Before I respond to Marko Puljic's important point about Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar, I would urge those not familiar with the magnificence of the Herzegovinian cultural and religious heritage we are discussing to just take a moment to glance at two Herzegovinian towns: Pocitelj and Stolac. Because these towns have now been deliberately destroyed and there are few books available on them, may I please suggest you check out the images at the following Web sites:
www.students.haverford.edu/vfilipov/pocitelj.html www.students.haverford.edu/vfilipov/stolac.html
Before discussing the role of the clergy in the systematic annihilation of Muslim monuments, heritage, and places of worship in these areas, and the expulsion of the Muslim population, with documented atrocities, here is the basic background of what happened:
Pocitelj was one of the most beautiful towns in Herzegovina. It had no military significance and was not occupied by any significant military force. It was perched on a rugged hillside along the Neretva river near Mostar. In September 1993, Croat religious nationalists of the HVO (Croatian Defense Council) rounded up the Muslim inhabitants and took them to concentration camps. All the major Islamic monuments, dating from 1563,were dynamited. According to some reports a Catholic Church is to be built on the ruins of the mosque. After the Muslim population was expelled and the ancient town dynamited, a giant cross was placed outside of the town. According to the Amir Pasic - Pasic, Islamic Architecture in Bosnia and Hercegovina, 218, - the following works of major importance were annihilated by late summer 1993: Sisman Ibrahim Pasa Mosque, Sisman Ibrahim, Pasa Medresa (school complex), Sisman Ibrahim Pasa Han (market complex), Sisman Ibrahim Pasa Hamam (Turkish-bath complex), and the Gavran-Kapetanovic's House. Croatian scholars have since held a conference at nearby Capljina discussing the ancient "Croat" character of Pocitelj and according to some reports a Catholic Church is to be built upon the spot of the destroyed Islamic monuments.
Stolac was a magnificent small town, built along a rushing river beneath rugged hills with ancient Ottoman fortifications and ancient pre-Ottoman Bosnian tombstones known as steO(c,')aks. It was also known for its exquisite, small-scale, seventeenth-century mosques. Stolac was occupied in 1992 by the Serb army; when the Muslims were driven out, they began shelling the town from nearby mountains. Then the HVO, wearing the masks favored by Serb militias during such operations, turned on the people it had helped save from the Serb army only months before. Here is an account from the UN High Commission for Refugees:
On 23 August 1993, four mosques in Stolac were blown up. That night, witnesses said, military trucks carrying [Croatian] soldiers firing their weapons in the air went through the town terrorizing and rounding up all Muslim women, children, and elderly. The cries and screams of women and children could be heard throughout the town as the soldiers looted and destroyed Muslim homes. The soldiers, who wore handkerchiefs, stockings or paint to hide their faces, took the civilians to Blagaj, an area of heavy fighting northwest of Stolac. [András Riedlmayer, "The War on People and the War on Culture," New Combat 3 (Autumn 1994), 23, quoted from a UNHCR report of August 23, 1993.]
The Islamic monuments, many dating from the early 18th century, that were dynamited or destroyed in other fashions are listed at the Stolac Web site above.
Now for Marko's point about Bishop Ratko Peric. It has been very difficult to find information on precise activities of the Herzegovinian clergy. So I ask Marko the following:
Could you possibly post the text of Peric's condemnation of the placing of the cross outside the "ethnically cleansed" Pocitelj? Did Peric condemn the dynamiting of the Islamic sites and the placement of the population in concentration camps? What are the statements of the local clergy from Pocitelj and Stolac on the organized persecution of non-Catholics in these towns?
My goal here is simply to identify those clerics who have opposed the persecutions, those who have supported them, and those who have remained silent.
Final question: if Bishop Peric opposed the persecutions, could not the Vatican have forcefully come to his aid by announcing that any militia leader engaged in mass-murder, dynamiting houses of worship, or expulsion of non-Catholic civilians to concentration would be excommunicated? Pope John Paul II has been very forceful in other areas (such as clamping down on Liberation Theologians in the Latin American Church). Is there evidence that statements by Bishop Peric have been backed up by a morally urgent stance by the Vatican in this area?
Finally, has the international head of the Franciscan order, some of whose friars have been implicated in the support of the radical religious nationalists in Herzegovina taken a stand on the persecutions in this area?