🚀 go-pugleaf

To the Bundespresident
Roman Herzog
Office of the Bundespresident
Kaiser-Friedrichstrasse 16

53105 Bonn

Cologne, 25 October 1996

Dear Mr Bundespresident:

I would like to explain to you today my motives for refusing the German National Service Cross.  I am refusing this 
honour you award me, to protest against the decision of the Minister of the Interior�s Conference to begin the 
"accompanying" of Bosnian refugees back to Bosnia-Herzegovina starting October 1st.

I hold this decision to be deeply inhumane, on multiple grounds:
1. Winter is again facing us, and the current situation with living supplies in BiH is already catastrophic.
One million residents and 1.4 (!) million internal refugees in the country are 80% dependent on humanitarian aid, 60% 
of habitable space is destroyed, infrastructure and business are at their all-time lows.  UNHCR is protesting against the 
expulsion decisions, it can hardly manage to guarantee the already precarious supplies, much less under winter 
conditions.  Neither public facilities nor private accommodations have the space for extra people.  I know refugees from 
the region Prijedor, who have been waiting since summer 1992 in a refugee centre in Zenica:  During this entire time, 
they�ve had no possibility to work, no decent living and sanitary conditions, no private lives.  All of their belongings 
have been stolen or destroyed, they have experienced torture and humiliation.  They are sick in body and soul, and have 
no life opportunities ahead.  At this time they are facing the fifth (!) winter of the war - and now, they are supposed to 
share their tiny space and meagre food with even more people...

2. The political guidelines of the Dayton Agreement have not yet been realised.
Their realisation is an indispensable condition for the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees:  The creators of the 
Dayton Agreement set the prerequisite of an undivided Bosnia - among them was the German Foreign Minister.  The 
present shows a totally different reality.  Bosnian Muslims and Croats must still fear for their lives, if they ever cross the 
"former" front line toward their towns of origin.  In the recently occurring elections, these people needed IFOR 
protection in order to practice their rights as citizens - partly in polling places especially set up for them outside of the 
towns!  It is into places such as these, that the German Minister of the Interior and his colleagues want to send the 
Bosnian refugees "back home".  Women who have survived the most brutal rapes by their neighbours, are to return to 
the place of their torment!  This will first be possible only when at least some part of the injustice is publicly named, the 
perpetrators sentenced, and the survivors are welcomed.  The message of the Serb neighbours is unmistakable:  Stay 
where you are!  Nothing in these situations is altered by NATO air strikes, signings in distant Dayton, nor the presence 
of IFOR.  An example:  October 1996.  Bosnian people, who have been living for over 20 years in Germany, want to 
visit their Muslim relatives in Livno.  Livno lies within the so-called "Croatian" part of the Federation area, in which 
only a few Muslim families have held their ground through the terror.  The visitors travelling by bus were ordered to get 
off, shortly before the entrance to the bus station, because a bus arriving from "Muslim" Zenica was not allowed to enter 
a "Croatian" bus station.  The driver of a taxi, with which they wanted to continue their trip, refused to carry them:  "I 
don�t drive to that Muslim neighbourhood!"  It does not take great imagination to picture the lives of those who have 
been enduring this atmosphere for over three years.

3. The majority of Bosnian women and men who survived the expulsion and extermination machinery of the Serbian 
and later the Croatian aggressors, have experienced a holocaust situation: massive bodily and spiritual wounding 
through physical, sexual, and psychological torture, continual fear of death, witnessing the murder and torture of others, 
often family members, the loss of every kind of control over their own lives for weeks and months at a time.
If these wounds are not dealt with, they work their effects and lead to self-destruction and destruction of relationships 
with others.  Even after the flight to a secure country like Germany, the torture is not over:  Life in exile is also a part of 
trauma.  The Berlin psychologist David Becker says that all refugees find themselves in a traumatic situation, which in 
the country of exile can then develop for better or for worse, and which becomes exponentially more powerful, if 
negative events occur.

Mr Herzog, how have these last years passed for the Bosnian refugees in the exile country Germany?  They neither 
received urgently needed opportunities for therapy and employment, nor were they guaranteed secure residential status 
as survivors of genocide.  No consideration was shown for the severely damaged souls of these people. Regretfully I 
must report to you, that many of those affected by this decision have fallen into deep crisis since it was publicised.

I find it appropriate, on the basis of Germany�s national socialist past, that large numbers of the people fleeing Serbian 
and Croatian threats should have been accepted here.  The often-heard allusion to Germany as the host country which 
has accepted the highest number of Bosnian refugees compared to the rest of the international community, I find 
embarrassing.  In my view, Germany�s history and its present high standard of living give it a moral obligation.

Due to their barely tolerated status, the refugees in Germany can never feel secure, and certainly not since the Interior 
Minister Conference decision.  Among these refugees are also male and female witnesses for the War Crimes Tribunal 
in The Hague.  Should it not be automatic, for co-operation with The Hague in the interest of exposing the war crimes 
committed, to grant these people a secure residential status?

The German Defence Minister emphasised, after a relevant estimation of the situation, the necessity of the further 
engagement of IFOR troops in Bosnia.  At the same time, Mr Kanther gives notice of the "accompanying back" to this 
very same unsafe region of Bosnia.  The reports which led to Mr Ruehes� decision are known to me, I have listed one 
example from them under my point 2 for you.  By contrast, the decision of Mr Kanther must have been reached with a 
complete lack of knowledge about the still crucial situation in Bosnia, and a cold ignorance of the survivors.

Refugees in Berlin tell me that they have received information in the past few days about the order to return.  "Back to 
Srebrenica" reads the hand-written notice.  In one blow, the total humanitarian aid to these people in the past years is 
thereby made into an absurdity.

Dear Mr Bundespresident, it was of concern to me to inform you about the desperate situation of the Bosnian refugees.  
I appeal to you to use your influence on this policy which drives these people, who have come through hell, into 
renewed despair and suicide.  The moral strength of the democratic Federal Republic of Germany will be measured, 
among other standards, by the extent to which it will commit itself in its politics to the survivors of a genocide.

Respectfully yours, 

Dr Monika Hauser
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