political and national representative of the ethnic Muslim populace. Their aim is to make the people move away from here. This is because the SDA confirmed its political legitimacy and articulated the interests of the people here at the 1990 election and by boycotting the 1992 and 1993 elections,'' said SDA Sandzak branch General secretary Rasim Ljajic talking to VREME about the latest events in Sandzak.

``The aim of this persecution is to encourage and intensify the emigration of Muslims from Sandzak, all with the idea of changing the demographic structure here.''

VREME: What methods have been used?

LJAJIC: Various methods--physical, economic, cultural and other pressures. The physical option was used most often. The Muslims have been denied an elementary rightthe right to live. Remember the kidnapping of the passengers from the train, the mysterious disappearance of Muslims from the Pljevlja community when they were taken to Cajnice and then exchanged for Serbian POWs... Around 35 villages have been cleansed in this way. Over 70,000 Muslims have left Sandzak and gone to Western Europe, Scandinavia, Turkey and now to other continents.

VREME: But there were weapons?

LJAJIC: That's traditional in the Balkans. Arms trafficking has always existed in these areas. The twenty-five accused men do not deny that, the problem is that the disarming is being done selectively, and only in Muslim houses where it is done brutally and bestially.

VREME: There is an impression that the local SDA has been more occupied with the problem of Bosnia than Sandzak?

LJAJIC: Well, the Muslims are a unique part of the Bosnian national fabric, and BosniaHerzegovina, is, without a doubt, our motherland. All that is happening in BH is certainly reflected in Sandzak. We believe that the constitutionallegal status of Sandzak will depend a great deal on what is agreed and resolved in Geneva or at some other conference. When I say that Bosnia is our motherland, I am not thinking just of the formal legal links, but of personal, family relations. Some 250,000 Muslims of Sandzak origin live in Bosnia, so that there are enough elements for BH to be the motherland of the Sandzak Muslims, at least that's the way we perceive things.

VREME: Does this mean that you wish to unite with the motherland?

LJAJIC: Even though there are such tendencies, they will remain just wishes and not a realistic political option. As a party we cannot build up our position on a political irrationality. It would really be irrational if this were set down in our program as a political goal. We underscored earlier that we respect all international documents which speak of the inviolability of external and internal borders.