Greetings from Mostar, where it's starting to look like summer in more
ways than one! The weather has been in the 30s everyday since May 1
Situation in Mostar and Bosnia-Herzegovina
By Gordana Katana in Banja Luka
The Bosnian Serbs have found a new man to represent them in Bosnia's tripartite
presidency - but the intrigue surrounding his appointment suggests his days
may already be numbered.
Borislav Paravac, a member of the ruling Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, was elected on April 10 to represent the Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia's multi-ethnic presidency. Paravac replaces Mirko Sarovic, who resigned on April 3 after coming under international pressure for having allowed a Republika Srpska, RS, company, Orao, to sell arms to Iraq. Sarovic's departure from office also followed the discovery that the Bosnian Serb army had spied on international agencies, and that managers in the state power company linked to the SDS had committed serious frauds.
Paravac's appointment may deflect attention from these recent scandals. But
his hard-line nationalist credentials do not bode well for stability in multi-ethnic
Bosnia - or indeed, within his own government. Barely
a day after Paravac was selected, his fellow SDS member and RS president,
Dragan Cavic, created a stir by telling reporters he would step up co-operation
with The Hague tribunal - a statement that could have a direct impact on Paravac.
Hardliners fear that the tribunal, which is currently in hot pursuit of Cavic's
predecessor as RS president, Radovan Karadzic, may also have fixed its sights
on Paravac. His
wartime role - as mayor of the ethnically-cleansed town of Doboj and confidante
to the RS defence minister of the time, Milan Ninkovic – has been fuelling
speculation that he might be indicted for war crimes.
If this were this to happen, Cavic's readiness to work with The Hague would
land him on a collision course with nationalists within his own party, who
remain vehemently opposed to the war crimes court. It
could also spell problems with the SDS' coalition partners in government,
the Party of Democratic Progress, PDP.
The PDP - widely seen as the less nationalistic, more civic-minded party in the coalition - had earlier put forward its own candidate to replace Sarovic. However, on the eve of the appointment, Petar Kunic, the PDP candidate for the presidency, withdrew from the race. His party offered no explanation as to why it had put forward a candidate for the presidency before withdrawing him to give Paravac a clear run for the title.
However, analysts say Kunic's candidacy was backed by elements within the
ruling coalition who felt he would be a safer bet than Paravac, whom many
felt was at risk of being indicted by The Hague. Comments
made by Milorad Dodik, leader of the opposition Alliance of Independent Social
Democrats, SNSD, added to the view that some government members had opposed
Paravac's candidacy right until the last minute.
Dodik told IWPR that his party had agreed to give PDP candidate Kunic their
backing after talks held on the eve of the appointment with the PDP leader
and current Bosnia-Herzegovina foreign minister Mladen Ivanic. "Obviously,
all hopes that Ivanic seriously intended to settle the issue of his relationship
with the SDS were in vain," said Dodik after the PDP withdrew their candidate.
Dodik
says the ruling coalition is heading for a crisis, and early elections are
on the horizon. If so, his party could do well out of these - the SNSD had
a surprisingly strong showing in the October 2002 elections.
Paravac has taken office at a difficult time, and his term may well be a short
one. He will first have to contend with the army and the hardliners, who are
incensed by the way the international community has punished them for their
supposed crimes and misdemeanors. Paravac
will have to balance this nationalist anger with the pressure from western
European countries to punch through with reforms.
Some of these reforms, recommended after the recent scandals, are particularly
painful. The
Bosnian Serb constitution has been redrafted, placing the army under full
civilian control and removing all references to statehood and sovereignty.
Furthermore, the army and intelligence services will now be monitored closely
at state level.
Speaking after Paravac's appointment, RS president Cavic acknowledged that
Bosnian Serb politics were going through a rocky phase. Cavic
told reporters that, should a crisis arise, he would not hesitate to use his
powers to dismiss the parliament, but equally, he hoped this would not happen
- at least not while he was in office.
By Daniela Valenta in Sarajevo
Bosnia-Hercegovina's state parliament is on its way to passing legislation that will unify school education for the first time since the war - and do away with the segregation and divisive teaching methods that hamper reconciliation in the various parts of the country. The bill, which sets out a blueprint for redesigning primary and secondary education from the ground up, was approved by the Bosnian government, the Council of Ministers, on April 16 prior to going to parliament. The draft law is the result of many years of effort put in by the international community and local experts.
Once in place, the new education law will take effect in both of Bosnia's constituent entities, Republika Srpska, RS, and the Federation, which have conducted separate education policies until now. Implementation will be underpinned by entity and cantonal legislation setting out the way teaching is managed and delivered in greater detail.
