Bukovica engleski.qxd - Fond za humanitarno pravo

Bukovica engleski.qxd 15.3.2003 13:54 Page 104
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Bukovica
and army units. The Muslim-Slavs in the area looked on
all this with great concern. Their feelings of insecurity
grew when their homes became the more and more frequent
targets of illegal searches and they themselves of
accusations that they were financing and joining the
Zelene beretke (Green Berets, a Bosnian-Muslim armed
force in Bosnia).
On July 1, 1992, in the village Bunguri, a group of uniformed
and armed men beat up six Muslim-Slav villagers.
Shortly after, several of the younger families
decided to leave the Bukovica area, believing their
departure was temporary. Early in September, Yugoslav
Army reservists arrived in the village of Kovačevići, saying
they were there to see to the safety of the people
and their property in Bukovica. Nonetheless, there were
constant incidents of illegal searches of Muslim-Slav
homes, physical violence to individuals, the confiscation
of licensed firearms, and open theft of foreign currency
and jewelry, and villagers began leaving the area
on a massive scale. Those who remained were mostly
the elderly who stayed behind to look after the livestock
and the abandoned property of relatives. By the end of
1992, more than 600 Muslim-Slavs had fled the villages
of Bukovica.
The reorganization of the Yugoslav Army included the
decisions to accept exclusively Serbs into its ranks and
to pay them. These decisions deepened the mistrust
among the Muslim-Slavs of Bukovica, especially among
those who recognized former reservists who had mistreated
them among the new regular Yugoslav Army
soldiers.
Yugoslav Army forces did nothing to stop a group of
Serb army members from Bosnia from entering the
hamlet of Selište on February 15, 1993 and abducting a