Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Seeing The Light in Bosnia
From: <SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Date: Sunday, 30 Aug 1992 12:50:27 EDT
Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center

The following information is a compilation from news articles
which have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and the
Manchester Guardian Weekly over the past few weeks.

As Western nations dawdled about using force to stop Serbia's
"ethnic cleansing" campaign, Iran has asked the Organization of
the Islamic Conference to hold an emergency meeting to study
military options to defend Bosnian Muslims.  Turkey, a predominantly
Muslim country, is prepared to send around a 1,000 men to Bosnia
as part of a U.N. military force.

Five Muslim countries at the U.N. (Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and
Senegal) have been instructed to form a committee to work with the
Secretary-General and get action to stop the genocide campaign by
Serbian Christians.

While protests against the killing and abuse of Roman Catholic
Croatians at the hands of the Serbians were made by the Roman
Pope and other Western religious figures, there has been very
little protest among Christian leaders over what appears to be
a much more ferocious campaign against Bosnian Muslims. There
have been reports that Muslims in Montenegro, Serbia's partner
in the "new Yugoslavia" have begun to harass and round up Muslims
in their area.  Fears are being regularly expressed about the fate
of Albanian Muslims in Serbia's Kosovo province who have already been
debarred from participation in public life.

An official U.N. memorandum indicates that the U.N. peacekeeping team
knew of the summary execution of Muslims by the Christian Serbians
as early as May of this year.  The memo cites "a calculated strategy
to 'cleanse' the area of Muslims" and cites burnings, deportations,
hidden murders of people in their homes and group massacres.
Bosnian Muslim and a lesser number of Croats are being systematically
rounded up and held in improvised camps in occupied areas.  Most
of these camps are not open to inspection by the International Red
Cross or Red Crescent organizations.

Bosnia's Muslim population is Slavic in origin, thus they are actually
of the same ethnic grouping as their neighbors -- only in religion
are they different.  In the past Muslims have attributed the West's
cynical treatment of the Kurds and Palestinians in part to a contempt
for Arabs.  Newspapers in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world
point to the fact that the Bosnian Muslims are Westerners as
an indication of how deep is the contempt for Muslims and other non-
Christians in the Christian West.

In Egypt the doctor's union has collected $2.4 million dollars in
private donations to send medical supplies and a medical team to
Bosnia-Herzegovina.  A spokesman for the union said, "This is unjust,
military action is necessary to save the people."  He claimed that
Westerners fear the emergence of Islamic countries in Europe -
referring to Bosnia and Albania in addition to Turkey. Most of Bosnia's
Sunni Muslim clergy are educated in Egypt and feeling in Egypt is
running very high against the anti-Muslim extermination campaign.

Journalists traveling in government-permitted areas report most villages
formerly occupied by Muslims to be burned out and empty of people.
Serbian camps at Brcko-Luka and Brosanki Brod are reported to be
regulary executing groups of Muslims.  Western photographers who
sneaked into forbidden areas have photographed groups of twenty
and more mutilated corpses of Muslims floating in the Sava and Drina
rivers.  As Bosnia officials at the U.N. urged the organization
to intervene Muslim women and children held at Trnopolye camp near
the border with Croatia were loaded into a railroad cattlewagons
and transported deeper into Serbian-held territory.  The train was
reported to move only at night, each day it was pulled onto a
siding.  Woman were sticking their hands from two barred windows
high up in the cars and screaming for the dead to be removed and
for water.  Anyone attempting to bring water was frightened away by
armed Serbian guards.

In the "ethnically cleansed" areas mosques and libraries have been
torched if they have escaped destruction.  In the past week Serbian
artillery have begun to target similar buildings in areas under seige.
Observers feel that the Serbian Christians are now intent upon
destroying the fabric of the Muslim heritage in Bosnia so that if
and when a settlement is reached that most Bosnian Muslims will
emigrate or lose their Muslim identity .

Bosnia has seen The Light.  These people need the help of their
exterminators' co-religionists if they are to be saved.

Jack Carroll