The law will impose a single system of certificates and diplomas, and will allow teachers and students to transfer from school to school anywhere in the country. It will increase the mandatory period of education from eight years to nine. Schools themselves will benefit from a greater degree of autonomy and increased parent and teacher involvement. The law provides for a common core curriculum for all schools, the setting of educational standards and addresses the issue of discrimination in the classroom.
"The most important thing about this law is that at state level it sets up a code of conduct (stipulating non-discrimination) for the school system," said Esma Hadzagic, former education minister of the Sarajevo canton.
Reform is long overdue in a country where since the beginning of the war in 1992, education has been hostage to nationalism and outdated teaching methods that emphasise rote learning rather than developing children's reasoning abilities. The reforms have been hampered by the lack of an education ministry at state level to drive them. Eleven years on, children still attend ethnically divided classes, and there are dozens of schools that provide segregated teaching under one roof.
Textbooks are often loaded with ethnically offensive language. Until last year, areas with Serb and Croat majorities made wide use of books sent from Belgrade and Zagreb. This began to change when the current school year began in September, following an agreement between the various education authorities and the international community. RS has now replaced all textbooks with domestically produced ones, while Croat areas are still using some books from Croatia.
Although the bill now in parliament does not address the issue of textbooks, education experts say new ones will be produced to match the core curriculum. They are already working on the curriculum, according to Mevlida Pekmez, director of the Sarajevo Teacher Training Institute. She says the multiple curricula that existed until now created a patchwork of incompatible teaching systems.
The new curriculum should ensure that children of different ethnicities spend most of their time in school together and, at the same time, to take classes in designated "national subjects" such as language and literature. The model has already been piloted in Brcko District, with considerable success. The overhauled curriculum will throw out old teaching methods, which Mevlida Pekmez says, left the student reduced to the status of passive recipient, to be crammed with facts.
"Teachers would lecture and then examine the students, who were expected to learn things off by heart," Pekmez said. "The student should now be expected to observe, research, draw conclusions and participate in team projects, not just be served ready-to-use definitions."
"A curriculum should be a detailed description of skills, values, competencies and attitudes that students should acquire," said Claude Kiefer, senior education advisor with the OSCE mission to Bosnia. "The only objective defined now is the amount of knowledge, and that is outdated."
Experts said teachers will have to be retrained for the new curriculum and the use of new multi-media methods. Pekmez said teacher training used to end with the award of a university degree, but further training is now ongoing. "At the end of the war, not a single teacher knew how to use the Internet," Pekmez said, "but there is a strong desire on their part to learn new things. Our education is good but many things have changed in the world and we have to keep up."
With the new school year just four months away, and the education law still in parliament, there is some doubt that the new curriculum be ready in time. There are concerns that the passage of the law may be hindered by attempts to block it by some of the nationalist parties. Religious groups may also create obstacles. Sources close to the OSCE said the Catholic and Serbian Orthodox communities are unhappy with Article 9, which makes religious instruction in schools an ungraded course and forbids compulsory religious instruction for children of different faiths.
In RS, instruction in the Orthodox faith has been a mandatory, graded class for all, an unpopular rule with non-Serb returnees. Compulsory religious instruction runs counter to the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires the state to ensure that education of children is "in conformity with their (parents') religious and philosophical convictions".
In the event that the law gets bogged down in parliament, it may be simply imposed by the Office of the High Representative. But the deputy head of the OSCE mission, Ambassador Zipper de Fabiani, was cautious on the likelihood of this. "It's far too early to think of imposition. I would ask you to let the parliament have its procedure first," he said.
Both the OSCE head of mission Ambassador Robert Beecroft and Dr Sonja Moser-Starrach, Special Representative of the Council of Europe, have urged the parliament to adopt the law as quickly as possible. For Bosnia, modernising its education system is a priority if it wants to join Europe. Educational reform is one of the conditions that must be fulfilled by 2009 for the country to join the next round of EU enlargement.
"It's the last train for Europe," Esma Hadzagic said. "We can't remain isolated, and if we play it smart, we can finish first." Passing the new law will be a first step towards this, but Bosnia still has a long way to go before its education overhaul is complete.
topBy
Chris Stephen in the Hague
The European
Union will bar entry to 100 people suspected of links with renegade war crimes
suspect Radovan Karadzic. The move is part of a fresh western strategy aimed
at isolating Karadzic's outer circle and then moving against his closest associates.
If all goes to plan, he will be progressively denied friends, cash and hiding
places, making a final arrest much easier. It is a fine idea - pity nobody
thought of it eight years ago.
