Playing with peoples’ feelings: Nobody “dug into” Serbian or anybody else’s graves in Sarajevo

The news from July 2017, about placing stickers on the tombstones of two cemeteries in Sarajevo, Vlakovo and Bare, has been presented a few months later as the news about “digging into Serbian graves in Sarajevo”.

In July of 2017, an online media outlet Faktor published an article titled “Warning stickers in Vlakovo and Bare: What did the funeral service Pokop want to say to the citizens of Sarajevo?”. The article states that the graves, for which the obligatory fee hasn’t been paid in years, have been labelled to alert relatives to pay the fees.

Numerous stickers have been placed on the tombstones at the Bare cemetery, to warn the relatives of deceased ones, that they haven’t paid the grave’s maintenance fee in years and that they should settle their debts as soon as possible. (…)
Although this public utility company is legally entitled to remove the remains for a burial site for which no maintenance fee has been paid, they have never done it.
In accordance with the regulations of arrangement and maintenance of city cemeteries, payment of compensation is a legal obligation of a relative of the deceased.
Thanks to this fee, we are able to keep the cemeteries clean and tidy. Hereby, we also request for citizens to report to one of our offices in order to check if the fees are paid – said Najda Beširević – Vranić, a spokeswoman for the funeral service Pokop.

A month later, the same topic was discussed in an article titled “Citizens owe millions of KM to the Pokop burial company”, which was published by Oslobođenje.

The interlocutor was once again Najda Beširević-Vranić, who stated that Pokop wants to avoid the removal of the remains from these graves, although in some cases, fees had not been paid since the 1960s. Also, Beširević urged citizens to pay the debts for the maintenance of burial sites:

According to analysis, between 50 to 60 percent of citizens are paying their fees, but there are some cases in Pokop, where none of the relatives of the deceased had paid their fees since 1967. The largest debts were recorded in the 1970s and 1980s.
– We take every opportunity to remind citizens of the importance of paying the fee and to help us in this way. We have a legal right to rebury the gravesites after 10 years of non-payment, which is also a worldwide practice. But have never done so before and we hope we won’t have to do it in the future. Therefore, we once again urge citizens to pay their debts for the maintenance of the cemetery, concluded Vranić-Beširević.

Although it was not mentioned in the original articles, the news of the stickers affixed to graves at the Sarajevo cemeteries a month later was presented as a – national issue.

In September of 2017, RTRS broadcasted a story about the stickers on of the graveyard, and the story titled “Sarajevo – There is no place at the Bare cemetery, but for whom!?” was posted on an online website of this television. According to RTTS’ story, the answer to the question from the title is the following:

However, there are no words and no alternatives for the war and post-war Serbian “homelessness” in Sarajevo, for the victimized families or expelled relatives of those who died a long time ago! Even though Pokop’s administration does not want to speak about the national structure of the “abandoned” tombs, we are convinced that there are many on the Orthodox plot.
(…)
Bulldozers over Serbian graves and the image had already seen in Croatia or in parts of Kosmet! Will the city on the shores of Miljacka be following in their footsteps?
Dušan Šehovac from the DIS association believes that this is an urge coming from Sarajevo in order to “cleanse” from all the signs of other people who lived in this region.
(…)
Sarajevo has long halted the exhumation of the victims of the last war from its cobblestone! And will the bulldozers from Kazani, the landfill, the Ali Pasha’s Bridge…be diverted to the Bare cemetery!? And will those who died a long time ago become “graveless” brothers in the war of the slained? Only Sarajevo knows the answer.

RTRS also shared a statement of Asmir Hodžić, the Acting Executive Director of Pokop:

It is most likely that one part of the graves that nobody paid for will be exhumed. We can’t say whether it will happen in 2018 or 2020, but it will happen eventually if the need to exhume the graves occurs and the laws of the city of Sarajevo allow us to do so.

RTRS’ journalist further states that this was a “controversial decision taken by the Cantonal Government of former prime minister Besim Mehmedic in 2010.” Attached to this statement is a document – Decree on the Management and Maintenance of Cemeteries and Funeral Activities, by which the exhumation period is suggested.

However, the previously mentioned regulation never came into force. In fact, it only exists in a draft form and has not been adopted by the cantonal government to this date.

The story, however, did not end with suggestive questions and interpretations.

In November of 2017, it reappeared on the website Glas Srpske, this time with the following headline “The Reburial of Serbian Tombs in Sarajevo”. The article claims that a “reburial order” has already been issued and that the first such activities have been recorded. The phantom “decision” is also referred to in this article – but now it is presented as a decision of the City Assembly.

