SEARCH FOR MISSING MARKED BY STALLED CASES

PALE, FEBRUARY 19 /SRNA/ – A roundtable discussion on the issues in searching for missing Serbs was held in Pale today, pointing out numerous unresolved cases and persistent delays in the process, three decades after the end of the war.

Isidora Graorac, president of the Republika Srpska Organization of Families of Captured and Fallen Soldiers and Missing Civilians, said the roundtable was organized to mark 30 years since the organization’s founding, stressing that the issue of searching for those missing from the past war remains the most difficult. Graorac told reporters that more than 1,600 individuals from Republika Srpska remain on the list of the missing. She added that information families receive from the BiH Missing Persons Institute, the institution responsible for this process, does not inspire optimism regarding faster and more efficient case resolution. She noted that families of the missing have requested more concrete steps, including the establishment of an institute for missing persons at the level of Republika Srpska. To set up such a body, she said, it is necessary to adopt a law on missing persons from the past war at the level of Republika Srpska. “We expect that the next session of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska will address this law and, consequently, the formation of this body, which is necessary because we have no trust in institutions at the BiH level nor that anything will change in the process of identifying and locating the missing,” Graorac stressed. According to Graorac, today's meeting was attended by representatives of families of the missing from across Republika Srpska, who continue to seek answers as to why there is no new information, why the process is being prolonged, and why this humanitarian issue is being placed in a political context. “The issue of the missing must not be politicized, because all victims, regardless of nationality, have the right to the truth, and their families have the right to final peace and the opportunity to turn to the future,” Graorac underlined. Milena Kusmuk, who is searching for her husband Ratko, said he was killed in 1992 on Mount Trebević and that his remains have still not been found. “We have lost all hope. This kind of work and the obstructions coming from Sarajevo make no sense. We have come across certain information suggesting that the trail leads to Kazani. Whether that is true, I do not know, but we are not being allowed to conduct excavations,” Kusmuk said, adding that she and her children have done everything possible in the search, including providing DNA samples.