Trio Of Refugees Attacked In Bosnia Croatian Crowd Beats Serbs Returning To Visit Hometown

A crowd in a Croat-controlled town in western Bosnia attacked three Serb refugees on a U.N.-organized trip to their hometown, a U.N. official said Thursday.

Alexander Ivanko, the U.N. spokesman in Sarajevo, said the beatings on Wednesday in Drvar show that authorities there are not trying to stop harassment of ethnic minorities.

The town, about 90 miles west of the Bosnian capital, was almost entirely populated by Serbs before the Bosnian war. But Bosnian Croat authorities repeatedly have prevented Serbs from returning.

The three Serbs were on a trip organized by the U.N. refugee agency to visit a graveyard. They were waiting at a bus stop for the rest of the refugee group when the Croat crowd attacked. U.N. police who witnessed the attack said the Serbs were badly beaten.

Soldiers from the multinational peace force rescued one of the Serbs and U.N. police rescued another, while the third escaped on his own.

“It seems that the local police were aware of the visit and did not do anything to try to prevent this attack,” Ivanko said.

Drvar is not the only Croat-controlled town where ethnic minorities are being harassed. In the southern city of Stolac, 40 houses rebuilt with international funding to accommodate returning Muslim refugees have been looted, said U.N. refugee agency spokesman Kris Janowski. In some cases, entire ceilings and floors have been ripped out.