Researchers have faced specific obstacles in trying to document war crimes against Bosnia’s Roma, not least a tendency among some not to identify as Roma at all.
Sejdic blamed deep-rooted stigma, discrimination, prejudice, and racism; many Roma still live on the margins of Bosnian society.
“No matter how many universities we finish, we will always be gypsies,” said Ismet Vehabovic, who fought in the war and lives in the Romska Varda settlement in Kakanj, northwest of the capital, Sarajevo.
“No matter if we have a master’s degree, we will always be gypsies for them, and that is it, end of story. It makes no difference to me. Believe me, I am used to these things. But we, the gypsies, do not have the same rights as Muslims, Croats and Serbs in Kakanj.”
However, some Roma people decided to take action for themselves. Fadil Ferhatovic of Drustvo Evropa Roma (European Roma Federation), who comes from Skocic, in an area where women and girls were raped and 27 civilians executed, set up an organisation to establish the fate of those who went missing during the war.
“So because we, the Roma, are very peaceable people, I began to fight for Roma rights without a gun in my hand. But presenting all this to someone is difficult,” Ferhatovic said.
“At first, not even Bosniaks could believe me; they kept telling me: ‘What Roma people are you talking about, Mr. Ferhatovic? How do you know that this war crime was committed?’ Well, I come from the village of Skocic, I know who’s no longer alive here. I know about everything that happened here.”
Ferhatovic said that the bodies of people killed in Skocic were found in a mass grave known as Crni Vrh, southwest of Zvornik. He assisted in getting Roma people to help identify the human remains found there.
“When we were supposed to give blood [for DNA testing] for the missing, I called people and all those families and they came and gave blood,” he explained.
“When they found the DNA and when it was all done, half of the bodies were there and half were missing. Some were missing, and I explained to people that this was the case and we had time to do these things, that they would stay until everyone was found, that one day we would all do it together.”
But the investigators faced a problem when we they the bones of a woman and a small skull. “It was a baby skull in month nine of pregnancy, and they asked me if I knew about it,” Ferhatovic recalled.
“I said: ‘Listen, I know for sure that this small skull belongs to that baby, because she was nine months pregnant, the woman was about to give birth.’ Unfortunately, we are still searching for one woman, for whom no one has given DNA.”
Lacking trust in official bodies, many Roma are still too afraid to talk about the experiences of the war.
Omer Gabela, an experienced war crimes researcher who took part in the project with Kali Sara, BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, cited the case of a Roma man who was forced to bury murdered civilians, who witnessed sexual violence and imprisonment, but refused to talk.
Roma, he said, were not spared the crimes of the Bosnian war, be it “murder, rape, detention in concentration camps, expulsion, destruction of property, and arson”.
But Sejdic said he was sceptical that the project will ever arrive at a precise number of killed and tortured Roma, but that it was important to begin.
“Memorialisation is important precisely in order to study the matter in future school literature, and to leave to our future generations the legacy of the suffering of Roma, so that they continue to investigate, so that we all continue to memorialise all the suffering of the Roma population in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said.
He listed some of the places where the Roma presence was wiped out: Foca, Gorazde, Visegrad, Cajnice, Srebrenica, Bratunac, and parts of Vlasenica, Zvornik, and Bijeljina.
“We can also mention another settlement, Nova Kasaba, where there was a street called Ciganluk, which was completely inhabited by residents of Roma ethnicity.”
Read more about this issue on BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Detektor website here.