András J. Riedlmayer

Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1996: A Post-War Survey Of Selected Municipalities

Type
report
Year
2002
Commissioned by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and used in the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, this thirty-one page report summarizes the damage to cultural and religious heritage of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat (Roman Catholic) communities during the 1992-1996 conflict with Serb forces. It is the result of fieldwork conducted in Bosnia-Herzegovina in July 2002 and is accompanied by a Filemaker database (not yet available) that documents in detail 392 patrimonial sites in nineteen municipalities. The religious and cultural sites to be surveyed included, but were not limited to, places of worship, libraries, educational buildings and cultural sites. Sixty percent of the sites listed were inspected first hand, while documentation on other sites was collected from a variety of sources judged to be reliable, including state and local monuments protection authorities and the religious communities.

During the survey, the damage to each site was assessed using a five-point scale ranging from "in good condition" to "completely destroyed". Based on this scale, ninety-two percent of the 277 mosques surveyed were found to have been heavily damaged or destroyed, of which 136 were almost or entirely destroyed. Similarly, seventy-five percent of the 57 Roman Catholic churches documented in the survey were found to be heavily damaged, of which thirteen were destroyed. The evidence collected by the survey points to widespread
and systematic destruction between 1992-1996 of patrimonial sites significant to the Muslim and Croat communities of Bosnia.

Citation

Riedlmayer, András J. 2002. Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1996: A Post-War Survey Of Selected Municipalities. Expert Report commissioned by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

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Copyright

András J. Riedlmayer

Terms of Use

Public Domain

Country

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Language

English