Sarajevo – Employees of Sarajevo cemeteries have been ordered to rebury graves of those who died a long time ago, the largest number of whom are Serbs because their relatives, scattered around the world after being exiled from Sarajevo, have not paid the maintenance fee.
Few Serbs in Sarajevo point out that this is especially the case with the city’s largest cemetery, called Bare. These procedures are based on the decision regarding the organization and maintenance of the city cemeteries, adopted by the Sarajevo City Assembly. The decision defines that a burial ground or a collective burial ground can be reburied ten years after the first burial if the graves have not been maintained and no compensation was paid for it.
The decision affects the Serb population the most, as about 150,000 Serbs were expelled from Sarajevo during and after the war. They are displaced around the world and many of them rarely come to Sarajevo and are unaware of the decision taken by the Sarajevo Assembly.

To begin with, by looking at the decisions of the City Council of the City of Sarajevo that were adopted in the current convocation, it can be seen that the City Assembly did not adopt any decision that would fit to what was stated in the article. 

Moreover, by reviewing the adopted decisions, we were able to find only one that in some way relates to the performance of public utilities (Decision on approval of the Statute of the Public Company for the Management, Protection and Maintenance of the Facilities of the City of Sarajevo and the Performing of Utilities and Other Activities of Public Interest in the City of Sarajevo (JP “Sarajevo” doo)). The decision was adopted in March 2017, but it doesn’t deal with the maintenance of the cemetery nor does it regulate such issues.

The decision to rebury the burial sites was therefore not made in the City Assembly. The question, however, is who could make such a decision, given the legal ambiguity that has been present in this department since the Constitutional Court of the Federation of BiH in 2015 ruled that at the time applicable Law on Communal Services of the Sarajevo Canton was inconsistent with the powers of local government, and that cemetery management should be left to municipalities and the city. A new law was passed in 2016, and in 2017 the Assembly of Sarajevo Canton decided to extend its implementation for another two years until the cantonal Law on Local Self-Government is adopted.

Therefore, Pokop is still the only one that deals with the maintenance of cemeteries in Sarajevo. As it is a cantonal public company, it is not under the jurisdiction of the City government, but under the jurisdiction of the Sarajevo Canton. As already stated, neither the Government of Sarajevo Canton nor the Cantonal Assembly has made any “decisions about reburying the graves” – moreover, they have not yet settled the department of ​​utilities itself, which is waiting for the adoption of local government laws.

The article published in Glas Srpske also contains a statement by an unnamed source, presented only as a “former Sarajevan”, who said that the burial of the graves had already begun:

“A former Sarajevo resident living in Serbia today told to Glas Srpske that his father’s grave in the Bare Cemetery was reburied.
– I found this terrible news from an acquaintance. When he informed me that the grave had been reburied, I went and with great difficulty, I found the remains of my father which have been taken away from the cemetery.
My father was buried there in the 1980s, and my family and I were expelled from that city during the war and ethnic cleansing. Because of the distance, I could not regularly visit my father’s grave. There should be more consideration for the situation of Sarajevo Serbs, and not to target them by a decision that many are not familiar with. What about the remains of the deceased whose families are scattered around the world – says our interlocutor, who, for fear of new inconveniences in Sarajevo, did not want us to reveal his identity. ”

Two days later, the statement was shared by a website Informer, in an article published on the basis of the article from Glas Srpske.

Informer also gave this anonymous source a name, adding some details which were missing in the statement from the original article. In the version published by Informer, the statement reads as follows:

“Our reader, Sarajevo-born Nenad K, who was expelled from his city in the 1990s, says he saw that his father+s remains were excavated from the Bare cemetery.
– This terrible news was reported to me by an old friend of mine from Sarajevo. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so I quickly went to Sarajevo. When I came to the Bare cemetery, I was told that my father’s bones are in the ossuary. If I had arrived a week later, they would have been burned. They claim it is legal because I did not pay for the gravesite, but no one even told me about it because I would certainly do it. I am still in shock since my father was buried in the 1980s and my family and I were expelled from Sarajevo – Nenad told us.”

Following the source of these allegations, we contacted Glas Srpske requesting for more accurate information on the alleged reburied tomb, to check if and when such an event took place. The author of the article told us in a telephone interview that he could not disclose an anonymous source and that “we could verify the information because we are in Sarajevo.” Since we have not received any specific information on how we could identify the cemetery site that was allegedly reburied, the released statement remains unverified – and unverifiable.

On the other hand, Pokop told us that no graves have ever been reburied in any Sarajevo cemetery. In a connection with the statement of Acting Executive Director, aired by RTRS, we were told that it was taken out of context and tentatively selected from a 15-minute interview. Pokop also added that there was no plan to “dig graves” – neither Orthodox nor anyone else’s.

