INTRODUCTION
The Blogajevo pages came into existence when I spent 9
months in Sarajevo in 2014. I was there to research police violence during the
1992-1995 war. Criminologists sometimes assume that police are ‘natural’
partners in ethnic violence. I wasn’t so sure, and spent my time away from
Edinburgh going through court records to see what the story was. What I found
was that processes of democratisation, politicisation, deprofessionalisation
and militarisation fundamentally changed the shape of the police and help to
explain their involvement in atrocity crimes. A full paper, with sources and
citations, is available here.
My nine months were spent analysing over 50,000 pages of
court transcripts and 3,000 pieces of evidence from two cases heard in The
Hague at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(Prosecutor v Brđanin, Prosecutor v Stanišić and Župljanin).
Police participation in genocides and atrocity crimes is
well recognised. Police are trained to use violence and to obey senior
authority, but to me that’s a fairly thin understanding of police. At best, it
suggests a potential role in violent state action against civilians, at worst
it risks taking police violence for granted. The underlying assumptions can be
questioned. They ignore the possibility of untrained personnel; fail to
consider in what ways and in what contexts police are trained to use violence;
side-line ideological conviction or other explanations; and don’t treat
violence as a process unfolding over time. Detailed description and analysis of
a specific case can shed more light on these processes.
DESCRIBING POLICE VIOLENCE
The police contributed to ethnic cleansing in the Krajina
region in the north west of Bosnia through the creation of an inhospitable
environment for non-Serbs, forced transfers of population and murder.
Krajina municipalities in pink and blue |
Disarmament
Serb authorities, including the police, targeted disarmament
programmes at Bosniaks (known at the time as Bosnian Muslims) and Bosnian
Croats. In contrast they accommodated and cooperated with irregular armed
formations of Bosnian Serbs and Serb neighbourhoods and villages retained or
received weapons. Radio broadcasts explicitly targeted non-Serbs with calls to
surrender arms. In this way, Serb authorities secured a monopoly over the
material means of physical violence.
Joint military and police weapon collection programmes
targeted towns, villages and individuals. Weapons taken in by the civilian
police included those retained after military service, illegally procured arms
and legally owned and registered pistols and rifles. These operations involved
intrusive and violent police searches, arrests and large scale detention of
civilians. Both before and after the expiry of deadlines, military attacks were
threatened and occurred.
Detention camps, arrests, interrogation
Evidence from detainees and members of the Serb Interior
Ministry describe various detention camps, often in schools, public facilities
and industrial sites.
Camp detainees were held in inhumane conditions. Camps were
crowded, had inadequate provision for nutrition and personal hygiene, and
inmates slept on hard floors. They were humiliated and denigrated, beaten and
killed.
Beatings took place during police interrogations and as part
of the daily activities of the police acting as guards. In Kotor Varoš, at the
school building and sawmill, acts against inmates extended to sexual violence
and rape against men and women.
Individual killings include the suffocation and beating to
death of men being transferred to Manjaca, and the July massacre of detainees
from Brdo in the Omarska camp. Further details on individual killings and
massacres in Omarska and Keraterm are found in other cases at both the ICTY and
the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The ICTY evidence only includes the clearest and strongest
examples, where eye-witnesses survived to testify. An association of camp
detainees has wider evidence of around 700 killings at Omarska.
Lines of control are often ambiguous in camps, but police
involvement is evident. Examples include the sports hall in Sanski Most; the
Manjaca detention camp; and in leadership and day to day running of camps at
Omarska and Keraterm.
Interrogations took place in police stations and in camps.
Teams of interrogators were made up of the regular police (Public Security
Service), the intelligence-oriented State Security Service, and Military
Security. In Keraterm, Manjaca and Omarska camps, interrogations categorised
detainees into three groups, including men singled out to be killed. These
included those in leading functions, wealthy citizens, intellectuals and
professionals, suggesting a strategy to undermine non-Serb communities by
removing those playing a role in organisation and representation.
In some cases, police acted to protect non-Serbs during
transfers or in detention. These are limited, but indicate points where police
break from the script of persistent, repeated and serious abuse and violence.
Violence outside camps and police facilities
The camps provided a contained environment in which violence
was routinized. Violence, including police violence, was also prevalent
outside. The police cooperated with military forces in violent attacks on
villages and were involved in individual and large scale killing outside the
detention camps.
The massacre at Korićanske Stijene is one of the better documented
mass killings. On 21 August 1992, a police intervention squad from Prijedor
shot around 200 Bosniak men at the edge of a canyon. Clothing lying in the
canyon and a bad smell suggested this was not the first mass killing at the
site.
A hostile environment
As part of the strategic goals of the Serb authorities to
separate the peoples of BiH and to secure territory, a combination of killings,
detention and harassment sought to rid the area of non-Serbs by elimination and
by creating a hostile environment to promote mass population movements out of
the region.
The court documents allow detailed description of this
process, and can serve as a foundation for an explanation of how a multi-ethnic
police force is transformed to carry out such acts.
EXPLAINING POLICE VIOLENCE
Three developments changed the structure and function of the
police. First, the democratisation process and the victory of
ethnically-oriented parties; second politicisation and polarisation in police
agencies leading to fragmentation and deprofessionalisation; finally, the
militarisation of the police.
Democratisation
In BiH’s first multi-party elections in 1990 three
ethnically-based parties, the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ), Party for
Democratic Action (SDA) and Serb Democratic Party (SDS) secured 202 of 240
seats in the Republican Assembly.
