Pig's head found in Muslim cemetery in Bosnia's Mostar

A pig’s head found in a Muslim cemetery in the Bosnian city of Mostar forced organisers to cancel a memorial service on Monday.

A group of Bosnian Muslims had arrived at the cemetery in a Croat-majority neighbourhood to mark the anniversary of the 1992 formation of a Bosnian army brigade. They found the pig’s head among the headstones. Pigs are considered impure in Islam.

The service had been planned to commemorate victims of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 conflict. Police said they were investigating the incident.

Mostar’s Croat-majority mayor, Mario Kordic, said he was deeply concerned and condemned what he called the violation of the cemetery. Sanel Kajan, the Bosnian Muslim member of parliament for the area, said the situation was unbearable and said the cemetery had been desecrated several times with graffiti and vandalism.

AFP reported that relations between Bosnia’s Muslims, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats remain tense three decades after the war, with incidents increasing ahead of key votes. The report said the incident came amid heightened tensions before a general election later this year.

During the 1990s war, Croats and Muslims, also referred to as Bosniaks, were allied against Serbs but also fought each other in a 17-month conflict in 1993 and 1994, especially in the Mostar region and in central Bosnia. The Bosnian war killed nearly 100,000 people.