CHANGES IN THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF VI[EGRAD BETWEEN 1991 AND 19971 EXPERT REPORT FOR THE MILAN LUKI] AND SREDOJE LUKI] CASE (IT-98-32/1) EWA TABEAU DEMOGRAPHIC UNIT, OFFICE OF THE PROSECUTOR, ICTY SEPTEMBER 1, 2008 Summary of Results This report summarises changes from 1991 to 1997 in the ethnic composition of the Vi{egrad municipality in the middle-east of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its goal is to provide reliable demographic statistics that allow for an assessment of the type and scale of the changes. Secondly, I discuss basic demographic profiles of persons who went missing in the Vi{egrad municipality during the war. The study of missing persons aims at showing who were those who went missing and finding, whether there were any particular periods in which people disappeared. In this report I analyse three data sources: the 1991 Population Census, the 1997 Voters Register, and the ICRC list of missing persons (the 2005 edition), and use standard statistical and demographic methods. The major findings are the following: - In 1991 Vi{egrad had two main ethnic groups: Muslims (63.5%) and Serbs (31.8%). There were also Others - mainly Yugoslavs (4.5%), and Croats (0.2%), that lived there. - The 1991 population was however unequally distributed within Vi{egrad: out of the total of 159 settlements within the municipality, 93 had a clear Muslim majority, 60 a clear Serb majority and only six could be considered as “mixed”, including the Vi{egrad town. - The post-war ethnic structure of Vi{egrad was dominated by Serbs (95.9%). During the war Muslims entirely disappeared from Vi{egrad. This is reflected also at the level of settlements. - Scale of the process of changes in the ethnic composition in Vi{egrad was substantially larger than in other municipalities in the surroundings (excluding Srebrenica and Bratunac). - The vast majority of persons missing in Vi{egrad were Muslim men, mainly aged 15 to 44 years. - The process of going missing was most intense in May and June 1992; over a half of the missing persons disappeared in Vi{egrad town. - Number of persons missing in Vi{egrad in 1992 was larger than in any other municipality in the surroundings. Timing of disappearances in 1992 in Vi{egrad is similar to the timing in the surrounding municipalities. 1 This report is an updated version of the expert report: E. Tabeau and J. Bijak, 2001, Changes in the Ethnic Composition in the Municipality of Vi{egrad, 1991 and 1997; prepared for the VASILJEVI] case (IT-98-32); ERN: 0213-8385-0213-8433 (English). The 2001 report was presented to the Trial Chamber during the expert witness testimony of Ewa Tabeau on 19th September 2002. 1 September 2008 1 The Reference Map of the Pre-war Municipality of Vi{egrad and its Surroundings @ivinice Kalesija Zvornik Bosnia and [ekovi}i Herzegovina Kladanj Bratunac Area shown Vlasenica on the main map Olovo Srebrenica Han Pijesak Sokolac SERBIA Pale Rogatica Legend: Vi{egrad State borders Municipal borders Gora`de Rudo Olovo Municipality names Dayton Line ^ajni~e Major towns Fo~a Approximate scale: 0 10 20 MONTENEGRO km 1 September 2008 2 1. Introduction This report summarises changes in the ethnic composition of the Vi{egrad municipality in the middle- east of Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1991 and 1997. Its goal is to provide reliable demographic statistics that allow for an assessment of the type and scale of the changes. In this report I analyse three data sources: the 1991 Population Census, the 1997 Voters Register, and the ICRC list of missing persons (the mid-2005 edition). These sources are reliable and relevant to the objectives of this report. Changes in the ethnic composition are shown by comparing the 1991 Census- based statistics with statistics based on the 1997 Voters Register. The 1991 Census is the latest complete population survey conducted directly before the war and gives a very accurate perspective on the population and its ethnic composition in this period. As to the 1997 Voters Register, I realise that ideally a period closer to the early phase of the conflict should be taken for the comparison with the 1991 Census. Such sources are, however, generally unavailable and therefore cannot be analysed here. Even though the year 1997 is quite distant from the period in which the most population movements occurred, the 1997 Voters Register can be seen as a valuable source to discuss the war-related changes in the ethnic composition. Firstly, because in 1997, (as I will prove in this report), many displaced persons still lived in areas different from their place of residence in 1991. Secondly, because the returns of internally displaced persons that took place in 1996-97 were not considerable which suggests that many displaced persons resided in 1997 in temporary locations acquired during the war. The report consists of the “Summary of Results” (included at the beginning of this report), four main sections, and three