CROATIA: HAGUE COOPERATION BOOST
By Drago Hedl in Osijek
In a move that illustrates a new readiness to cooperate with the tribunal, a Croatian court gave the go-ahead on April 30 for the extradition of key war crimes suspect Ivica Rajic to The Hague. Rajic, 45, was a commander in the Bosnian Croat militia and is accused of ordering an attack on the village of Stupni Do in which at least 16 Muslim civilians were killed. The tribunal has sought his extradition since 1995, when he was first indicted.
The decision to transfer Rajic to The Hague comes less than two weeks after the Croatian government provided the tribunal with access to the so-called Susak archive, which consists of about a thousand pages of documents signed by former defence minister Gojko Susak. Government officials declassified the archive on April 17, a day after the tribunal's chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte requested the documents during a visit to Zagreb.
Susak, who died in 1998, was in charge of Croatia's military forces throughout the break-up of Yugoslavia. He was one of the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjan's closest allies. The Hague has been asking for access to the archive since mid-2000, but the Croatian government always refused the request, claiming the documents were classified to protect national security.
The Croatian government has always insisted that it was fighting a defensive war agianst Serbian aggression. However, the newly-released archive is expected to show that Zagreb was far more involved in the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina than it claimed to be. Among the long-time allegations expected to be confirmed by the archive is that Zagreb funded the Bosnian Croat entity known as Herceg-Bosna with the aim of annexing it to Croatia.
"The documents will show that more than 20 billion kunas (about 3 billion US dollars) went to Herceg-Bosna from Zagreb," said former defence minister Jozo Rados, who held the post from 2000 to 2003. The archive is expected to confirm that Zagreb funded Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban's efforts to build a para-state, comprising elements such as the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, the Bosnian Croat Army, the civil service as well as Mostar's hospital, university and television station.
The documents are also expected to detail the corrupt practices of the Bosnian Croat statelet. By some estimates, at least one-third of the money Zagreb sent to Herceg-Bosna wound up lining the pockets of Boban and his cronies. Other examples include Bosnian Croat customs officers being paid both by the Croatian Defence Council and by the Croatian army, and politicians receiving military salaries.
The archive's revelations have enraged many in Croatia, who are furious that their tax money was used to fund Herceg-Bosna. Croatian prime minister Ivica Racan vowed that parliament would investigate and issue a special report on the Susak archive this summer.
Some suspect that Racan's enthusiasm to investigate the contents of the archive is motivated more by politics than by a desire to expose the truth about Croatia's role in creating the Herceg-Bosna statelet. The country is holding parliamentary elections either at the end of this year or the beginning of next. A senior official from Racan's Social Democratic Party, SDP, said the prime minister could use the archive to discredit the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, which was in power when the funds were diverted.
"Once a debate is launched on where the Croatian taxpayers' money went to and what was financed with it, and especially on the embezzlement and all the illegal transactions that were made, the public could turn against HDZ because all this happened while it was in power," the official told IWPR. "People live a very difficult life in Croatia, the country's foreign debt amounts to 16 billion dollars and the people will not approve of the fact that three million dollars of their money had been spent this way."
By calling
for the Susak archives to be debated in parliament, Racan can both expose
how his political rivals squandered billions of kunas during the war and divert
attention from the country's current grave economic situation. The Croatian
court's decision to extradite Rajic may also help the prime minister by relieving
international pressure on Zagreb to cooperate and aid its bid for admission
into the European Union by 2007.
----------------------------------------------------
These articles originally appeared in Balkan Crisis Report and Tribunal Update, produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, http://www.iwpr.net/.
Film
Club is seriously considering the idea of establishing a night shift and changing
the biorhythms of its members. Even though it's too hot, we managed to finish
our film workshops. Somehow we can already vaguely see the first films in
our production.
Unfortunately we still didn't manage to host film nights because we have decided to ignore films made in '90s and to look for films which are harder to find in video clubs. Also, we are working on our film library. For the beginning we want to gather a collection of the history of ex-Yugoslav cinematography.
Adele
is fighting like a lion with foundations, embassies and donors to get a video
projector so that we don't have to rent it any more.
Applications for the Short Film Festival are coming every day, and we will
choose the 20 best films from the 40 that we received. The second Short Film
Festival will be held from June 12-15 this year. We would be happy to welcome
you all, so if you have time come by and join us. Or if you can't come by,
you can visit our Web site at www.ppbih.net/faf/.
SALUD
i ANARQUÍA,
Film
Klub
April
was a very exciting month for the Photo Project -- we got funded! Or rather,
we got permission to use funding we already had: 6.000 KM donated by ProHelvetia
for the YPMN project in 2001. This project, which began in 2000, has never
been completed because the Council of Europe inexplicably backed out on a
portion of its donation, leaving us without enough money to complete the grant.
