Western Balkans

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I am sorry I did not put in a note to ask to speak, Mrs Brooke: I was inspired to speak partly by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) and partly because I have just returned from Bosnia and Herzegovina. That trip was my third visit since 2009. My right hon. Friend said he did not have much experience of Bosnia and Herzegovina; perhaps those three trips have given me a little experience. Also, in the past I was a history teacher—and not a bad one—so I can claim some knowledge from that.

I want to give hon. Members a flavour of those visits. I first went out in 2009, before the election, as part of a project called Project Maja, set up by Baroness Warsi to get politicians to go out to places and do some work there. We raised some money over here, working with another charity, the Fund for Refugees in Slovenia, which is led by a remarkable lady who I think is well known to the Minister—Lady Nott, the wife of Sir John Nott, the former Secretary of State for Defence. She set up that charity, which is still going, and she still works tirelessly to help mainly refugees from the conflict in Bosnia in the 1990s. She had incredible support from Baroness Thatcher on the quiet, and the charity has raised millions over the years to rebuild homes and villages that had been destroyed.

We raised money to help Lady Nott’s efforts to rebuild two more houses up in the villages above Srebrenica. I am sure hon. Members can imagine what it was like going to Srebrenica in 2009. I went again this year, and the divisions are still palpable. Hon. Members from Northern Ireland may know more about that than I do: the only division I really know and understand is the one between Lancashire and Yorkshire—and long may it remain. We felt the tension on the streets when we were living in Srebrenica. We went up into the hills to finish rebuilding these buildings using the money we had raised with the help of Lady Nott. I never managed to congratulate her formally on being awarded the OBE in 2013, which was some recognition for the tireless work she has undertaken in that region.

We were stood in this village with a lady—we had managed to raise some money to help repair her house—in this incredibly beautiful country, almost like Switzerland up in the hills. We asked her why she had come back. This lady had lost three sons, a husband and two of her brothers-in-law. They were all killed. She was a Bosniak—a Bosnian Muslim—and had had to flee. Her house had been burned down. She came back with her daughter-in-law and her little grandchild. That was all that was left of her family.

This lady said—through a translator, of course, and a lot more was perhaps lost in the translation—“They will not win” and that they had come back for the sake of the family who were killed. We could see Serbia—we could almost touch it across the valley—yet they had come back with the immense support of the charity set up by Lady Nott.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) on introducing the debate. I know something of the feeling that has just been expressed: that we will not allow them to win. That has carried many people in Northern Ireland through very difficult days with the IRA. However, the scars of war last a very long time. With war come deprivation, poverty, grief and division. How does the hon. Gentleman feel the international community has helped the area he is speaking about to heal those scars of war?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

The people in that particular incident are aware of the international community and of the Dayton agreement, which I will say something about. However, it is even more important for them to see British politicians, such as ourselves. I was out there with my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who is now a Minister in the Foreign Office. He laid out a football pitch in this village—and, of course, given his military training, was ordering the rest of us around, but that is another story.

We felt that it was at least something tangible for those people to see politicians from what they regard as the other end of the world trying to help them, aside from the high-ranking meetings that had gone on, the treaties and all the rest of it. I do not know whether that is the case in Northern Ireland. The human dimension and human contact are one of the greatest touchstones. We were from mixed religions, of course.

The lady we met told us that people had grown up in these villages as a mix of Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Bosniak Muslims. They had grown up and played together. They had gone to church or to mosque on high days and holidays. This terrible thing then happened that divided them. Srebrenica is actually in Republika Srpska, which is part of Bosnia. I have been to Bosnia three times and I still find it really difficult to work out how that country is managed politically.

One of the points I want to make is that the Dayton agreement ended the bloodshed, but it is as though Bosnia and Herzegovina is frozen in time and cannot move forward. The international community has huge issues to consider in Syria, which we are about to debate in the Chamber, and in the east, but we cannot forget, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said in his introduction, that we are talking now about where the spark that started the first world war happened. We still have unreconciled issues. Although there is no fighting going on, we should not forget that there is a need to move Bosnia and Herzegovina on. As my right hon. Friend mentioned, Serbia may join the European Community, as Croatia has. That would be a great thing. However, to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina out when they regard themselves as the victims seems to me to be a dangerous miscalculation.

[Sir John Randall]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. I will have to talk to him more about Bosnia after the debate. Although in some respects I am not the greatest fan of the EU for ourselves, these countries’ aspiration to get into the EU at some stage—although it is some way off—will drive them together. They could ultimately be a Balkan bloc in the EU, which could be a uniting factor.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. He mentioned the floods. We saw the evidence of the floods. That is another thing we should not forget: there are still thousands of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in Serbia, without a roof over their heads. The fact that the floods have gone away and are not on the television, as it were, does not mean that the aid should stop and that we should forget about them. My right hon. Friend is exactly right. The point goes back to what I said to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea): the human contact will be a great help to push past the history.

My right hon. Friend spoke about the history. I want to give an anecdote from my first trip in 2009. As an ex-history teacher, I spent the whole trip trying to explain about the Habsburg empire. I will not go into the history curriculum, but a really good thing about this Government is that we are getting back to a proper history curriculum, so people might know what the Habsburg empire was. That is a side issue.

