WITNESS TESTIMONIES: Foča Municipal Council Member Izet Spahić: Governments of Serbia and RS poured the foundations of the 'Buk Bijela' hydroelectric power plant on the bones of murdered Bosniaks!

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Izet Spahić, the only Bosniak council member in the Municipality of Foča, spoke yesterday on Hayat television. Topics of discussion included the position of Bosniak returnees in Foča, the attitude of local and entity authorities towards them, and, despite the decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH, the continuous construction of the Buk Bijela hydroelectric power plant, jointly carried out by the authorities of the Republic of Serbia and the smaller BiH entity.

Spahić pointed out that life in Foča is very difficult, especially for the returnee population.

"The life lived there is not worthy of a human being," Spahić stated.

Spahić emphasizes that mostly pensioners have returned to Foča.

"Very few people have children. People have returned to rural areas. There are only 10 Bosniak households in the city. The attitude of the local authorities is catastrophic. Out of 100 employees in the Municipality of Foča, only two are Bosniaks, and out of 160 employees in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, only three are Bosniaks. Public institutions do not have Bosniak employees. When creating the budget, the lives of the returnee population are not discussed.

On the building of the Municipality of Foča, there is a poster of the war criminal Ratko Mladić, one by one meter. The famous Partizan building, where Bosniak women were abused, is 15 meters away from that building, there is a large mural of Draža Mihailović. When someone desecrates it, a crew quickly appears, sets up scaffolding in plain sight of the police, and quickly restores it to its original state," Spahić emphasizes. 

Spahić points out that the implementation of funds they manage to lobby from higher authorities takes an unacceptably long time.

"There is absolutely no will from the local community to allocate funds to its Bosniak citizens. Three hydroelectric power plants have been built within a kilometer as the crow flies from the local community of Jeleč, and returnees in that village have been living without electricity for 15 years.

One quarter of the Municipality of Foča where Bosniaks lived has no electricity. We have addressed both the local community and all other addresses. We used to solve this somehow through the federal level, and when that problem moved to the state level, everything stopped," Spahić points out.

He says he is tired of activities and will withdraw from political life. 

"I am very tired of all these things. I have spoken with many friends and announced that I will withdraw from the duties I perform because my health condition is also not good, and for two full years now I have been unable to solve any serious problem for Bosniak returnees. The local community completely ignores us, higher levels of government do not allocate enough, and together with colleagues, I am unable to solve problems. So I don't see the point of continuing to work," Spahić stated. 

In discussions about the construction of hydroelectric power plants on the Drina River, the opinions of those living in the area are least considered and least sought.

"Mostly, the discussion is about the usurpation of state property and the decisions of the Constitutional Court, and there are at least two other topics that concern Bosniaks in that area. At that location (Buk Bijela), a mass grave was found in which 43 victims were exhumed. All of them were detained in the KP Dom (Remand Prison). Of the 620 Bosniaks who were not given funeral prayers, about 150 are those who were in the KP Dom. Surviving Bosniaks from the KP Dom believe that at the Buk Bijela site, where the construction of the hydroelectric power plant is planned, there are still bodies of Bosniaks," adds Spahić.

Spahić emphasizes that the local community has refused to submit a request to search the Drina riverbed.

"And our representatives do not talk about it at all, or they talk very little. I initiated this at the main board of the SDA, but apart from Mehmedović and Salkić, as far as I could see, no one spoke about it seriously. The Government of Serbia and the entire RS entity come there and, before our eyes, lay the foundation stone, and we already suspect that there are bones of murdered Bosniaks in that concrete they poured," concluded Spahić.