From: jakhan@IASTATE.EDU (Javed Ahmed Khan)
Subject: Re: Rape After Rape After Rape
Reply-To: jakhan@IASTATE.EDU (Javed Ahmed Khan)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 16:56:25 GMT



This article was picked from soc.religion.islam. It may interest readers in
this newsgroups :


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In article <1h2643INNgr6@life.ai.mit.edu>, imran@mbcl.rutgers.edu writes:
> Hello,
> 
> 	What follows is an article from the New York Times.  Why am I posting
> it here?  I feel that some of the issues pertain to at least some of the
> threads I have seen in this group (and the other groups that I am posting
to).
> The article is about the calculated destruction of the Bosnian Muslims.  The
> article contains extremely graphic descriptions of brutality, torture, and
> rape.  
> 
> 	I hope this article makes you uncomfortable.  I hope this article makes
> you act.  Perhaps you will make your friends aware of the situation in
Bosnia.
> Perhaps you will write to your elected officials and ask them to act.  I am
> doing my part by bringing this to your attention.  At the end of the article
I
> have included a copy of a letter that I sent to the senators of my state (New
> Jersey).  If you wish feel free to use it as is, or to plagiarize from it, or
> better yet write something in your own words.  
> 
>
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> 
> 	Copied without permission from:
>  	The New York Times OP-ED Sunday, December 13, 1992
> 
> 	Rape After Rape After Rape
> 
> 	ZAGREB, Croatia.  What is happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 
> Muslim and Croatian women seems unprecedented in the history of war crimes.  
> Women are raped by Serbian soldiers in an organized and systematic way, as a 
> planned crime to destroy a whole Muslim population, to destroy a society's 
> cultural, traditional and religious integrity.
> 	The numbers are chilling: In October, the Ministry of Interior of
> Bosnia and Herzegovina estimated that 50,000 women and girls had been raped,
> and many impregnated on purpose.  It is feared that since then the number has
> risen even further.  The ministry collected and documented 13,000 cases.
> 	Journalists and feminists have interviewed women in refugee camps in
> Croatia, and it is through their stories that the world has discovered the
> tragedy.  In the civilized world rape is a crime.  Mass rape is a method of
> genocide that should become a war crime and outlawed in all international
> conventions.  The lives of tens of thousands of women have been destroyed;
the
> world owes them at least that.
> 	Here are accounts by three women.  "E.'s" account will appear in the
> January-February issue of Ms. magazine.  -SLAVENKA DRAKULIC
> 
> 	Z.N., age 40.
> 	As soon as Chetniks [Servs] came into our city, they selected women,
> children and the old people; men were taken to a concentration camp with an
> excuse that they were mobilized.  They put hundreds of us in a school in
Doboj
> and they turned it into a kind of camp.  Our Serbian neighbors locked us in. 
I
> knew many; they used to visit our house.  As soon as we entered a camp,
> "marticevic" [followers of Milan Martic, a Serbian leader] came in with guns
> and selected younger women and girls.  They put them in the halls and told
the
> Chetniks to do with the women what they pleased.  
> 	There was silence.  Then the crazy, dirty, stinking, Chetniks jumped at
> the women like animals; they tore off their clothes, pulled their hair, cut
> their breasts with knives.  They'd cut the belly of the women who wore the
> traditional Muslim baggy trousers.  Those who screamed would be killed on the
> spot.
> 	In front of a few hundred prisoners they raped and tortured women and
> girls for days.  It was unbearable to watch girls being raped in front of
their
> fathers.  In the evening, after heavy drinking, the Chetniks would come in
the
> hall with lamps.  Stepping on us, they would look for girls, not older than
12,
> 13.
> 	The girls cried, holding on to their mothers.  As they were taken,
> pieces of their mother's clothes remained in their hands.  While doing that,
> the Chetniks would shoot at us.  Later they would leave the girls' dead
bodies
> in the hall, so we had to see them.  We cried until morning.  Then they would
> throw the bodies in the river.
> 	Every day the same picture was repeated; they would rape and kill in 
> front of hundreds of us.  Once a young woman with a baby was taken in the 
> middle of the hall.  It was in June.  They ordered her to take off her
clothes.
> She put the baby on the floor next to her.  Four Chetniks raped her; she was 
> silent, looking at her crying child.  When she was left alone, she asked if
she
> could breast-feed the baby.  Then a Chetnik cut the child's head off with a 
> knife.  He gave the bloody head to the mother.  The poor woman screamed.  They
> took her outside and she never came back.  The biggest criminals in Doboj are
> Bosko Jeitic, Milenko Varnjes, Mico Tuca, the brothers Stankovic and
Jorgovic.
> 	I was raped and tortured too, because they knew that I am a wife of a
> leader of the Muslim party.  My neighbor tortured me the most, the one my
> husband respected as his own brother.  By the end of June, Chetniks brought
> another neighbor of ours and with a gun pointed at him they forced him to
rape
> a 14-year-old girl.  He stood trembling and stuttering with fear.
> 	Then he turned to a Chetnik he believed was a leader and said, "Don't
> make me do it.  I have known her since she was born - her father and I drank
to
> her birth."  They beat him in front of us until he died.  It was an example
to
> the other Serbs that there is no pity, that one must do what leaders order
them
> to do.
> 	In August some prisoners were exchanged including me and my sons.  Many
> women and girls who were pregnant remained in the camp.  They were
transferred
> to a hospital and fed twice a day because, as the Chetniks said, they had to
> bear their offspring.
> 
> 	E.N., age 14 and her mother.
> 	E.N: That commander was big, fat, dirty old guy.  He had gray hair with
