NEWS STORY: Faith groups seek to reduce tensions in Bosnia

c. 1997 Religion News Service SARAJEVO _ While Bosnian politicians and outside experts are questioning the viability of a multiethnic Bosnian state, the Balkan nation’s religious leaders are quietly taking the first steps toward interfaith reconciliation. For the past six months, leaders of Bosnia’s Muslim, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Jewish communities have been informally meeting […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

SARAJEVO _ While Bosnian politicians and outside experts are questioning the viability of a multiethnic Bosnian state, the Balkan nation’s religious leaders are quietly taking the first steps toward interfaith reconciliation.

For the past six months, leaders of Bosnia’s Muslim, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Jewish communities have been informally meeting to draw up a common declaration expressing their shared moral commitment to peace.


The exact wording of the document has not yet been agreed on, but its guiding principles will have at their core respect for religious freedom, fundamental human rights, and interreligious dialogue.

Specifically, according to those close to the process, there will probably be a central clause insisting individuals have the right to practice the religion of their choice.

The document is also expected to condemn acts of revenge and include a condemnation of the desecration of religious buildings and cemeteries.

Bosnia has approximately 1 million Muslims, 700,000 Orthodox, 190,000 Roman Catholics, and 1,000 Jews.”However difficult during the war, we tried to keep contacts alive with all the religious communities,”said Bishop Pero Sudar, spokesman for the Catholic bishops conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”The time has now come to try and intensify these contacts and work together to fulfill the goal of reconciliation which all of the religious communities here are striving for.” While the initiative for the meetings has come the Bosnian religious communities, the effort is also receiving support and aid from the World Council on Religion and Peace (WCRP), which has been acting as a facilitator by organizing meetings and providing transportation between the different regions of the country.”One of the things we’ve always tried to avoid is putting pressure on the religious groups,”said Saba Risaludding of the WCRP.”The Bosnians have enormous capacities of their own. What we would like to do is to help release these capacities.”What the WCRP is finding at the moment is that individuals are undertaking their own initiatives in this kind of a climate,”Risaludding added.”There’s a general feeling that the religious leaders are getting ahead of the politicians.” Political attempts at forging a durable peace in Bosnia have stalled.

Many Bosnians and members of the international community now regard the peace and reconstruction process as a failure.

According to many, the goal of establishing a common and workable multiethnic identity among Bosnians as envisioned by the Dayton Accords _ the November 1995 agreement signed in Dayton, Ohio, that ended the war between the Bosnian army and the breakaway Bosnian Serbs _ has largely failed due to the international community’s inability to promote the building of common political and social institutions among Muslims, Serbs and Croats.

Almost a year and a half after Dayton, less than 10 percent of all refugees who were expelled from their homes have actually been able to return. The country still operates with three different currencies and runs at only 20 percent of its pre-war industrial output.


Unemployment is at a staggering 70 percent, and hospitals and schools are often closed for lack of heating and electricity. While checkpoints run by militias have disappeared, Muslims still are afraid of traveling to Serb-dominated and sometimes even Croat-controlled parts of the country.

In February, relations between Bosnian Muslims and Catholics were further strained when Bosnian Croat police killed one Muslim and shot 20 others during a pilgrimage to a Muslim cemetery on the Croatian side of the city of Mostar.

In part because of that incident, the work of the religious leaders has taken on added urgency. Their goal, they say, is to establish multireligious cooperation at the top in the hope it will give the go-ahead to imams, Orthodox and Catholic priests, and rabbis at the grassroots to start communicating with one other.”We’re hoping to free up a lot of grassroots goodwill which is now blocked,”Risaludding said.”In the long term the formation of an interreligious council will make it easier for humanitarian agencies to be catalysts for cross-institutional cooperation.” The leaders have not given themselves a deadline for issuing the common declaration and the negotiations have been slow, but steady, according to participants. For example, Bosnia’s Orthodox leaders must consult with Orthodox authorities in Belgrade before making any decisions.

In addition, the rotation of religious holidays of all four communities makes it difficult to hold regular meetings.”Every single word needs to be weighed and checked over and over again,”said Sudar.”But the positive momentum and the commitment are there.”

MJP END MODRO

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