Sarajevo

In Sarajevo, things are going from bad to worse. The latest attacks and counter-attacks in and around the city continue throughout the day. Incessant cannonades from all sorts of weapons prevent the remaining Sarajevans and tens of thousands displaced persons from taking a breath at least once a day, from eating, washing and sleeping. The local airport is closed again, telephones are operating only within the Sarajevo area code, and power and water is supplied only at brief intervals. Local doctors caution about possible epidemics due to lice and skin and stomach diseases. The young are affected by the rapidl spreadi of children's diseases. Hospitals have long been without vacant beds and medical supplies.The wounded, only partly treated or healed, often return to their units to fight again.

What's happening here and now can't be called life, although an illusion of normal living may be gained from public proclamations issued by the authorities. Those still breathing in the Old People's Home in Nedzarici no longer need their pensions. They have long been left to their own devices. The appeals from the home, situated on the front line have remained unanswered since last May. They need electricity, the home should be moved elsewhere and they need to bury their dead...

There is a shortage of food for others and for children. A good part of the humanitarian relief - no matter what the authorities do - goes through smugglers channels to those who have money and connections, or who can promise certain return favors. The remaining cigarettes are distributed to fighters and to the diminishing number of officials. All those in a position to go somewhere have left and their return is doubtful, according to sources close to the Government. Perhaps this was why the Presidency announced that some of those who had left would in future work abroad for the interests of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Along with the shortages and the threats of shells or snipiers, there is mounting fear in Sarajevo about what one can say, to whom , and how it will be interpreted. Mixed marriages and friendships break up and people at work begin to be suspicious of one another, and the defenders of the city are hostile to those who do not carry arms, irrespective of their nationality. Lists of the names of those who can and those who cannot be trusted are circulating among verified civilian and military staff. The fact that thesy keep themselves discretely informed in this way gives rise to hope that the chance of living together has still not been entirely lost.

Vlatka Krsmanovic

Teslic

Expulsion In a "Peaceful and Dignified" Way

In Teslic, a predominantly Serb-populated municipality, there had been hardly any awareness of the war until the beginning of May. The one- nationality authorities and police had somehow operated, while the "disloyal" policemen decided to leave for neighboring Tesanj, inhabited by a Moslem majority before the war. In May, it was either on invitation or on their own initiative that a group of "Red Berets", a Serbian paramilitary formation, arrived in Teslic. They disguised their identity in the common name "Mica". But some of the 23 "Micas" headed by Lieutenant Colonel Ljubisa Petricevic were identified by townsmen as prewar criminals, thieves and even assassins from Maglaj and Doboj where, as they said, they had "established order" before coming to Teslic. They were expelled from Banja Luka.

Having constantly exaggerated the threat that might come from the Croat and Moslem controlled Tesanj, Zepce, Vucja Planina, Travnik and Vitez, the "Micas" had relatively easily disarmed in one month's time all non-Serbian population in Teslic and vicinity. They were particularly active in cleansing the suburban locality of Stenjak and the village of Rankovici where their "establishing the order" presumed driving people away and looting and burning of abandoned houses.

Even the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) showed little interest in Croat prisoners who had for ten days been kept in an open tennis court of Kadrial Hotel where they were tortured in different ways. The HVO apparently reasoned that these were not the genuine Croats because they were not with them wearing uniforms. At the same time, woman activist and teacher Nada Radulovic was addressing over Radio Teslic the remaining non-Serbian population urging them to leave their homes in Teslic. A fearful atmosphere was enhanced by a curfew, from 8 p.m. to 11 a.m., by night raids, arrests, looting and raping. During the rule of "Micas", thirty Croats and Moslems disappeared from Teslic, many of them feared dead.

After a joint action by the local police and units of the Army of the Serbian Republic of Krajina, it became relatively peaceful in Teslic for a while. The most notorious "Micas" were jailed. But, under pressures exerted by Serbs who escaped from Travnik, Tesanj, Vitez and Zepce, non-Serbian population was again maltreated and expelled. Local Serbian Population helped their neighbors by mixed marriages. In less than one month's time, there were one hundred marriages, 13 in one day. Serbs' decision to protect in this way their non-Serb neighbors had infuriated the extremists among all the three sides.

In Rudo, too, local population lives in constant fears of the "prominent" combatants who cleansed the area and established Serbian authorities.

The man who "runs things" around this section of Bosnia, from Foca via Rudo and Cajnice to Visegrad, is Dusko Kornjaca, Defense Minister of Eastern Bosnia. He located his headquarters in Cajnice, where there is not a single Moslem today. Before the war, however, Moslems accounted for 42 per cent of the town's population. In pointing out that his political commitment is "an alliance of united Serbian states", Kornjaca does not even stop at showdowns with his fellow countrymen who do not back him up and who condemn his brutality.