> a white tuft at his forehead.  He stank of brandy, really stank.  He had a
mask
> on.  He nodded toward me and ordered me angrily to stand up.  We went in one
> room; my legs trembled, I couldn't walk at all.  He then pushed me but I
> trembled terribly and inside me everything trembled.  I thought he would
> slaughter me and I couldn't ever pray.  He asked me crudely if I had ever had
> sex.  "Please, don't" - I beg him.  Then he pushed me, hit me and threw me on
a
> bed, tore off my dress and hit me again.  He put his hand over my mouth.  I
> screamed again.  He hit me; he shouted at me.
> 	The mother:  I heard my child screaming.  She called for help.  I heard
> his grunting, his howling.  My womb hurt as if someone is pulling it out.  My
> mind darkened, but there was nothing I could do.  My child was suffocating
> under his fist.  I heard him: "Is it good, you dog?"  He was more and more
> violent.  He repeated the same question until she nodded yes.  He asked if
she
> wants more.  I heard her pleading, "Please, don't."  He went out of the room 
> and said angrily to me, "Don't let anyone touch the little one."
> 	In other rooms, my sister's daughters were raped in the same way. 
> While this was going on, one Chetnik guarded me and my sister.  We found my
> sister's dauther unconscious and naked.  My dress was torn apart and she had
> visible injuries on her body.
> 
> 	E., age 16.
> 	The massacre after the attack on my village had been the greatest
> tragedy of my life.  I did not know then that destiny had something even
worse
> in store for me.
> 	Several Chetniks arrived.  One, a man around 30, ordered me to follow
> him into the house.  I had to go.  He started looking for money, jewelry and
> other valuables.  He wanted to know where the men were.  I didn't answer. 
Then
> he ordered me to undress.  I was terribly afraid.  I took off my clothes,
> feeling that I was falling apart.  The feeling seemed under my skin; I was
> dying, my entire being was murdered.  I closed my eyes, I couldn't look at
him. 
> He hit me.  I fell.  Then he lay on me.  He did it to me.  I cried, twisted
my
> body convulsively, bled.  I had been a virgin.
> 	He went out and invited two Chetniks to come in.  I cried.  The two
> repeated what the first one had done to me.  I felt lost.  I didn't even know
> when they had left.  I don't know how long I stayed there, lying on the floor
> alone, in a pool of blood.
> 	My mother found me.  I couldn't imagine anything worse.  I had been
> raped, destroyed and terribly hurt.  But for my mother this was the greatest
> sorrow of our lives.  We both cried and screamed.  She dressed me. 
> 	I would like to be a mother some day.  But how?  In my world, men
> represent terrible violence and pain.  I cannot control that feeling.
> 
> 
>
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-
> 
> 
> 						December 16, 1992
> 
> 						Shahid Imran
> 						Systems Administrator
> 						Waksman Institute
> 						Rutgers University
> 						Piscataway, NJ 08855-0759
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Senator Bill Bradley
> Room 731, Hart Senate Office Building
> Washington, D.C. 20510
> 
> Dear Senator Bradley,
> 
> 	I am writing to urge you to take action on the Bosnian situation.  The 
> organized destruction of the Bosnian Muslims is a crime against humanity.  
> Once again there is the specter of genocide.  
> 
> 	Our current policy of wait-and-see is at best the abdication of duty.  
> At worst it is a form of realpolitik that demonstrates that we have lost all 
> sense of compassion.  We as a country are still determining our post Cold-War
> role in global politics.  We have taken a few tentative steps in the right 
> direction with our relief efforts in Somalia.  We must continue in this 
> direction.  We must take aggressive measures, including the use of U.S.
forces,
> to prevent the genocide that is occurring in Bosnia-Herzegovina from reaching
> completion.  
> 
> 	I am enclosing a recent Op-Ed article from the Sunday New York Times 
> which I would like you to read.  The article is a graphic account of some of 
> the atrocities that have been committed on the Bosnian people.  They are
beyond 
> human comprehension.  They bring to mind words like Treblinka, Auschwitz, and
> Babi Yar.  We cannot let this happen again.  
> 
> 	I would appreciate it if you would bring these issues to the attention 
> of the other members of Congress and to the attention of the President of the
> United States of America.
> 
> Sincerely Yours,
> 
> 
> Shahid Imran
> 
>
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-
> 
> If you've read so far you have my thanks.
> 
> Shahid.
> 
>
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> Shahid N. Imran, Systems Administrator   || Phone:    (908) 932-4864
> Molecular Biology Computing Laboratory   ||
> Waksman Institute/CABM                   || BITNET:   imran@mbcl
> P.O. Box 759, Rutgers University         || Internet: imran@mbcl.rutgers.edu
> Piscataway, NJ 08855-0759 * USA          ||
>
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> 
> 
> 
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=



The war in BH has claimed thousands of lives. The Serbians have run
concentration camps with impunity. They have now captured 95% of the land in
Bosnia. The Muslim community has borne the brunt of the tragedy. All this
happens while the rest of the world wrings its hands in classic inaction. The
opulent so-called "muslim-world" only pays lip-service. The west is putting  its
head in the sand and wishes that the problem somehow vanishes. 

Its so obvious that the Bosnians have been left there for target practice. The
Serbians are supplied arms and men by their parent Serbia in open defiance of
the "arms embargo" being "imposed" by the UN. The UN has been particularly
stringent in preventing any arms from reaching Bosnia while it has expressed
helplessness in doing the same with Serbia. If it can't prevent Serbians from
getting arms, it has no right in preventing the Bosnians from getting arms
to defend themselves. 


--Javed.


Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan