In the hills of eastern Bosnia sits the small town of Srebrenica--once known for silver mines and health spas, now infamous for the genocide that occurred there during the Bosnian War. In July 1995, when the town fell to Serbian forces, 12,000 Muslim men and boys fled through the woods, seeking safe territory. Hunted for six days, more than 8000 were captured, killed at execution sites and later buried in mass graves. With harrowing personal narratives by survivors, this book provides eyewitness accounts of the Bosnian genocide, revealing stories of individual trauma, loss and resilience.
In July 1995, the Army of the Serbian Republic killed some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica--the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. Surviving the Bosnian Genocide is based on the testimonies of 60 female survivors of the massacre who were interviewed by Dutch historian Selma Leydesdorff. The women, many of whom still live in refugee camps, talk about their lives before the Bosnian war, the events of the massacre, and the ways they have tried to cope with their fate. Though fragmented by trauma, the women tell of life and survival under extreme conditions, while recalling a time before the war when Muslims, Croats, and Serbs lived together peaceably. By giving them a voice, this book looks beyond the rapes, murders, and atrocities of that dark time to show the agency of these women during and after the war and their fight to uncover the truth of what happened at Srebrenica and why.
Senahid Halilovic is one of the very few survivors of the Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide. From July 11-July 22, 1995, more than 8,372 Bosnians, mostly men and boys - were rounded up and killed. Amongst them were his father and all three of his brothers. He is one of the rare Bosnian men who managed to overcome the 'Road of Death' and survive the Srebrenica genocide by walking for one week, through mountain crags without any food or water. "After the genocide, I tried several times to count how many relatives I lost, but I never could. Their images begin to show up in front of my eyes as soon as I try to think about it; this causes me great distress, and I often find myself giving up. I remember my mother telling me once "Oh, my son, you have lost 70 nearby relatives." I usually saw them in my dreams every night. At night when I dreamt of them, and then woke up, I felt very sad. Once I awoke from this dream, I could not sleep again. As I lay awake, no matter what I did, I saw their images in front of me." "And I realized something else; that they are not dead, that they remain alive, because they were killed in the name of injustice. At that point I wished for them to be with me and talk to me, even within my dreams. After this epiphany, any time one of them (especially my brothers or father) talked to me, or even if I saw one of them in the dream I felt much better. After I saw them in my dream, I felt lucky, like I had done a good deed. But now, years later, this does not happen usually; I rarely see them in dream, and I miss them too much. Life is like that. Sometimes the same thing that tortures you at one time, you later miss and wish you could experience more often." Senahid currently has several wishes: to find out the complete truth and ensure that all the people of the world hear the truth about what really happened to Bosnia and to Srebrenica during the war against Bosnia in 1992-1995 and the genocide against Bosniaks 1995, that there may be peace, justice and harmony on planet Earth, and that Srebrenica is never repeated again to anyone.
The massacre at Srebrenica of between 3000 and 5000 Muslim prisoners by Bosnian Serbs is one of the most horrifying tales to emerge from the bitter conflict in Bosnia. It changed the course of the war and led to the deployment of US ground troops in the area. It also became the first atrocity in modern times where the well-intentioned but ineffectual Western involvment contributed directly to the mass executions.
“Khan is a refreshing original, and The Unquiet Dead blazes what one hopes will be a new path guided by the author's keen understanding of the intersection of faith and core Muslim values, complex human nature and evil done by seemingly ordinary people. It is these qualities that make this a debut to remember and one that even those who eschew the [mystery] genre will devour in one breathtaking sitting.” —The LA Times Despite their many differences, Detective Rachel Getty trusts her boss, Esa Khattak, implicitly. But she's still uneasy at Khattak's tight-lipped secrecy when he asks her to look into Christopher Drayton's death. Drayton's apparently accidental fall from a cliff doesn't seem to warrant a police investigation, particularly not from Rachel and Khattak's team, which handles minority-sensitive cases. But when she learns that Drayton may have been living under an assumed name, Rachel begins to understand why Khattak is tip-toeing around this case. It soon comes to light that Drayton may have been a war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. If that's true, any number of people might have had reason to help Drayton to his death, and a murder investigation could have far-reaching ripples throughout the community. But as Rachel and Khattak dig deeper into the life and death of Christopher Drayton, every question seems to lead only to more questions, with no easy answers. Had the specters of Srebrenica returned to haunt Drayton at the end, or had he been keeping secrets of an entirely different nature? Or, after all, did a man just fall to his death from the Bluffs? In her spellbinding debut, Ausma Zehanat Khan has written a complex and provocative story of loss, redemption, and the cost of justice that will linger with readers long after turning the final page.
A young survivor of the Bosnian War returns to his homeland to confront the people who betrayed his family. The story behind the YA novel World in Between: Based on a True Refugee Story. At age eleven, Kenan Trebincevic was a happy, karate-loving kid living with his family in the quiet Eastern European town of Brcko. Then, in the spring of 1992, war broke out and his friends, neighbors and teammates all turned on him. Pero - Kenan's beloved karate coach - showed up at his door with an AK-47 - screaming: "You have one hour to leave or be killed!" Kenan’s only crime: he was Muslim. This poignant, searing memoir chronicles Kenan’s miraculous escape from the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign that swept the former Yugoslavia. After two decades in the United States, Kenan honors his father’s wish to visit their homeland, making a list of what he wants to do there. Kenan decides to confront the former next door neighbor who stole from his mother, see the concentration camp where his Dad and brother were imprisoned and stand on the grave of his first betrayer to make sure he’s really dead. Back in the land of his birth, Kenan finds something more powerful—and shocking—than revenge.
This book punctures once and for all common excuses for Western inaction in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the most egregious crimes against humanity to occur in Europe since World War II.
In 1992 the growing threat of Serb nationalism in Bosnia forced Hasan Nuhanovic and his family to flee their home for the safety of Bosnia's mountainous countryside. High up in the woods along the Drina River, Hasan and thousands of Bosniak refugees faced bitter nights, deprivation and death, while Serb soldiers covered their retreat with sniper fire and artillery shelling. After many months on the move, the Bosniaks battled their way to the town of Srebrenica, their last refuge, under the charge of a small UN force. When the Bosnian-Serb army laid siege to the town, Hasan's life once more became a daily struggle for survival, battling starvation, sniping and shelling. This book is a powerful first-hand account of the barbarism of those years leading up to the massacre in Srebrenica; it is also an action-packed, gripping true story of struggle, survival and heroism.
Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999, Michael Parenti challenges mainstream media coverage of the war, uncovering hidden agendas behind the Western talk of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and democracy.
