Crimes

I cringe from the shock. The shock of reading horrendous accounts of terrible crimes. It's for my internship, which I've just gathered enought courage in the past week or so to do some work on.

...detained at Dretelj Prison, HVO members, including the prison warden and members of HVO units not attached to the prison, subjected detainees to beatings and cruel treatment, including constant fear of physical and mental abuse. Bosnian Muslim detainees were sometimes forced or instigated to beat or abuse other Muslim detainees. Muslim detainees held in the isolation cell were particularly brutalised. Muslim detainees were harassed, subjected to ethnic insults and humiliated.

I cringe from the descriptions. The descriptions of rapes, of children and elderly people detained in concentration camps, of men wilfully and arbitrarily taken away and shot, of death and destruction... descriptions of the worst excesses of human inhumanity toward fellow human beings. Of hate, and the actions that flow from the consequences of hate.

...soldiers repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted Bosnian Muslim women and girls detained at Vojno Camp. (Annex) Such episodes of sexual assault were often preceded or accompanied by beatings or threats that non-compliance would result in the woman's child (or children) being killed.

And I sit here in my room, sipping tea, listening to Christmas songs on the radio, occassionally munching on chocolate... but elsewhere so many have died and suffered in vain... and elsewhere, many more ar undergoing the same.

...regularly mistreated and abused, and allowed the mistreatment and abuse of, Bosnian Muslim detainees, both at the Heliodrom itself and at various locations where detainees were taken for forced labour or other purposes. There was regular cruel treatment and infliction of great suffering, with HVO soldiers and guards routinely beating detainees, often to the point of unconsciousness and severe injuries. Muslim detainees lived in constant fear of physical and mental abuse. Passing HVO soldiers often fired their weapons indiscriminately at Muslim detainees held in crowded areas. Other detainees were attacked by HVO guard dogs which were released by the guards for the specific purpose of inflicting injury and fear. Muslim detainees were often humiliated in various ways...