From: draskovi@usc.edu (Zoran Draskovic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.europe
Subject: Massacre
Date: 21 Dec 1992 23:37:05 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu

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RTw  12/18 0616  CORPSE MUTILATION ANGERS SERBS AFTER MOSLEM ATTACK
    By Donald Forbes
    BRATUNAC,  Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dec 18, Reuter - Before he was buried in
a cemetery that bristles with fresh wooden crosses  the  remains  of  Dusan
Pradunovic were filmed by medical authorities.
    The  amateur  video,  shown to reporters by doctors who identified him,
show that most of the upper part of his corpse and head  were  missing  and
that his hands had been chopped off.
    The  mutilation  of  Pradunovic  and  other  victims of a Moslem attack
occurred after they were shot dead.
    Near him lay the corpse of a man whose penis had been sliced off and  a
boy  whose  eyes  were  gouged  from  his  face.  An elderly woman had been
disembowelled.
    Pradunovic, a man of almost 60, and the others were among more than  50
Bosnian  Serb  villagers killed in an attack by Moslem forces near Bratunac
this week.
    Their mutilation after they  were  killed  was  apparently  an  act  of
contempt by the Moslems for their Serb foes in the vicious war over Bosnian
independence.
    According to the video made as a record by the Bratunac medical centre,
the  body  of  each victim was desecrated in some way calculated to provoke
fury.
    Doctors at the medical centre vouched for the authenticity of the film,
shown to Reuters and seen by many residents of Bratunac who helped identify
the victims.
    Their Moslem foes, 10 km (six miles) away across the frontlines,  could
not be contacted for comment.
    All three sides in the Bosnian conflict frequently accuse their foes of
massacres,  torture  and  other  atrocities.  But  there  has  been  little
independently-corroborated evidence to back up the claims and  humanitarian
organisations fear they may never establish the true death toll.
    Officials  at  the Bratunac medical centre said they were ready to show
the video, lasting more than half an hour, to  anyone  who  wanted  to  see
it  --  including, eventually, the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission set up in
Geneva.
     Bratunac, a Serb town on the Bosnian  border  with  Serbia,  has  kept
Moslems  in  neighbouring  Srebrenica  under  siege  since the war began in
April.
    The fighting has been brutal and hundreds have died on both sides.
    "Nafir," the 25-year-old commander  of  Moslem  forces  in  Srebrenica,
admitted recently: "This is a dirty war, fought without mercy."
    Serbs  said  the  Moslems  attacked  on  Monday without warning as dawn
broke, targeting the villages of Bjelovac, Sikirici and Voljevica.
    Rodoje Rankovic, one of  three  brothers  who  escaped  from  Bjelovac,
said:  "The  Moslems  suddenly appeared in the centre of the village. There
was an explosion and people ran from their homes into gunfire."
    "They tried to run for the banks of the (river) Drina, but the  Moslems
had  already  occupied  it  to  stop them escaping. People who tried to get
across in dinghies were shot at."
    Rankovic and Simic said that the battle for the village  of  about  200
people  lasted  all day. At the end of the afternoon, 40 of its inhabitants
were dead and others are still missing.
    A woman identified as Mira Filipovic,  panicking  in  her  desperation,
threw  herself  into  the  fast-flowing  Drina  with her small daughter and
infant son, local people said. The three are assumed to have drowned.
     The victims were taken to the Bratunac medical centre where they  were
filmed and their injuries indexed.
    Some  had  been  hacked and stabbed at random. Others, like Pradunovic,
had obviously undergone methodical mutilation.
    "They were just villagers, they weren't army," Simic said.  "They  were
just  defending  themselves.This is a fight for our survival. If Serbs lose
this war, they will disappear from this territory."
    Moslems and Serbs, absorbed by their  own  sufferings,  block  out  any
consideration that the other side suffers too.
    Ten  km  (six  miles)  west  is Srebrenica, built in a natural mountain
fortress. Moslems starved by the siege feel as abandoned and  desperate  as
their Serb enemies.
    Local  Serbs  feel  particularly betrayed because twice in recent weeks
they allowed U.N. aid convoys for the Moslems to cross the  no  man's  land
between them at Srebrenica.
    "It  is  difficult to contain the people when things like this happen,"
Simic said. "If the U.N. wants to take another convoy, I am going  to  take
them to the people (of Bratunac) and they can tell them what they think."
    "We are all to blame. There are no innocent people in this war."

Xref: sparky soc.culture.europe:10663 soc.culture.nordic:8005