Annexes. Section 1 is a general “Introduction”. In Section 2 I discuss details of “Data Sources and Methods”, and in Section 3 I summarise “Changes in the Ethnic Composition 1991- 1997”. Section 4 is devoted to “Basic Demographic Distributions of the Missing Persons in Vi{egrad”. Finally, the Annexes provide the reader with some additional information. Annex A contains the list of persons who went missing in the Vi{egrad municipality, being an excerpt from the ICRC list of missing persons. Annex B provides information about the ethnic composition of all settlements in Vi{egrad municipality in 1991 and of a selection of them in 1998. Annex C contains the description of statistical methodology (chi-squared goodness-of-fit test) used in the report. One practical remark regarding the use of the Voters Register is that when the total number of the 1997 voters is broken down by place of registration, the resulting samples can be very small. In order to increase the sample size, I use the 1997 Voters Register in combination with the Register from the 1998 election, which was also supervised by the OSCE. The type of information available from the two Registers is the same. The 1998 Register is only used for those voters who registered first time in 1998. Approximately 95% of the voters registered first time in 1997 and only about 5% in 1998. Therefore, my results should be seen (and will be further referred to) as the 1997 figures. 1 September 2008 3 2. Data Sources and Methods 2.1 Population Census for Bosnia and Herzegovina 1991 My source of information on the pre-war population of Vi{egrad is the 1991 Census for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Census was taken in April 1991 (officially per March 31, 1991), just before the outbreak of hostilities in the former Yugoslavia. In statistical practice, the population census is the largest and most complete source of information about the population in a country. The 1991 Population Census covered the entire population of Bosnia and Herzegovina as of 31 March 1991. During the Census, information was collected about a total of 4,4 million individuals. The information about individuals was obtained in face-to-face interviews based on a Census questionnaire designed in a uniform way for the whole country, i.e. the former Yugoslavia. Preparations for the 1991 Census started about a decade earlier and included among other things: preparing and adopting the Census Law at the country and republican levels, appointing the authority responsible for the conduct of the Census (in Bosnia it was the Republican Statistical Office in Sarajevo; the municipal Statistical Offices were the local agencies responsible for the actual Census taking), developing the Census questionnaire, issuing manuals and training of the Census inspectors and interviewers, developing procedures for duplicate elimination, error checking and corrections, designing data processing schemes, preparing and conducting a Pilot Census, and after the actual 1991 Census - a Control Census, plan of publication etc. The electronic Census files contain one record for each enumerated person. These records include information on a large number of variables, such as the municipality and settlement of residence, name and surname, father’s name, household sequential number, personal ID number, date and place of birth, sex, occupation, ethnicity, mother tongue, religion, educational attainment, the number of children born (for women only), and many more. The overall data quality is good, except for frequent errors in the persons’ names. These errors are mostly consequences of poor optical scanning of the original forms (for example misreading V for U, as in MVSIĆ) and no subsequent checking and editing. To correct the scanning errors the Demographic Unit - OTP employed several strategies. First, computer software was developed and applied to detect combinations of letters that are impossible in the B/C/S language. The software used the B/C/S syntax in order to assess the viability of combinations. The impossible combinations were corrected by eliminating miss-shaped (illogical) characters and inserting their most likely equivalents. Secondly, we developed correction tables to eliminate scanning mistakes from the names. The tables contained the actual names and their correct versions which both were used by a computer programme to produce suggestions regarding the corrections needed. Then, these suggestions were controlled manually to discard any wrong corrections produced by the software. The accepted corrections were then applied to the data. Native speakers of the B/C/S language, who in addition were familiar with naming traditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, undertook all these tasks. Furthermore, we also developed and applied computer software that utilised household information to correct surnames within households. The software checked the correctness and consistency of family names within the same households.