SERB FACE NUMEROUS PROBLEMS IN PROPERTY RESTITUTION, 1,700 REQUESTS FOR AID FILED

MOSTAR, NOVEMBER 28 /SRNA/ - The president of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Serbs in the Federation of BiH, Đorđe Radanović, said that 1,700 Serbs in the Herzegovina–Neretva Canton /HNC/ have registered with the Committee’s Legal Aid Office seeking protection of their property rights.

He said these individuals come from Konjic, Jablanica, Mostar, Čapljina, Stolac, Ravno, and Neum. "All of these people have questions, and the largest number of cases concerns the city of Mostar," Radanović said at a conference on the protection of Serb property rights in the Herzegovina–Neretva Canton, organized by the Coordination of Serbs of Mostar. Dušan Golo, the president of the Coordination of Serbs of Mostar, said that the situation is very complex when it comes to protecting the property of Serbs in Mostar and the Herzegovina–Neretva Canton. "We have received many reports from people on the ground who contact us because of the usurpation of private property. The biggest problem is that people don’t know whom to turn to or how to resolve their problems," Golo said. The elder of the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity in Mostar, Duško Kojić, said that the Church is in a somewhat better position than the people, but even that position is far from satisfactory. "We have been waiting for a long time for our problems to be resolved, just like everyone else, and we mostly end up with a negative outcome. We have not succeeded in reclaiming all of our property. We were given access to a small portion that belonged to the Serbian Orthodox Church, and that only at the time when property was being returned to all religious communities, because we were then part of a collective decision," Father Kojić said. After that, Kojić says, they have not been able to exercise any of their rights and are encountering unnecessary delays and non-resolution of cases.