As the genocide wore on, the Bosnian and Croats were loaded onto trucks, separated from family, to be sent towards a number of concentration camps located within Europe.
Two of the concentration camps, Omarska and Keraterm, were places where killings, torture, and brutal interrogations were carried out. The third, Trnopolje, had another purpose; it functioned as a staging area for massive deportations of mostly women, children, and elderly men, and killings and rapes also occurred there. The fourth, Manjaca, was referred to by the Bosnian Serbs as a 'prisoner of war camp,' although most if not all detainees were civilians... The Commission of Experts determined that the systematic destruction of the Bosniak community in the Prijedor area met the definition of genocide. (HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH / Bosnia-Herzegovina / The Unindicted: Reaping the Rewards of "Ethnic Cleansing" / January 1997 Vol. 9, No. 1 (D))
The conditions in these camps were deplorable. "Onetime farmers, factory workers, and philosophers were pressed tightly into barracks. One prisoner's nose nestled into the armpit or the sweaty feet of the eighty-five-year-old inmate beside him." If that were not bad enough, "the urine bucket filled, spilled, and remained in place. Parched inmates gathered their excretion in cupped hands to wet their lips" (Pg. 269). There was no regard for human decency in the camps. As described above, rape, beatings, and murder were common occurrences in these camps; perpetrated by Serb soldiers. As Power's indicates, some 10,000 people perished while in these camps.
Journalists worldwide flocked to the area after hearing about the camps. The journalists were only taken to certain places and only allowed to interview those who the Serb soldiers had brought before the reporters. Throughout the tours, the journalists were escorted by armed Serb soldiers. One of the Bosnian men incarcerated in the camp commented "we all felt feel like Jews in the Third Reich" (Pg. 272) after describing the journey to the camps by truck and sealed boxcars.
Several thousand Muslim and Croat civilians, including the entire leadership of the town of Prijedor, were held in metal cages and killed in groups of ten to fifteen every few days. A former inmate, Alija Lujinovic, a fifty-three-year-old electrical engineer and been held in a northeastern Bosnian facility where he said some 1,350 people were slaughtered between mid-May and mid-June. Not surprisingly, just ike the Khmer Rouge and the Iraqi government, the Serbs denied access to relief officials and journalists who wanted to investigate. On August 2, 1992, Gutman filed a story in which Lujinovic, the survivor, offered grim details of Serbs slitting the throats of Muslim prisoners, stripping them, and throwing them into the Sava River or grinding them into animal feed.
The following day U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher finally confirmed that the United States possessed evidence of the camps. He admitted that the administration knew "that the Serbian forces are maintaining what they call detention centers" and that "abuses and torture and killings are taking place. (Pg. 271-272)"
The United States government just didn't want to get involved. At one black-tie Democratic fund-raising dinner in D.C., Frank McCloskey (a democratic representative who had been a loud voice in Washington trying to get something done about the Bosnian conflict) had an interesting conversation with then current president Bill Clinton.
McCloskey stood in a rope line to greet the president, whom he had been criticizing fiercely. Like Lemkin, McCloskey was never one to waste an opportunity. The congressman took Clinton's hand and said, "Bill, bomb the Serbs. You'll be surprised how good it'll make you feel." Unflustered, Clinton nodded thoughtfully for a few seconds and then blamed the Europeans for their hesitancy. "Frank, I understand what you're saying," the president said. "But you just don't understanding what bastards those Brits are." Clinton slid along the rope line, snaking more hands and making more small talk, and McCloskey thought the exchange was over. But a few minutes later the president spun around and walked back to where McCloskey was standing. "By the way, Frank," Clinton proclaimed cheerily, "I really like what you're doing. Keep it up!" "The problem with Bill Clinton," McCloskey observes, "was that he didn't realize he was the president of the United States."
Throughout this time, firefights continued around Bosnia in villages and towns. Bosnian freedom fighters, using what little weapons they had, battled the heavily armed Serbian forces. Many villages and cities were left in rubble and ruin.
Below are some photos taken by Ron Haviv during the conflict. Some more information on the genocide will be included in my next posting.
These pictures are very powerful! It pisses me off that nobody was willing to step up and crush the Serbs from the very beginning!
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