In April we decided that three years was long enough for any grant to go unfinished,
so we contacted ProHelvetia and arranged with them to release us from the
original grant proposal so we could use the remaining 6.000 KM for our operational
costs. Beyond this, they informed us we had an additional 20.000 Swiss francs
due upon completion of the grant. Because the grant will not be completed
as originally planned, we have submitted an alternate proposal for the use
of this money and are eagerly awaiting ProHelvetia's reply.
With the ProHelvetia funds we have purchased film, cameras and other miscellaneous supplies, and completed the darkroom in our new house. Most exciting of all, we were able to fund salaries for three long-standing members of the Photo Project to take over coordination of the project. Our three new leaders are Goran Arsic, Sanja Majic and Svijetlana Sakic. They are already hard at work getting everything in order so that work can begin in earnest in May!
Right now we are making plans about working with new participants of Photo Project. Also we want to think about a new name of the photo group. So any ideas you people maybe have, please send them to us!!!
Gox,
Sanja, Svijetlana, Rebecca and the rest of the Photo Project
Sexual
and Reproductive Health Project
At
the end of March, the Info Center Mladi Most Mostar held a presentation in
the hotel Bristol for people working in the NGO sector, governmental institutions,
secondary schools and regional centers for social work. The presentation started
with a short introduction of Mladi Most and presentation of the project "Improvement
of sexual and reproductive health in BiH" done by Mrs. Zeljka Mudrovcic.
At the end, a group of young peer educators made a short presentation to demonstrate
their work and the connection they build with young people.
During April, the peer educators finished the presentations they were holding in the Gymnasium Fra Didaka Buntica and started to give lectures and information in the Mjesovita Elektro Technical School (Alekse Santica 10). The Cooperation and work that they are having in this school is very good, thanks to the hospitality and interest of teachers and educators of this school. Through the cooperation that we have established with them, it has become very clear how important it is for young people to have correct information and understanding when it comes to the issue of reproductive health. We have realized that there is a big need to answer many questions and dilemmas they are having at this age (contraception, protection from HIV/AIDS, unplanned pregnancy, etc.)
On World Health Day, April 7, we had a TV program on Oscar C called "Reproductive and sexual health of young people in BiH." The aim of the program was to introduce the project to a wider public, to motivate young people to think about sexual and reproductive health in a responsible way, and to help them make a step forward in their sexual identity.
To end with, we would like to pass on the information about our new Web site where you can find much information about our work and activities, as well as answers to questions about reproductive health. It is located at www.infocentar-mo.com.ba.
Ana,
Dolores, Sanja, Gox, Azra, Alma, Sandra, Hajro
Young
Women’s Experiential Learning Network
This month has been a very exciting one for the women's group. We have renewed contact with the Beavers Arts group and have begun to plan some very exciting things to come. We have decided to try to attract a new group of people. Through this partnership we are able to purchase a video camera, and it is our intention to create a video about women. The group will ultimately decide upon which facet we will focus. We are filled with enthusiasm about what direction we will take at this moment.
Tae kwon do continues every Saturday and we are gaining a larger group. There is even talk of expanding it to a twice-weekly basis. This weekday seminar will be done outside and closer in town in hopes of increasing our attendance.
Sarah
and Arijana
April has been a month of visits; we had a lot of people coming and visting Mladi Most. We welcomed people from the German organisation "Brucken nach Bosnien," who work with orphaned children. They were very interested in our work and a possible future co-operation. We'll see what will happen with this idea.
Also in April, the German reporter Jan Kahlcke was doing a story about Mostar and wanted to include Mladi Most in his story, so we talked with him and introduced him to our work.
In the past few months, together with 6 non-governmental organisations, we started a campaign to get a space from the city government (the Abrašević building on Šantića street), which would be a youth center. Lots of activities have been organised to draw the attention of the public (street actions, petitions, cleaning actions, press conferences, etc). The initatiative board for the center has done a great job. They also made a request to the city government to give us this space, but they still haven't replied to this request. However, we have information that they want to give this space to some other people and organisations, such as the Center for Culture, who do hardly anything for the youth and culture in this town.
We will
continue to fight for the Center, and all help we can get is welcomed.Your
sugestions, ideas, comments and propositions are needed.
Topli
pozdravi and warm greetings from Mladi Most!
Arijana,
Senada, Adeline, Goksi, Azra, Ana, Marija, Lisbeth, Dolores, Sanja, Svijetlana,
Hajro, Ermin, Rebecca and Sarah