As of September, Belgrade and Banja Luka will launch a great campaign to protect properties of around 400,000 Serbs in BiH, as a perfidious plan of ownership change is being implemented, affecting the most the people in the Diaspora, unaware of what is happening in BiH.

The goal is to call on Serbs abroad by way of diplomatic and consular missions of Serbia, Serb associations across the world, local media, social networks, to apply in order to prevent their losing houses, fields or forests in the Federation of BiH.

Under the pretext of ‘harmonizing the cadaster and land registers in the FBiH,’ the old owners are being erased for several years and all has intensified lately.

The FBiH is publishing advertisements and calling on owners to apply for registration, but it is being done by way of local media outlets, the Official Gazette or municipal notice boards.

The deadline for application is only 60 days, and if the owner fails to act before expiration, the property is registered in someone else’s name, most often in the name of the municipality, canton, and not so seldom, in the name of a neighbor.

According to available data, land and other properties claimed by Serbs are worth billions of euros.

According to the 1991 population census, around 8,400 sq. km of land in FBiH territory were registered in the name of Serb owners, hence the calculation – if only two euros were paid for one square meter of land, the figure would reach almost EUR 17 billion.

Preparations are underway to enable Serbs to apply for registration also by way of the mobile applications Viber and WhatsApp.

The Director of the Serbian Foreign Ministry’s Directorate for Cooperation with the Diaspora and Serbs in the Region, Arnaud Gouillon, told this paper that Serbia would help to inform as many people as possible, and that property owners or their descendants would contact legal assistance offices in Srpska, the existing six of them – in Banja Luka, Zvornik, Bijeljina, Istočno Sarajevo, Mrkonjić Grad and Nevesinje.

– We want to reach out to the Serbs abroad who cannot even see those announcements, as we want what is Serbian to remain Serbian – Gouillon said.

The coordinator of the Office for Expert Legal Assistance to Serbs in the FBiH, Đorđe Radanović, told Novosti that legal assistance offices had already received around 4,000 reports from Serbs of their property being seized and registered in the name of municipalities or cantons in the FBiH.

– We expect the number of reports to increase significantly once Serbia launches the campaign. Estimates from the field show that the property from these 4,000 claims filed thus far is worth more than EUR 100 million – said Radanović.

He noted that land owned by Serbs was being seized in every part of the FBiH, and mostly in the areas of Sarajevo, Mostar and Bihać.

– This is why I urge all Serbs whose houses, fields, forests were seized, to contact us – Radanović said.

Source: RTRS