In addition to expanding and modifying the above statement, Informer intervened in sharing the statement by Najda Beširević-Vranić, a spokeswoman for Pokop. Her statement in Glas Srpske was published as follows:

A spokeswoman for the cantonal public utility company Pokop, Najda Vranić-Beširević, said that there are between 12,000 and 13,000 graves without known owners, closest relatives or caretakers, including those with incomplete documentation.
Pokop manages nine cemeteries in the Sarajevo Canton – Bare, Lav, Stadion, St. Josip, St. Marko, St. arhanđeli, Georgije and Gavrilo, St. Mihovil, Obad and Vlakovo.
– Unfortunately during the war, part of our documentation was destroyed, especially when it comes to the Bare City Cemetery. Most of these burial sites are neglected and devastated which greatly impairs the appearance and safety of the cemetery. We have a legal basis for reburying graves after ten years of non-payment for compensation, but in no way do we want to damage or hurt our citizens. We invite citizens to report to one of our offices to complete the documentation because we are introducing geographic information records of graves – said Vranić-Beširević, adding that the annual fee for maintaining graves is 8.5 KM and that these debts by now are several million marks.

In a version made by Informer, the statement was significantly shortened and published with the following intervention:

A spokeswoman for the Public Utility Company Pokop, which manages nine cemeteries in the Sarajevo Canton, Najda Vranić Beširević said that about 13,000 predominantly Orthodox graves will be destroyed since nobody cared for their maintenance.

A spokesperson for Pokop has confirmed that she never said that only Orthodox graves will be dug over, and no one from this company would do such a thing.

Furthermore, based on completely incorrect claims, Informer has provided the article with the following headline and introduction:

Authorities in Sarajevo have begun digging around 13,000 Serbian graves in this city, putting the remains in an ossuary and then burning it! One of the reasons for such a scandalous move is the claim that “Serbian tombstones distort the appearance of the cemetery”?!
Also, the reason for the destruction of the Serbian graves is the fact that no maintenance fee had been paid for ten years. At the same time, it is not stated anywhere that these remains are the remains of relatives of expelled Serbs, who even if they wanted, could not return to Sarajevo and solve the problem with the tombs of their ancestors.
Experts and analysts argue that this is just another way to express hatred toward Serbs, and that the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina want to erase any evidence of our people’s existence in the area by burning down the deceased

These incisive claims were further “enhanced” by statements by an interlocutor – Anđelko Kozomara, who said that “Sarajevo authorities want to completely erase any trace of the existence of Serbs in that city”; and Ivan Kostić, a Dveri MP and chairman of the Diaspora and Serbs Committee in the region at the Serbian Parliament, who interpreted it as “a government policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina that inevitably leads to new conflicts”.

Neither was the Glas Srpske objective in its selection of interlocutors and in the redistribution of their statements.

So, for example, the statement repeated by Vranić-Beširević – that Pokop has a legal basis for the reburial of the graves, though they never did it, nor do they plan to do so in the future – was disputed in the original article by the general tone of the article. These claims were already made in the headline, saying that “the graves of the Serbs in Sarajevo are already being dug.”

In contrast, the almost identical statement the author received from the Banja Luka City Cemetery was fully shared, without any dispute – although this company operates under the same legal regulation and has stated the same as the spokeswoman for Pokop:

The Banjaluka City Cemetery said that they do not rebury the gave sites, even though there are many graves for which the maintenance fee hadn’t been paid for more than ten years.
“We haven’t had any such operation so far”, they said.
Reburial of graves is regulated by the Law on Cemeteries and Funeral Activities of Republika Srpska. The law states that a gravesite or a tomb that has not been maintained and for which the costs of maintaining the cemetery have not been paid for ten years, is considered abandoned, but due to the sensitivity of these cases, funeral companies avoid applying the regulation.

Besides Informer, the article published by Glas Srpske was also shared by the Tanjug agency, which published its shortened version on the same day, without any verification of the allegations made:

GS: The graves of Serbs in Sarajevo are being reburied
BANJALUKA – Authorities in federal Sarajevo have ordered cemetery workers in the city to rebury the graves of long-dead, most of them Serbs, because their relatives scattered around the globe after the war did not pay regular maintenance fees, writes Banja Luka’s Glas Srpske.
Few Serbs in Sarajevo point out that this is the case in the city’s largest Bare cemetery.

Tanjug‘s version was then shared by a number of media outlets from Serbia, including Politika, RTS, B92, Pink, Sputnik and others.

So, within few months, the news of stickers at the city’s cemeteries went from a story of unpaid fees and the establishment of geographic information records of gravesites to claims that the “reburial of 13,000 Serbian graves in Sarajevo” was already underway, with captions such as “terrible hatred” and “this leads to new conflicts”.

Considering the series of inaccurate allegations made in these articles, and the incitement and tendency to convey information, we rate these articles as fake news and biased reporting.