CHRISTIAN JENNINGS
Fri Jun 22 2007
TheScotsman
TWELVE years after the end of the wars in Bosnia and Croatia that tore apart the former Yugoslavia, a panel of international experts have ascertained that the number of those who died is close to 100,000.
The Bosnian Book of the Dead was released in Sarajevo today by the Research and Documentation Centre (RDC) after four years of work and it contains the names of 96,895 victims, classified by age, gender, ethnicity and status.
Mirsad Tokaca, president of the RDC, said that the aim of the project was to identify each victim and prevent any type of distortion of numbers.
"This book is important because it brings an end to the manipulation of numbers of those who died," said Nerma Jelacic, senior war-crimes expert from the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network, which is based in Sarajevo.
Phillip Verwimp, one of the experts who worked on the report, said:
"Many consider the number of 96,895 as the overall total of victims of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, which is not correct. For several reasons, this number should be seen as an approximation of a minimum and not as a complete total."
...The project was funded primarily by the Norwegian government.
During and after the war in Bosnia, varying estimates tallied the death toll at 200,000 or more.
Different ethnic groups are constantly disputing the death toll.
...Mr Tokaca's team worked for three years with thousands of sources, collecting 21 facts about each victim, including names, nationality, time and place of birth and death, circumstances of death and other data.
The project does not include people who died during the war in accidents, through reckless handling of weapons, or due to starvation or lack of medication.
"What comes to mind are 12 babies that died in Banja Luka because the hospital had no oxygen or six civilians in Gorazde who died because an air-dropped American humanitarian aid package fell right on them," Mr Tokaca said. "Such cases were not counted as they are regarded indirect deaths.
"We are not publishing the number but rather the names of BiH [Bosnia and Herzegovina] citizens who died in the period from 1991 to 1995. Our intention is to stop talking about numbers and start talking about people."
RDC data indicates that, out of the total number of victims, 57,523 were soldiers and 39,684 civilians.The research was done in several ways.
The total number also includes names of 3,372 children who died during the war.
According to this data, 89 per cent of victims were men and 10 per cent were women.
In terms of ethnicity, 65.88 per cent were Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks (64,036), Serbs comprised 25.62 per cent (24,906), Croats 8.01 per cent (7,788) and various others 0.49 per cent.
Most pieces of information were collected through direct contact with witnesses, families of victims, through newspaper articles and various registers.
"The highest number of victims - more than 30 per cent of the total number [28,666] died in Podrinje, and the second highest number [14,656] perished in Sarajevo," said Mr Tokaca.Mr Tokaca's team of 20 people conducted thousands of interviews, visited 303 graveyards and went through records of all three armed forces involved in the war as well as other sources.
The president of the RDC said "Srebrenica was just a finishing act," adding that the centre's data suggested that 6,886 people were killed in the July 1995 massacre.
Up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim male soldiers and civilians were killed when Bosnian Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic surrounded the United Nations-controlled haven in eastern Bosnia.
"This study was done to change the perception of the past and to allow us to overcome the hotheads and switch to calm dialogue," Mr Tokaca said.
Twelve years after the war both Mladic and his political leader, Radovan Karadzic, are still on the run from international justice. They are believed to be hiding in Serbia.
FIGURES BEHIND THE ATROCITIES:
8,000 The number of Bosnian Muslims reportedly massacred at Srebrenica in July 1995
10,000 The number of people killed in the four-year siege of Sarajevo
250,000 The highest estimate of the number of dead from the Bosnian and Croatian wars
78,000 The lowest estimate
90 The percentage of the total killings reportedly carried out by Serbs
25 The percentage of the Bosnian civilian population estimated to be suffering from untreated post-traumatic stress disorder
1,100,000 The number of refugees displaced during the war
4,100,000 The approximate population of Bosnia today
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