We visited Sarajevo and went to the spot where the archduke and his wife were assassinated. We then went to the biggest mosque in the city to meet the Grand Mufti, the head of the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One sometimes wishes we had a Grand Mufti in Britain; that might help in certain senses. He was recognised as the leading figure among Muslims. The mosque was in the Ottoman style, and we sat on very low benches. The Grand Mufti came in; he clearly was the Grand Mufti from everything he was wearing: he looked like something from an Ottoman court, a great man. He first words, in English—remember this was 2009—were, “This mosque is the Emperor’s mosque. It was restored by the Emperor Franz Joseph. The last time Bosnia and Herzegovina was run properly was by the Habsburgs.” We could see the shades of the history that my right hon. Friend talked about pouring down on us.

I went back in 2011, again as part of Project Maja, to help redo a special needs school. That was alongside my hon. Friends the Members for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) and Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). We were working alongside Bosnian politicians, trying to help out in a special needs school, because that school made no distinction about religion. That was a real opportunity to demonstrate something.

Finally, I went out this year with my hon. Friends the Members for Redditch (Karen Lumley), for High Peak (Andrew Bingham), for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) and for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), and also with a Member of the House of Lords, the Earl of Courtown. I remember a remarkable situation. We were discussing with Bosnian politicians how there had been no movement from Dayton and that they were stuck in a tripartite situation. The chairman of the Bosnian party explained how one of the issues they had was trying to move on from what was essentially a feudal system. The Earl of Courtown said that his situation was, of course, feudal as well. The chairman replied that his was also because he was an hereditary Bey from the days of the Ottoman empire. Nothing much changes.

I have been to Srebrenica three times to see the memorial and have taken new Members to it. One of my proudest moments in this Parliament was in July two years ago, when the British Government became the first Government in Europe to have a solemn memorial at Lancaster House in recognition of the Srebrenica massacre. That memorial was held for the second time last year.

On my recent visit, we had a long meeting with the International Commission on Missing Persons, which, if any good can come out of such terrible things, is perhaps a good, because of the training it has provided in Bosnia in finding and tracing families and remains through DNA. It should not be forgotten that the graves of many people who were massacred were dug up, and the bones scattered, in a deliberate attempt to prevent families from being traced. The commission has much support, including that of Britain—and long may that continue. Its techniques are now being used across the world.

I want in particular to express my respect for Adam Boys, who has been in the region for 20 years as a commission director; I think he has said that this will be his last year before returning. He has done incredible work. It is funny to discover what a small world it is: when I first met him three years ago he told me that as a boy he spent all his summer holidays in Fleetwood, which is clearly a preparation for becoming a director of the International Commission on Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Our group went to a room where there were more than 1,000 separate bags of remains—bones—whose DNA was still being tracked. I must admit that I had not thought about this before, but it was explained to us how originally an attempt was made to trace people using their clothing; however, clothing can be misinterpreted, and it rots, in time. Using DNA requires the DNA of living family members, but we can imagine that if someone has survived a massacre, and then some official wants their DNA, they will be extremely suspicious. It has taken years to convince families that it may be a way of tracing people.

We went to Srebrenica and laid flowers—that small but important thing that humans do as a form of recognition. We talked to an old lady there, from Mothers of Srebrenica. She said that at least this year she had something of her 14-year-old son, who had been lost. She had two bones that had been found, which were traceable as his, and she said that at least she had been able to have a burial. Bosnia and Herzegovina have left the television screens, and the events may even be taught as part of modern history—they will be seen as something that happened. However, the situation has not, in fact, moved on a great deal. It is perhaps not a priority for the international community, and that is worrying and dangerous for the long term.

The principal reason for our visit this year was, following what the previous Foreign Secretary did to raise sexual violence in war up the agenda, to assist Medica Zenica—in the town of Zenica. The charity was created after the war to help women scarred by sexual violence in the war, as well as children who resulted from that sexual violence. We had raised some money for an extension to the charity, and being humble Members of Parliament we were put to work painting walls. That was some help, but the real help was perhaps in raising the money and highlighting the charity.

We spent two days doing that work. The children of the sexual violence that happened are now in their 20s. What is a mother to say to their son or daughter about what happened and where they came from—in a society where religious background is critical? I pay tribute to the continued work of Medica Zenica.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip spoke about travelling in Albania. During our visit we were told that one of the next big things to deal with was the trafficking across Bosnia and Herzegovina. There were children there; we could not be told where they had come from for reasons of legal protection, but clearly the trade was moving through.

[Sir John Randall]

I did not want to imply that it was only Albania that had those problems. It is the whole area. Some places are destinations, some are transit areas, and some are where the victims come from, but the whole region is involved.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I understand that. There are boundaries that to some are not boundaries—a Croat in Bosnia can enter Croatia and a Serb in Bosnia Herzegovina can enter Serbia, and so on. The issue that I want to raise is that the Bosniak population, essentially a Muslim population, has nowhere else. They are European Muslims. In one sense, given the way that the world is and the way communities are behaving, they are the Muslim group—European Muslims who have been Muslim for hundreds of years—that should be a force in Europe, showing that there is a form of moderate Islam, which works.

I have given a personal account of three visits to part of the Balkans. I have only once been to the Serbian side, to Belgrade. I suppose that other hon. Members who have made more such trips than I have will have felt as I did before flying home, and wondered how such things could happen in such an incredibly beautiful country. That is the thought that leads us on.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip for raising the issue. Perhaps, although the western Balkans are absent from television screens, this debate will highlight the huge issues that remain for our Government and other European Governments to deal with, so that they do not forget.