A minimal consensus existed between parties around a
principle of dividing up control of republican, municipal and socially-owned
institutions and offices. This shows continuity with party penetration of state
institutions common under communism, but in a new multi-party context.
An arrangement known as the 'ethnic key', ensuring
representation of BiH's different constitutent peoples in key state functions,
was also adapted to the new context.
The relative strength of ethnically-based parties became a
proxy for working out the relevant ethnic composition at all levels, and
parties put forward their preferred candidates. Agreement that roles and
functions should be distributed across the parties did not mean agreement on
the specific allocations, and many appointments were contentious.
Attachment to a party (rather than the party) remained
important in securing key roles after the elections, but now with three parties
rather than one. In many cases, experience was disregarded and people with no
police background were appointed to leading positions or relatively junior
staff were promoted rapidly.
Politicisation and deprofessionalisation
Police professionals, appointees with no previous policing
experience, and party members all describe how parties put forward their own
people for key police posts. In Prijedor the SDA even made a pre-election
promise to appoint a Muslim Chief of Police.
Party appointees often fell short of the requirements of the
job. In many cases, appointees had no background in policing. It was claimed
that the Chief of Police appointed by the SDA in Prijedor had no experience
policing outside being stopped for drunk driving. After an armed takeover of
the town the role went to Simo Drljača, from the education service, then to a
mathematics teacher. In Kotor Varoš an engineer with no experience of policing
was appointed as Chief of Police, and in Ključ, the same role went to a man
with experience in construction.
Regardless of the professional background of police-leaders,
party-based nomination meant that candidates owed their jobs to political
parties and were likely to be loyal or sympathetic to their aims. Further,
candidates that did not meet pre-existing criteria diluted the professionalism
of the police and new leaders were not schooled in the police values of SFRY.
Irregularities were noted throughout the service, not just
at the top. Police officials sacked over disciplinary or criminal matters were
reappointed after elections, while normal appointment procedures were ignored
for regular police officers and circumvented to stack the police reserve with
party supporters.
As BiH disintegrated ethno-political appointments and
dismissals were more explicit. In June 1992, an official decision by the
Krajina authorities limited all positions involving the protection of public
property to Serbs and excluded those “who have not confirmed by plebiscite or
who in their minds are not clear that the Serbian Democratic Party is the sole
representative of the Serbian people”.
Changes in the composition of the police force question
police training as a factor in their role in atrocity crimes. One witness saw
men as young as 16 or 17 in police uniform.
Instead a restructured and mono-ethnic police provided an
organisational framework and badge of convenience with access to the material
means of violence. These means of violence were then expanded through the
militarisation of the police.
Militarisation
The militarisation of the police impacted upon the structure
of the organisation, the skill set of its members, the tools available, and the
opportunities for engagement in activities against civilian populations.
Military tools were sometimes redeployed to police. Former
military vehicles were repainted in police colours and militia in blue uniforms
manned the front lines. Once mobilised, police reserves had access to weapons
including automatic and semi-automatic weapons.
In the Krajina, Serb police requested military hardware from
the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in April 1992. It was subsequently paraded in
Banja Luka and elsewhere in the region. The request included helicopters,
armoured vehicles, machine guns, sniper rifles, hand grenades and other
explosives.
The creation of an expanded and militarised police reserve
is something that began before the division of the Ministry of the Interior in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Rooted in a Yugoslav concept of All People’s Defence,
it was also a logical move in light of restrictions on military force in the
UN-backed Vance plan, and the limited defensive capacity held by republics in
Yugoslavia.
Special units or detachments were set up, like the special
detachment of the regional Public Security Centre (CSB) in Banja Luka. The unit
was formed from a mixture of police, members of the paramilitary Serb Defence
Forces, and the military. Criteria for inclusion in the unit included front
line experience.
Regular use of police in combat was a further threat to the
distinction between police and military. The expert witness, Christian Nielsen,
identified the extent of police deployment in military roles. In 1992, it was
suggested that police served 300,000 man days per month in combat functions.
The different dimensions of the apparent militarisation of
the police support two separate conclusions.
First, the ‘policeness’ of those who appear to be a part of
the police is called into question. The wholesale transfer of personnel and
weaponry from military and paramilitary units into police organisations shows a
fundamental change to the nature of the police in the Krajina region,
marginalising officers whose training and service started before the war.
Secondly, regular utilisation of police in military roles
can create an embattled and brutalised force who view their role in terms of
securing their people from an enemy as opposed to securing a more general sense
of order.
A NEW POLICE: POLITICISED, DEPROFESSIONALISED, MILITARISED
The police in the Krajina region of Bosnia and Herzegovina
were transformed into a tool of the SDS programme of ethnically targeted
violence. This was not inevitable, but used the existing structures of policing
and defence from Yugoslavia, and was shaped by the ethnicisation of politics in
Bosnia’s democratic transition.
It created a police force distanced from a professional
ethos, in which senior positions were held by ideologically committed party men
often with no previous police experience. Uncontrolled recruitment and an
absence of police training left no scope for sharing professional values that
might have countered the SDS strategy.
Coupled with the military potential of a police force
viewed, equipped and utilised as an integral part of the emerging state’s
military capacity, this helps explain the role of the police in atrocity crimes
in the Krajina, especially in the period of spring to winter 1992.
The ICTY files are a rich resource, but not without problems
of coverage and interpretation. This work makes a start at mining the files to
make sense of what happened in the war.