From: mtaghavi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Amir Taghavi)
Subject: 1,300 Muslim Slavs imprisoned in Serb camp
Keywords: Yugoslavia
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 02:47:18 GMT

	
	KLIS, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian forces are holding in a
prison camp in this tiny northeastern Bosnian village almost 1,300
Muslim Slav men, mostly civilians swept up months ago in ``ethnic
cleansing'' operations.
	``They took me from my home on May 2, and I left behind my wife and
two small children,'' a 53-year-old resident of the eastern town of
Vlasenica told the first two Western journalists allowed into the camp.
The camp is located on a former state-run farm about 10 miles north of
the Serb-controlled town of Bijelina.
	``I was just in my home, doing nothing,'' said the inmate, who asked
not to be identified.
	Said another prisoner on the basis of anonymity: ``I have been here
since June 17. I was brought here from Vlasenica. It was routine
cleansing of the town. They just came into my house and took me.''
	About 40 inmates are young Muslim Slavs who were serving as
conscripts in the Yugoslav army in Serbia when the war in Bosnia-
Hercegovina erupted. Discharged and ordered to return home, they were
pulled off buses as they crossed the border, arrested and thrown into
Klis.
	``We were not allowed to go farther,'' said Majid Music, 20, of the
eastern town of Kladanj, who has been in Klis since June 2. ``My mother
doesn't know where I am.''
	Maj. Jovica Savic of the so-called Serbian army of Bosnia-
Hercegovina, who conducted the two-hour visit on Wednesday, effectively
confirmed that most of the 1,295 inmates are civilians -- a violation of
the 1949 Geneva Convention. He said most were being held because they
were ``potential soldiers.''
	``Between 80 and 90 percent are potential soldiers. The rest of them
were caught in the fighting zones and they were taken for their
personnal protection,'' Savic said. ``After the fighting is over, they
will be released.''
	He added that also among the inmates were ``fighters and people who
committed crimes. They took part in mass killings and massacres and
rapes of girls under 18. They also multilated dead bodies.''
	``There is a procedure of interrogations and investigations and they
will probably go to trial because it is impossible to forget such
crimes,'' added Savic.
	The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other human
rights groups say all sides in the bitter conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina
have been incarcerating civilians as part of ``ethnic cleansing''
operations aimed at ridding areas they control of members of rival
ethnic groups.
	Many are held, international human rights workers say, either for
exchanges or simply to prevent them from returning to their homes.
	There is little dispute among experts that Serbian forces have
pursued such practices, as well the ``ethnic cleansing'' tactics of
forced deportations and expulsions, housing-burnings and killings, on a
far greater scale than their Croatian and Muslim Slav foes.
	The Klis camp was unknown even to the embattled Muslim Slav-led
government in Sarajevo until last week, when its existence was confirmed
to ICRC personnel investigating conditions in Bosnian detention centers
as a result of reports of beatings, torture and killings.
	Despite repeated promises by Serbian leaders of open and immediate
access to such centers, local Serbian authorities spent a week
negotiating with the ICRC before allowing its personnel into Klis. The
delay gave them time to make any improvements they deemed necessary and
to prepare the inmates.
	It was virtually impossible to determine the conditions that existed
in the compound prior to the ICRC request for permission to inspect it.
	The camp comprises two farm warehouses -- ill-lit, poorly ventilated
concrete structures measuring about 1,000-square meters each.
	One holds almost 1,000 men. They sit and sleep shoulder-to-shoulder
on blankets thrown across long, regimented rows of straw bales amid an
oppressive stench of human sweat. Many possess only the filthy clothes
there were arrested in.
	The remaining inmates are held in the second warehouse and have a few
privileges. They sleep on stain-covered mattresses and are allowed to
watch television.
	``The conditions of people here are much better than I can say about
the conditions of our soldiers on the front,'' Savic said.
	The rear yards of the warehouses are fenced-in and contain water
spigots for washing. Latrines are constructed of brand-new corrugated
iron sheets.
	Like other inmates interviewed under the watchful eyes of Savic and
other Serbian military officers, Armin Totarevic, 25, of the northern
town of Brcko, insisted ``the food is pretty good here.'' He said
prisoners were fed three times a day.
	But many of the detainees were clearly emaciated, their eyes sunk
deeply into shadow-rimmed sockets, their skin drawn tightly around their
skulls and limbs.
	A large number appeared to be middle-aged or older. Nearly all were
deeply tanned from laboring long hours under the hot summer sun in
nearby fields.
	``We require them to work,'' said Savic, adding that inmates are not
paid.
	Prisoners contended there had been no beatings or abuse. But several
were seen limping around the two dusty fenced-in yards in the rears of
the warehouses, or into the camp doctor's office, which Savic said had
existed since the compound was built.
	At one stage, an inmate approached the journalists and volunteered
how well the prisoners are treated.
	As he spoke, two prisoners behind him locked eyes with this
correspondent and slowly shook their heads in an apparent warning he
should not be believed.


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