Refugee Days

by Filip Svarm

Their life is reduced to pointless wanderings between meals. They talk about what they had left behind, about burnt and plundered houses, about friends and relatives for whom they don't know whether they are dead or alive... As with all refugees, real life has been left behind, and a better one is somewhere else. There is practically no one who hasn't lost someone in the war

Istanbul (Turkey), March

The Kirklareli refugee camp is located in the European part of Turkey, 230 kilometers from Istanbul. It is fenced with barbed wire, guarded by Turkish soldiers and in it there are around 1700 refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The refugees, mostly women and children, live in pre-fabricated bungalows from Germany and they stand, every day, in line for food, for the WC (approximately one for 200 people), for humanitarian aid... They say that there is plenty of everything and that they do not lack the essentials. The inscriptions in the camp, which is full of Bosnians, are in Turkish; in the offices of Turkish administrative employees there are pictures of Kemal Ataturk, Turkish flags are everywhere and if it weren't for the spoken language with the characteristic accent, there would be no trace of Bosnia anywhere.

Apart from the refugees, around 18 000 of whom are reportedly registered, Bosnia-Herzegovina is also present in Turkey thanks to headline stories. Apart from warrants for "Kurdish terrorists", Turkish towns are also full of color photographs showing killed children in Sarajevo, burned mosques etc. Above the photographs it says BOSNIA-HERTZEK.

The refugees in the Kirklareli camp live in bungalows - a room of some fifteen square meters with a concrete floor and thin floor covering, several beds and a gass heater are considered to be enough for three to four people. Their life is reduced to pointless wanderings between meals. They talk about what they had left behind, about burnt and plundered houses, about friends and relatives for whom they don't know whether they are dead or alive... They talk about the camp, about the conditions in it, that is, about other places where it is better and easier to live. Like for all refugees, real life has been left behind, and a better one is somewhere else. There is practically no one who hasn't lost someone in the war. There are also children without both parents. A twelve year old boy speaks about how they hid for a month in the forest above his village in the vicinity of Foca, how his father was killed and his mother raped. He speaks coldly, clearly, almost indifferently. He never smiled once even when they changed the subject and started talking about some other things concerning Bosnia and Turkey. His light blue eyes are lifeless. He leaves the impression of an old man with enormous life experience. He says that now he has to take care of his mother, younger sister and grandmother. He also says that he will take revenge. When asked against whom, that is, whether he too will leave some children without fathers, after some silence and contemplation he calmly says that he knows who they are and that they all have names. He is just waiting to grow up a little more so that they will give him a rifle.

Looking for something in the neighboring bungalow, a woman in her forties found, by chance, a photograph of her husband and brother. She looked at the photograph from 1985 showing reserve policemen in uniform walking in line. The first one is her husband and the last one her brother. Most of them are no longer alive - for some this is known for sure, for others it is assumed with great certainty. She silently weeps while looking at that line of dead people and her hands start shaking making it difficult for her to pour coffee. She said that she saw her husband, son and brother for the last time nine months ago, when their Serbian neighbors from a village in the vicinity of Foca took them away somewhere down the alley pointing rifles at them. Before taking them they beat them up, tore up their documents, took away their leather jackets, wedding rings and money. No one has seen them since or heard anything about them.

There is no need to describe the odium and hatred that is felt towards the Serbs in the Kirklareli refugee camp. The refugees say that their next door neighbors, Serbs, told them not to be afraid, that they would protect them, only to be attacked later by those very same neighbors. An old man from the vicinity of Rudo says how his son was killed while tending cows, that he was killed by an unknown Serbian soldier accompanied by three local people and that, since he couldn't bury his son right away, he covered him with thorns so that dogs wouldn't tear him apart. Still, all those in the camp stress that they wouldn't be there if it weren't for Serbs who got them out and helped them. People from Foca say that Muslims were not allowed to go out into the street or to communicate with each other. Police vehicles with megaphones circled the town warning them about this. Closed in their apartments, they survived thanks to their Serbian neighbors who, with great risk to themselves, secretly brought them food. They also say that when clashes broke out in Foca on April 8th 1992, a column of about a hundred Serbs and Muslims set off from Donje Polje towards the center of the town and that they did not wish to separate when numerous Serbian military and police patrols demanded this. Furthermore, they mention some of their Serbian neighbors who defended them with weapons in their hands, often risking their own lives. A man, wearing a badge of Josip Broz Tito, who was kept in the camp at the sports center in Brcko, says that after being maltreated he was saved, along with a group of other people, by a lieutenant of the Serbian Republic's military police who transferred them from Brcko to Bijeljina, from where they left for Belgrade. Later on he heard that the lieutenant was killed precisely because of that. "Where would we be now if it weren't for those decent people you find in every nation", said a woman in her thirties who had spent two months at the "Partizan" sports hall in Foca. She says that the women who were kept there were taken to be raped every evening and that what they went through can simply not be described. She claims that the biggest crimes in Foca were committed by Janko Janjic called Tuta and his gang, and that Montenegro had submitted a request to the Serbian Republic in B-H to extradite him because of the murder of the Klapuh family near the Mratinje hydro electric power plant. Tuta, it is said, had promised to transfer the Klapuh family from Foca to Niksic for 1000 DM, but he killed them in order to take the savings they had on them. He has not been extradited because people involved in crime are in full control of Foca. Other people from Foca mention as war criminals Velibor Ostojic (the former Information Minister) and some others... They say that Foca is a typical example of ethnic cleansing, that there existed three camps (The Foca Correctional Center, the high-school center and the "Partizan" sports hall), that Muslims were taken out of the local hospital and killed, that mass executions were carried out on the Drina bridge after which cisterns would come to wash the blood...

"Why all this, why did the war break out?", these are the questions the people in the Kirklareli refugee camp constantly keep asking themselves, remembering, with nostalgia "comrade Tito's" Yugoslavia. His reputation and the "brotherhood and unity" he advocated are appreciated here more than anywhere else. Refugees claim that the apartments in which the soldiers of the Serbian Republic in B-H found his pictures, were demolished.

A large majority of the refugees in the Kirklareli camp hope to return one day to their villages and towns in Bosnia-Herzegovina. All their plans for the future start with "Inshallah". There is no trace here of Alija Izetbegovic's Bosnia-Herzegovina. There are no newspapers, no propaganda, no news "from home". The refugees say that at the B-H consulate in Istanbul they ask 350 DM for a passport, while a passport costs 3 DM in Sarajevo so that many go to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Consulate for documents. They also say that Muhamed Cengic, the former number-two person in Bosnia-Herzegovina, currently cares about nothing but his private business in Turkey. It is claimed that he once spoke to them saying that only his suit and the shoes on his feet belonged to him. But that they knew he was lying and that he lived in an elite quarter in Istanbul.

In any case, Bosnia-Herzegovina is far away. The victor, no matter who that will be, will write history. Meanwhile, refugees will suffer and look for their beloved ones in the muddy Balkan battlefields, and in any case there are too many dead bodies everywhere. Journalists will try to describe and explain everything. The only certain thing, as Danilo Kis wrote, is death. Death in the only total war in Europe since 1945.

A twelve year old boy speaks about how they hid for a month in the forest above his village in the vicinity of Foca, how his father was killed and his mother raped. He speaks coldly, clearly, almost indifferently. His light blue eyes are lifeless. He leaves the impression of an old. He says that now he has to take care of his mother, younger sister and grandmother. He also says that he will take revenge. When asked against whom, that is, whether he too will leave some children without fathers, after some silence and contemplation he calmly says that he knows who they are and that they all have names. He is just waiting to grow up a little so that they will give him a rifle.