Amnesty's report on ethnic discrimination in the workforce in Bosnia-Herzegovina was released today in Sarajevo and it calls upon Mittal Steel and other international investors specifically to make compliance with 'UN Norms for Business' a condition of their involvement in the country.
The report illustrates how every single one of the 2,000 non-Serb workers at the Omarska mines were sacked when the local Serb authorities began their ethnic cleansing campaign in the Prijedor region. These workers were sacked by letter and then the local radio announced that Muslims should not dare attempt to return to work. Ironically, of course, this was not the last many of them saw of the mine complex and many were brought back as detainees to be tortured or killed as the mine management worked with Serb paramilitaries and local Serb officials to run the Omarska camp.
"At the beginning of the war the then state-owned company came under the control of the local Bosnian Serb de facto authorities. The new management of the Ljubija mines systematically discriminated against at least 2,000 non-Serb workers, by dismissing them en masse solely because of their ethnicity. Thousands of Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats in the area, reportedly including former workers at the mines, were taken to the Omarska detention camp, which was situated in the Ljubija mines complex. In Omarska, torture and mass killings were carried out. Unfairly dismissed Ljubija workers have not been reinstated in their jobs, nor received other forms of reparation. In 2004 the international corporation LNM Holdings (now part of Mittal Steel) signed a joint-venture agreement to establish a new company, the New Ljubija Mines, 51 per cent of which is owned by the foreign investor."
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