The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

genocide in bosnia-herzegovina, 1992‒1995 221
Warren Christopher, who immediately dispatched the assistant secretary of state for human
rights to Tuzla to corroborate the account. With the names and descriptions of places where
the massacres took place now available, the CIA reviewed spy photographs of the area and
were able to identify execution sites and mass graves. The U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, Madeleine Albright, consequently presented U.S. government aerial photographs
to the U.N. General Assembly and called for air strikes against Bosnian Serb Army positions
in Bosnia.
9. The report of the UNPROFOR human rights team is quoted in the U.N. Srebrenica
Report VIII:G (383–90). Tadeusz Mazowiecki, special rapporteur of the Commission of
Human Rights for the United Nations, resigned in protest after the fall of the U.N. “safe
havens” of Srebrenica and Zepa and the failure of the United Nations to protect the population
in those “havens” from the onslaught of the Bosnian Serb Army.
10. Annex V Prijedor, IX Conclusions (prepared by Judge Hanne Sophie Greve), in Annex
Summaries and Conclusions, Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts,
December 28, 1994.
11. This is a paraphrase of Radovan Karadzid’s utterance. He put forward his threat at
a four-day session of the Bosnian Parliament (Skupstina BiH ) to consider a memorandum declaring
B-H as a “democratic sovereign state of equal citizens—peoples of B-H—Muslims,
Serbs, Croats and members of other nations and nationalities (naroda and narodnosti) living
in it.” Radovan Karadzid, who was not a deputy in the parliament, nor did he hold any positions
in the government, regularly attended sessions there. “Don’t you think that you are
not going to lead Bosnia into hell, and probably the Muslim people into disappearance (nestanak)
because the Muslim people cannot defend itself[?]—[It] is going to war.” Alija Izetbegovic,
the president of the collective presidency replied: “Muslim people will not raise its
hand against anyone, but it will defend itself energetically and it won’t as Karadzid said disappear.
We really don’t have an intention to live in a Yugoslavia that is being built on messages
like this one that Mr. Karadzid just gave us” (Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo, October 15, 1991;
see also Branka Magas and Ivo Zanid, eds., Rat u Hrvatskoj i Bosni i Hercegovini 1991–1995 [London:
Bosnian Institute, 1999]).
12. This encounter between Ratko Mladid and the Srebrenica schoolteacher is shown
in “A Cry from the Grave,” the BBC documentary by Leslie Woodhead.
13. See Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts, Annex IV.
14. Ibid., Annex V.
15. The official history of the war in Sarajevo is that a young female student from
Dubrovnik, Suada Delberovid, was its first victim. The bridge where she was killed has been
named after her, and a plaque commemorating her was fixed to the railings. However, in
the spring of 2001, the plaque was taken down and reappeared with another name added—
that of a young woman and mother, Olga Sucid, who also was killed on the bridge that day.
She had been taking part in the same demonstration for peaceful coexistence, on April 5,
1992, as Suada. Suada and Olga were from different ethnic origins, one Bosniac (Muslim)
and the other Serb (Orthodox). Moments before she was killed by a sniper, Olga had told a
television journalist covering the peace demonstration: “I am the mother of two children,
and I will defend this city” (Oslobodjenje, March 8, 2001).
16. Ibid. compares the 1991 population census figures for opstina (municipality) Prijedor
with the results of a population count in June 1993. It shows the number of Muslims reduced
from 49,454 to 6,124; the number of Croats reduced from 6,300 to 3,169; and “Others” from
8,971 to 2,621 (the non-Serb population in the same period increased from 47,745 to 53,637).