Bishop blasts Bosnian Government over refugee crisis

An outspoken bishop has once again hit out at the international community amid no sign of a let up in the struggle for tens of thousands of refugees to return home to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In a scathing attack, Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka in northern Bosnia criticised the Bosnian government and the international community for allegedly failing to allow exiled Croats - who are traditionally Catholic - to go back to the homes where they lived before the 1990s Balkans War.

According to church sources, before the conflict 220,000 Catholics lived in the Republika Srpska territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina but by the time peace returned only 12,000 remained.

More than 13 years later, barely two per cent of those forced to flee from the region have been able to return.

Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need, the charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, Bishop Komarica said: "Justice in this case is being trampled underfoot.

"Why do human rights apply in Germany, France and the USA, for example, but not to us in Bosnia?"

The bishop described making numerous appeals to enable the Croats to return but said he had been repeatedly ignored.

Many Croats are afraid of returning back to the region amid continued ethnic tensions in their former Bosnian homeland and Bishop Komarica has frequently demanded reassurances that they would be fully integrated into the political and social fabric of the region.

The bishop accused the Bosnian authorities of leaving him to take responsibility for the returning Croats, adding: "It is not the task of the Church to build homes, provide running water and repair roads."

Bishop Komarica underlined the Catholic Church's commitment to making a "fruitful contribution to the future of this country", but he stressed that "in order to do so we must first be able to live here".

Criticising the government for not taking steps to restore the country's damaged infrastructure, he claimed there was no "discernible political will", either at national or at international level, to put into practice public declarations that Catholic Croats would be able to return to their homes.

The bishop said: "Our appeals, pleas and protests have gone unheard."

The status of returning refugees is contested, especially by nationalist politicians in Bosnia.

Late last month Vojislav Seselj, the controversial leader of the Serbian Radical Party, who is standing trial at the Hague tribunal for war crimes, claimed that Croats who left northern Serbia in 1992 should not be classed as refugees.

Bishop Komarica's latest comments come after repeated criticism of the international community to act on behalf of the refugees.

Accusing the international community of "hypocrisy", in November 2005, Bishop Komarica gave an interview to ACN, accusing leading politicians including the UN of "rewarding the unjust and punishing the disadvantaged".

The war that raged in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995, following the breakup of Yugoslavia, claimed the lives of some 243,000 people.

During that period, 2 million people were driven from their homes as a result of the ensuing ethnic conflict.

ACN's recent Index of Persecution listed Bosnia as a country of worsening oppression against Christians, noting a rise in the number of attacks on churches and ministers, as well as police reluctance to investigate such cases.