From: victor@jezebel.wustl.edu (Victor Wickerhauser)
Subject: Lest we forget
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis Mo.
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 19:28:25 GMT

Let us not forget the most important issue.


(Courtesy of T.G.)
> 
> Article from The Toronto Star Monday, July 27, 1992 (Page A3)
> 
> RED TAPE STALLS BOSNIA CONVOY
> 
> By Alan Ferguson (Toronto Star)
> 
> CATEZ, Croatia - A convoy of 330 Bosnian refugees, mostly
> children, was held up at a border crossing between Croatia and
> Slovenia, with only a cornfield for a toilet and blankets for
> beds.
> 
> While 150 older women in the convoy sheltered from the blistering
> sun, the 180 young people, from tots to teenagers, marched around
> the Slovenian border post chanting, "Let us go. let us go."
> 
> Singing Bosnian folk songs, they blocked regular traffic through
> the crossing, lying down in the path of a transport truck whose
> driver was forced to back off into a parking lot. The barricade
> was only lifted when the children ran for ice cream being
> delivered by a Muslim charity organization.
> 
> Sevko Omerbasic, a doctor in Zagreb and the chief Muslim
> spokesperson in Croatia, sat with the children as he explained
> the bureaucratic nightmare that was stalling the convoy.
> 
> Holland had agreed to take them, he said, but because it was a
> weekend, no one was at the Dutch consulate in Zagreb to issue
> visas. Germany, which had earlier granted 30-hour transit visas,
> cancelled them because of the lack of the Dutch visas.
> 
> Because the German visas were cancwelled, the Austrian government
> had indicated it would not admit the children. And because the
> Austrains said that, the Slovenian government refused to let the
> children cross from Croatia.
> 
> Omerbasic said that during the delay, six children and one adult
> had to be evacuated to hospitals in Zagreb suffering from
> "dehydration, fever, diarrhea and vomiting."
> 
> The agony of the children's convoy gave dramatic resonance to an
> aid envoy's warning on the weekend that the Bosnian refugee
> problem is "100 times worse than people in Western capitals
> understand."
> 
> Jose Maria Mendiluce, special envoy of the United Nations High
> Commission for refugees, said unless Europe wakes up to the scale
> of the crisis and acts to stop the war in Bosnia, a million
> refugees will be flooding into the West by winter.
> 
> As bad as the delay of the children is, the stories of their
> two-month-long existence in the Bosnian maelstrom are infinitely
> worse.
> 
> Senka Paratusic, 19, described how she and her mother were being
> taken to the train station from their village of Brjan when they
> saw a young Muslim boy nailed by his wrists to the door of a
> mosque.
> 
> "I recognized him but I didn't know his name," she said. "He was
> still alive and he was conscious. His feet were on the ground,
> and he was bleeding from where they had cut the shape of the
> cross on his chest."
> 
> Senka unconsciously traced with her finger the line of the cuts
> on the boy's body.
> 
> "We came by after he had been nailed up. He was just five or six
> metres away, but no one could help because the Serbs were all
> around. The Serbs were using the mosque as a toilet and made the
> Imam sing Chetnik (Serbian guerilla) songs."
> 
> Senka's story, like so many others told by the thousands of
> refugees fleeing from the former Yugoslav republic of
> Bosnia-Herzegovina, is impossible to confirm and undoubtedly
> prone to exaggeration. But Western humanitarian aid workers say
> they have no reason to doubt accounts of the atrocities being
> committed by Serbian forces in a three-month-long onslaught that
> has "cleansed" vast areas of the republic of its Muslim
> population.
> 
> Mendiluce is visibly frustrated at what he calls the blindness of
> civilized nations to the horror of what is happening in Bosnia.
> 
> Zumreta Muskanovic, 17, described how she and her mother were
> rounded up from their home in the village of Kozarac in northern
> Bosnia on May 24 and taken to the railway station.
> 
> "We were put into cattle cars, 250 to a train. You could not sit
> down, there was no room. We stopped in some woods near Banja Luka
> and men in green military uniforms came and stole money and
> jewelry from anyone who had any. They took away 30 girls and
> women, aged between 13 and 30, and we never saw them again.
> 
> "They are beasts. They are wild. They don't know why they do it -
> there is something evil in themselves."
> 
> Zumreta said the women and children were put on trains from
> villages around Prijedor after the men were sent to detention
> camps.
> 
> She said the trains took them via Banja Luka to Doboj, from where
> they were forced to walk 50 kilometres (30 miles) over mountain
> trails to the Muslim-held village of Maglaj.
> 
> >From there, they were taken by bus to Zenica, where they slept in
> schools and a sports stadium. Muslims in Zenica made arrangements
> for the children to leave Bosnia via the Croatian cities of
> Split, Rijeka and Zagreb.
> "There is no safe place in Bosnia any more," said Zumreta.
> 


----
Prof. M. Victor Wickerhauser (314)935-6771  <victor@jezebel.wustl.edu>
Dept. of Mathematics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO  63130  USA

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