The Washington Post
October 22, 1992
KARLOVAC, Croatia – For 10,000 Muslims wasting away in Bosnian Serb prison camps, the main barrier to freedom is no longer their well-armed guards, in the view of relief officials, it is American and West European indifference.
The Bosnian Serbs have agreed to a massive prisoner release Monday from several camps, relief officials said, but the plan may be scuttled because Western countries are refusing to accept the freed prisoners. Unless the United States and Western Europe open their borders, the officials added, the prisoners will stay put amid freezing temperatures, malnutrition and beatings at the hands of their Serb captors.
“It’s total hypocrisy,” said Pierre Gassmann, a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is arranging the deal. “The Western countries have made promises {to take the prisoners} but aren’t delivering on them.”
Gassmann’s blunt words are unusual because he works for a publicity-shy organization that does not, by tradition, make waves. He is one of a growing number of frustrated relief officials who are openly chastising what they see as the relatively ineffecutal response of the United States and Western Europe to the situation in Bosnia.
Western indifference, they say, is prolonging suffering and inviting a humanitarian calamity in which Muslim prisoners will die in camps while civilians freeze to death elsewhere.
The prisons began provoking international outrage last summer when television pictures showed emaciated inmates. Newspapers carried allegations of widespread Serb atrocities, including mass murders of male prisoners and mass rapes of female captives, that elicited a storm of criticism of the Bosnian Serbs.
The Serbs closed the two most notorious camps, Omarska and Keratern, but at least three others where prisoners are held in harsh conditions are still operating. They are Trnopolje, Batkovic and Manjaca — the largest with at least 3,700 prisoners. The total number of prisoners is reported to be near 10,000, although relief officials say they fear many others are being held at still secret facilities.
Nearly three weeks ago, the Bosnian Serbs released more than 1,500 Muslim prisoners who are now at a U.N. refugee center here in Karlovac. Croatia, which is swamped with more than 700,000 refugees, agreed to serve as a two-week processing site after getting assurances that Western countries ultimately would accept them. The transit period has elapsed, and so far only 92 of the freed prisoners, accepted by Norway, have left the makeshift refugee center here.
“We’re in a bind,” said Larry Fioretta, a liaison officer with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “We can’t accomodate additional people unless Western countries offer asylum to released prisoners who really deserve help after the suffering they have gone through.”
At the Karlovac refugee center, two municipal buildings house the Muslims, crammed into dormitory-style rooms that would be comfortable for two or three people — not the 12 or 15 that are there. The buildings are unheated and dirty. The men, who have recovered from their starvation diets but still have a shell-shocked look in their eyes, shuffle around quietly.
The director of the center, Pirjo Dupuy, said angrily: “If there is no Western response, those guys {in Bosnia} will stay in the prison camps. The United States is always promoting itself as the champion of human rights, so why won’t it do something now? What is 10,000 people if they are distributed over the world?”
The U.S. government, which has demanded that the Bosnian Serbs close the camps and supports war-crimes investigations into atrocities there, offered earlier this month to take just 100 sick or wounded refugees who need specialized medical care, according to diplomats and relief officials. The quota applies to all refugees, not just released prisoners.
A U.S. diplomat in Zagreb argued that Croatia, as the “first country” of refuge, is obliged under normal international standards to accept all fleeing Bosnians, including the released prisoners, and not attempt to hand off the burden to other nations. “We certainly hope that the Croats will do their duty,” he said.
Relief officials disagree. They note that war-torn Croatia, which has just 4.7 million people, houses the world’s fourth-largest refugee population. Its burden is equivalent to the United States providing shelter for 35 million refugees. Throughout this Maryland-sized nation, displaced Muslims and Croats are jammed into military barracks, hotels, train stations and private homes.
When they speak off the record, diplomats in the region are virtually unanimous in their disappointment at the way their governments have responded. But they are reluctant to discuss the situation on the record.
The basic problem, critics say, is that domestic political concerns in the United States and Western Europe outweigh the moral benefits of providing a helping hand to 10,000 Muslims held in Serb prison camps.
According to Gassmann, the International Red Cross is working hard to unblock the political logjam. He said the warring parties in Bosnia — Serbs, Croats and Slavic Muslims — have agreed to release 5,000 prisoners on Monday, most of them Muslims held by the Serbs. That would leave thousands of Muslims still in Serb hands, but the hope is that they, too, would be released soon.
“Everything is set, but we still need the go-ahead from the asylum countries,” Gassmann said.
