Returnees in Republika Srpska are faced with the huge problem of confiscation of their private property, which the Office for Geodetic and Property Legal Affairs of Republika Srpska registers as the property of this entity, and people were never informed about it. Thousands of dulums were usurped, and no BiH institution protected the owners, even though they were deprived of their human rights and property in the most brutal way.
Only in our country is it possible to knock on citizens’ doors and inform them that their house and land, that is, their fatherland belongs to Republika Srpska from now on. Selim Mustafić bought this land back in the 1980s and lived and raised a family here. Now he was handed a blue envelope, from which blood flowed in his veins.
“I received a blue envelope to report to the cadastre in Miliće. I went upstairs. They handed me a decision that says that everything is now usurped. I asked the lawyer why they were confiscating it. She told me that it will now all be fenced off , forested with conifers and will be the main hunting ground of Republika Srpska. I said you can do it as you want. As long as I’m alive, I will fight,” says Mustafić, the owner of the usurped property.
Thousands of dulums of land in Podrinje were usurped and many returnees are now in court, demanding that their property be returned to them.
Besim Mustafić was deprived of 11.5 dulums of land, which was owned by his great-grandfather, grandfather and father for more than a hundred years. No one in Bosnia and Herzegovina protected these people, neither the institutions of the Ministry of Human Rights, nor the ombudsman.
“I call on the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees, I call on the Ministry for Refugees and Displaced Persons, to give us first of all legal assistance. To help us with things and rights that were taken from us so that we non-Serbs could survive here, because we are citizens of the fifth order here. I came back here in 1998, believe me it was easier than today in 2024,” says Besim Mustafić.
And that everything is done deliberately and without the knowledge of the property and land owners, is best illustrated by the case of Alija Hasanović, who has been fighting the battle with the Office for Geodetic and Property-Legal Relations of the Republika Srpska for three full years. Each of these papers proves that the land is his, but this Office registered his fatherhood as its own. They gave Hasanović the opportunity to appeal, but the appeal was rejected very quickly. Now he is waiting for protection from the judicial institutions, but it is obvious that the trial is being deliberately dragged out.
“For three years now, no one from the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina has called us. I addressed everyone. I invited them and I invite them to this day, to sit down and see how we will do. Because we carry this on our own backs, and this is very expensive. First, financially, and secondly, you are dealing with someone who doesn’t care whether it will be resolved in a day or ten years,” emphasizes Alija Hasanović, a fighter for the rights of returnees in Srednje Podrinje.
These people believe that all this is being done in order for Republika Srpska to acquire certain property for its ownership and so that maybe tomorrow it will have something to claim independence on. The intentions have been clear for a long time, but the relationship between the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the International Community, which calmly observes the gross violation of human rights and the institutional seizure of property, is not clear. And they shouldn’t do that.
