The lovely blonde I'd known for years became very animated when I finally asked where she was from, and how she came to be in the United States. She was from Bosnia, I discovered, and was a survivor of Europe's biggest genocide since World War II. "People did terrible things to survive," she said. "You have no idea."
She was about 14 when the atrocities in her country began in the 1990's. At first, people gathered in cities, but as the supply lines were cut off, along with electricity and water, it quickly became apparent that everyone in the city would soon face starvation, so she and her family all gathered at a relative's home in the countryside. The home was bombarded by day with shots fired from Serbs, forcing them to go out at night to cultivate potatoes, which kept them alive. One day, huddled inside the home, a shot came through a window and killed her uncle in front of everyone.
By far her worst experience was after the U.N. created a safe zone in Srebrenica. They gathered there, hoping for the best. Instead, the Dutch U.N. peacekeepers looked the other way while the Serbs separated all the Muslim men and women, and then proceeded to systematically murder the men. It was there that my acquaintance's brother was shot, a victim of the now-infamous Srebrenica massacre of 8,000. That event was the largest and most visible instance of genocide during that atrocious civil war, but it was not the only one. Many other brutal killings occurred. It is therefore somewhat ironic that now, in the Netherlands of all places, justice has been meted out to two Serb perpetrators of one such massacre.
Feeling rejected by Europe, many of the Bosnian Muslims fled to the United States or to Muslim countries like Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan. A Pakistani wrote in 1993: "Blonde, blue-eyed Bosnian girls sit in a circle on the floor in traditional Muslim fashion and sing a song of praise to Allah. Their bright faces are framed by headscarves...As the girls sing, Pakistani welfare workers listen with tears in their eyes...Pakistanis have been swept by a wave of emotion for these blonde Muslims. 'We are Europeans but we were abandoned by Europe, only because we are Muslims. Now distant countries like Pakistan have opened their hearts to us'...."
With these fair-haired Muslims in mind, it should have come as no surprise when my Pakistani friend recently mentioned blondes in her country. Although she was referring to an ethnic group called Pathans, she could have just as easily been referring to the Bosnians: "They were so different from us...so white with blonde hair...AAHH...they were so pretty...and the weather in Karachi was so hot...that all their perfectly white cheeks were glowing red...."
It is worth noting that within 20th century Europe, Muslims same as Jews found themselves victims of genocide. In yet another twist of irony, the main Serb killer who was brought to justice today was found hiding out in Argentina, the same place where a bunch of Nazis fled after WWII, and where there are now numerous blonde Latinos.
As stereotypes and ethnicities get blurred over time, you would think that genocide would disappear. But in reality, it is not physical differences that drive such conflict, but rather economic and power disparities, cloaked in differences of religion and values. Sadly, humans somehow lose their humanity along the way, and we get incidents like the following.
From the Associated Press via news.yahoo.com:
The Hague, Netherlands -- A U.N. war crimes court has convicted two Bosnian Serb cousins of murder and extermination for locking up scores of Muslims in two houses and burning them alive...
Milan Lukic was the ringleader...his cousin Sredoje Lukic aided and abetted....
"What the two accused destroyed in June of 1992 is far beyond their capacity to repay," prosecutor Dermot Groome told judges..."Spending the remainder of their lives incarcerated is simply a nominal token toward the loss they occasioned."
...The brutality of crimes in Visegrad, a small town on the banks of the River Drina, stand out even amid the atrocities that punctuated the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Groome told judges at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal that in one massacre in June 1992, the cousins barricaded nearly 70 Muslims -- elderly men, women and children ranging in age from 75 years to just 2 days -- into a house and set fire to it.
As flames tore through the crowded rooms and the victims inside screamed in agony, the Lukic cousins stood outside shooting anybody who tried to escape, he said...
"We will never know what would have become of the 2-day-old infant burned alive in the...fire," he added. "She would now be looking forward to her 17th birthday in a few weeks."
Milan Lukic was arrested in August 2005 in Argentina and sent for trial in The Hague. His cousin surrendered to Bosnian Serb authorities and was transferred to The Hague a few weeks later.
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