The project costing some 750,000 euro will see the construction of 21 houses, auxiliary buildings and roads in Bukovica this year to enable the return of some of the scores of Bosniak families who were forced to leave their homes in 1992 and 1993, BIRN has learned.
Over three million euro has already been invested in the project. From 2008 to 2013, 70 houses were built and more than 100 kilometres of roads were repaired.
“The road infrastructure, electricity network and housing facilities in Bukovica are in poor condition and their repair is the key condition for the return of the displaced Bosniaks,” the government’s latest report on the situation in the Bukovica area says.
More than 100 Bosniak families were forced to flee Bukovica in 1992 and 1993. Most of them went to Bosnia.
The Association of Exiled Bukovica Residents claims that during that time, six Bosniaks were killed, two committed suicide after being tortured, and around 70 were tortured by the Yugoslav People’s Army and police officers and paramilitaries from the Pljevlja area in the north of Montenegro.
In 2012, the appeals court in Podgorica acquitted seven ex-policemen and Yugoslav army officers of abusing Bosniaks in the Bukovica area in 1992 and 1993.
The seven men had been charged with the inhumanly treating, torturing and systematically assaulting Bosniaks during the war, in an attempt to scare them and forcibly expel them from their villages.
by Dusica Tomovic
(Source: Balkan Insight)
