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Friday, November 10, 2000

Croats in Bosnia
seeking autonomy

By Gregory Piatt
Bosnia bureau

MOSTAR, Bosnia and Herzegovina — There is a showdown between Croats in the southern part of this country and the international community that will come to a head Saturday, when Bosnians elect new national leaders.

The nationalist Croat Democratic Union, or HDZ, has called for a referendum to give more autonomy to Croats living within Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation. This follows HDZ protests over the Organization for Security and Cooperation’s electoral changes, which probably will diminish the HDZ’s influence.

Western agencies overseeing Bosnia’s post-war Dayton Peace Accord say any attempt to achieve constitutional changes through a referendum would be nonbinding and illegal. The OSCE said the referendum aims to undermine the provisions of the peace accord and would be a serious breach of election rules. OSCE officials have left open the possibility they may halt voting on the referendum entirely.

U.S. soldiers are part of the multinational peacekeeping force in Bosnia that is trying to help the international community implement the peace accord. An attempt to unilaterally change the treaty could potentially stir up tensions that peacekeepers have worked to overcome for five years.

Croats, who dominate this part of the country, think the peace accord, which carved Bosnia into the Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serbian republic, and recent electoral changes are relegating them to second-class citizens.

"Since Dayton was signed, Croats have been losing," said Boro Puljic, who was out for a stroll here with his wife. "Dayton has been repressing the identity of Croats, and the referendum is one way to protect our national identity."

The HDZ, the main Bosnian Croat party, and seven other small right-wing parties adopted a declaration recently that is intended to serve as a basis for the referendum.

The declaration calls for the establishment of separate Croat political, scientific, cultural, information and other institutions. It also calls for an equal constitutional and territorial structure for each of Bosnia’s three peoples — Serbs, Muslims and Croats — and for the Croatian language to be officially recognized, even though the Croats basically speak the same language as Muslims and Serbs.

Puljic and his wife, Drazenka, plan to vote in support of Croat rights, but they don’t see it as a plea for independence.

"We want to stay in Bosnia, but not as a minority," Drazenka said.

Much of Croat frustration comes from being the smallest ethnic community in Bosnia. They have vanished from some parts of the country where they were in significant numbers before the 31/2-year civil war. According to 1991 census figures, Bosnian Croats made up more than 17 percent of Bosnia’s pre-war population, but this figure now is estimated to be about 10 percent.

The HDZ thinks that a recent OSCE ruling on how the federation’s parliament is elected will further marginalize Croats. Under the new rules, candidates to the upper house of the parliament no longer will be elected solely from Croat-dominated regions but from across the federation’s 10 cantons, thus handing the Muslim majority a decisive advantage over Croat representatives.

Some Croats here think the ruling harks back to the days when Josip Broz Tito’s communist state called all the nationalities in Yugoslavia brothers, and communism didn’t give one nationality specific representation.

"We were at this stage before," Drazen Milicevic said. "Before in Yugoslavia, we were like a pet and we weren’t asked what we want."

Other Croats say the OSCE ruling is an imposition of American style-democracy on the federation.

"We don’t want an American recipe in Bosnia," Boro Puljic said. "We need our identity. I don’t think foreigners understand this or other problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina."

The HDZ lost a strong supporter when Croatia’s autocratic president, Franjo Tudjman, died in December. Tudjman financially and militarily supported Bosnia’s Croats in the war and their quest to form a state called Herceg-Bosna.

But the Croat minority in Bosnia found itself politically isolated when Croatia’s pro-European leadership came to power in January. Croatia’s current president, Stipe Mesic, has said Bosnian Croats should be realizing their rights through Bosnian state institutions and not through Croatia.

Jozo Peric, a retiree here, said they are doing that.

"Nobody should ban us from deciding about our destiny and life," he said. "We’re not breaking anybody’s right. We are not against Serbs or Bosnian Muslims. They have their own culture, and we want our culture."