To Each his own Camp

"Finally, in my own experience, the most appalling reports generally turn out to be true", says a person who, with a hundred or so hapless individuals, including one 14-year-old (in itself a violation of the International Charter on the Rights of Children - even if the boy was only held because the Serbs hadn't managed to catch his father) spent a month in the "prison" in Pale (which, according to Radovan Karadzic, does not exist). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) whose representatives have visited over 4,300 prisoners of "all sides in the conflict since the organization resumed its activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina certainly know about the camps, although "the ICRC has not been permitted to visit many detention centres scattered all over the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and information about detention centres received directly from prison authorities is incomplete".

The explicit mention of reports which exist, information about the actions of the ICRC (including "public appeals and numerous classified demarches at all levels), the activities of the EC observers and all UN agencies (which according to Vreme sources, from mid-July have proofs that camps exist on "all sides), did not, however, prevent Radovan Karadzic from telling Vreme's journalist that the "Serbian side vigorously denies the existence of camps for civilians anywhere in the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.. . Moslems and Croats living in Serbian Bosnia-Herzegovina are treated like Serbs, they are even in a more favourable position since they are not obliged to serve in the army. In view of the fact that this is an ethnic war, we do not compel them to fire on their own people and we do not mobilize them." Disregarding the idea of "equal treatment for Moslems and Croats) which from Mr. Karadzic as a psychiatrist, might be taken as a personal, albeit unintentional, denunciation of "Serbian" ill-treatment of "bad" Serbs in special camps for them, about which there are also rumours, particularly in connection with Banja Luka area, it is clear from the statement quoted that the "Serbian side" in this story has been caught with its hand in someone else's pocket.

The pickpocket, according to a well-tested recipe, first stares his collocutor straight in the eye and swears that it's not so: "There are no concentration camps on the Serbian territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina", declared Velibor Ostojic, the Information Minister there. Admittedly, "there are prisons for those captured at the front". Perhaps the flexibility of the Balkan term "front" may be overlooked, but not the ICRC's statement last week that in July their representatives visited camps/prisons In Mostar, Ljubuski, Livno, Capljina, Bosanski Brod, Zenica, and Manjaca and Bileca indisputably on "Serbian territories" and that in the year since the conflict began "violations of humanitarian and human rights have been committed by all sides in the conflict and have become a practice, particularly as far as the civilian population is concerned".

If it is at all possible to imagine that anything good will emerge from the shameful scandal and barbarity, that is to say out of what our daily lives have beeen turned into ("I didn't know, I just carried out orders", said the Nazis on trial in Nuremburg), then it is the fact that never again will anyone be able to hide by accusing the "others". The Bosnian-Herzegovinian Government claims that the "Serbian side" has a hundred or so (94-105) camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with around 95 thousand Moslems and Croats interned in them and accuses it of killing several thousand. The Serbs has "hit back" with a list of 43 "Moslem" and "Croatian" camps (22 in Sarajevo alone) with 42 thousand Serbs and claims that around 10 thousand have been killed. The Croatian "side" has published details of tens of thousands killed in Serbian camps and on "Serbian territories".

In short, no one has a clear conscience or clean hands, nor can they be cleansed: the possible locations of the prisons/camps for civilians - imprisoned only because they belonged to this or that nation, because they were "in the path of our of the armies" or because they can be used in exchanges between the warring "sides" - are shown on the map. As to the reliability of the details and the map, last week's statement by the ICRC and its spokesman's announcement (the very fact that the Red Cross is not given access to some sites speaks for itself) should be sufficient. Withholding permission to visit the camps with the excuse that the "road is not safe" is just a hint of what is considered craftiness ("on all three sides") here and not, to put it mildly, hypocrisy.

Vreme was able to establish that at least some of the reciprocal accusations were false. There are no concentration camps for Moslems in Subotica, Niksic, Aleksinac, Batajnica or in the July 4th Army garrison in Belgrade; there are probably none in Srpac, Loznica or Prijepolje either. There are no camps/prisons for Serbian civilians in the Sarajevo Central Prison or in the prison in the former Yugoslav Army's Viktor Bubanj garrison. Rumours about "private prisons" in Sarajevo - people armed with all kinds of weapons lock up people so as to be able to loot their homes their homes in peace - have not been disputed.

Undoubtedly the camps exist. They even existed during the brief "Slovene" war (mine shafts, abandoned railway tunnels, sports halls, and football stadiums are ideal for all sides), the considerably longer "Croatian", the unfinished Bosnian-Herzegovinian and, there is ample reason to fear, in future Balkan wars.