The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

198 annihilating difference
of 1991, the SDS organized a referendum in those areas they considered Serbian on
whether the Serbs wanted to remain in Yugoslavia (with Montenegro, the Krajina,
and Eastern Slavonija, the latter two areas in Croatia). This was in effect a vote for
Greater Serbia, and an overwhelming majority of those who voted, voted “yes.” (We
have no reliable figure for how many Serbs actually voted.) On January 9, 1992, when
the SDS declared the foundation of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
later renamed Republika Srpska, the harassment and violent terrorizing of
non-Serbs in SDS areas of control was already under way. 14
CAMPAIGNS OF “ETHNIC CLEANSING”
On April 5, 1992, the day before Bosnia-Herzegovina was recognized as an independent
state by the EU, Serb snipers near the Hotel Holiday Inn and in the nearby
neighborhood of Grbavica fired at a Sarajevo peace demonstration, killing two
young women. 15 The Sarajevans had been chanting “We want to live together” and
“Peace”; hours earlier barricades had been put up at various sites in the city. The
next day, Sarajevans woke up to a partitioned city under siege. It was the day the
war reached Sarajevo. From that date on, the Western media began to report almost
daily about the shelling of civilians; about massacres; forced expulsions; the
herding of civilians into camps; the burning of homes, mosques, and churches; and
the everyday suffering of ordinary people in cities under siege and constant bombardment.
While the attention of Western media was focused on the shelling and
siege of Sarajevo, non-Serbs were being herded into detention centers that served
as death camps outside of Sarajevo in Eastern and Northern Bosnia. It was part
of the organized attempt at eliminating the non-Serb population from Serbiancontrolled
territory. The outside world became aware of what was going on only
after some brave British and American journalists published pictures and stories
from the Serbian-run death camps in the district of Prijedor in Northern Bosnia:
Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje (see Gutman 1993; Vulliamy 1994). The camps
were part of a political and military strategy to rid Northern and Eastern Bosnia
(territory that either borders with Serbia or had a sizable Bosnian Serb population)
of all political opposition to a partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the creation of
a separate Bosnian Serb state. According to the logic of ethnic politics in the former
Yugoslavia, which I discuss below, a member of the opposite ethnic group or
“nationality” translated into a political enemy.
The case of Prijedor shows the gradual increase in acts of intimidation, provocation,
and terror directed toward the non-Serb population. “The Final Report of
the UN Commission of Experts” documents how those (non-Serb) Muslims and
Croats—the greatest numbers were Muslim—in positions of leadership or with
higher education were systematically targeted: these included political leaders,
teachers, physicians, lawyers, religious instructors, journalists, and intellectuals. 16
The obvious result of the organized targeting of the educated and powerful strata
of a community or “ethnic group” is the weakening, marginalization, and possible