Bosnian Muslims pressured to baptize during Genocide in Bosnia

Sun Journal
3 January 1994.

By Barbara Demick
Knight-Rider Newspapers

BIJELJINA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Two months ago, the police paid an unexpected visit to the home of a Bosniak pediatrician and his wife, a dentist. They had bad news. The city wanted to take over their spacious three-story home for municipal offices.

But the pediatrician also had a surprise for the authorities. He pulled out papers showing that he had legally changed his traditional Bosniak name to a Serbian name.

World Looked Away, While Serbs Mutilated Bosniaks in Camps

Photo: Notorious Ciglana concentration camp near Zvornik. Čelopek, Ekonomija and Ciglana were three camps in which Serbs tortured and then mutilated Bosniak civilians in the municipality of Zvornik, eastern Bosnia (near Srebrenica). They cut Muslim ears, noses, and genitalia. Prisoners died in excruciating pain. Darko Janković (aka: 'Pufta') - from Kraljevo, Serbia - was particularly brutal. He was a collector of Muslim eyes, noses and ears; he took sadistic pleasure in butchering of Bosniak civilians. Photo credits: Hague Tribunal.

“The Serbs are taking out Muslims’ eyes, cutting off their fingers, ears, noses, cutting their bodies step by step and putting salt on their wounds, scarring their foreheads and backs or cheeks with Orthodox crosses and cutting off women’s breasts…”

Calling Attention to the Slaughter

By Nahid Khan
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
13 November 1992.

PULLMAN — Abdullah Hodzic was formerly the chief imam, or Muslim religious leader, of Zvornik, a Bosnian province [municipality] bordering Serbia.

That is, until the Serb army destroyed his mosque, burned all the books of his library and killed or drove out all the Bosnian Muslims [Bosniaks] from the area.

Muslims in Bosnia Converting to Christianity, Fear for Their Lives

New Straits Times
14 December 1993.

BRCKO, Tuesday. — Hundreds of Muslims [Bosniaks] living in Ser-controlled areas in Bosnia have converted to the Orthodox Church and changed their names to distance themselves from their Islamic origins.

But the move in Brcko and surrounding villages is being warily watched by Bosnian Serb authorities worried about its effect on international opinion.

Since January some “hundred people, most of them Muslims” have changed their names, civilian leader Luka Puric told reporters in the north-eastern town of Brcko, 160km west of the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

Bosnian Genocide (1992-95) Confirmed by Four International Judgements

OTHER THAN SREBRENICA: Srebrenica is one of four legally validated genocides that occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992-95 Serbian aggression. Other notable cases of the Bosnian Genocide include international judgements in the following trials: Prosecutor v Jorgic (Doboj region), Prosecutor v Djajic (Foča region), and Prosecutor v Sokolovic (Kalesija/Zvornik region).

All three cases were tried in Germany — at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) — to ease caseload of the ongoing trials at the Hague. Both Nikola Jorgic and Maksim Sokolovic were convicted of genocide (other than Srebrenica); Novislav Djajic was acquitted, but the court confirmed that genocide against the Bosniak population was committed by the Serb forces in eastern Bosnian municipality of Foca.

Bosnian Genocide Memorial in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York – the Largest Christian Church in the World

Dedicated to the Bosnian Genocide

Imam speaks of Genocide in Bosnia

Business Times, p.18.
18 August 1992.

LONDON, Wed: The atrocities committed by the Serbs against Bosniaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina were beyond imagination and would even make Hitler look like a small child, the Grand Imam of the Zagreb Mosque in the former Yugoslavia, Dr Mustafa Seric, said here.

He added the Muslims were defenceless partly because they did not expect this fate as all they wanted to do was to set up a democratic state and live side by side with people of other ethnic communities and religion.

Also, they were unprepared for what happened because unlike other ethnic communities in the former Yugoslavia, they did not join the army and had very little military experience, he said on Monday.

The Quran [Muslim holy book] instructed Muslims to live peacefully and it was not something they could compromise because of choice or political expediency, he said.

Bosniaks, Islam and the Siege of Sarajevo

Bosnian Muslims Seeking Harmony

New Straight Times
17 December 1993.

Among the graves crowding the tiny courtyard of his mosque are five mounds of fresh earth that Imam Ismet Spahic tends particularly well and prays over each evening: they hold his wife, three daughters, and a granddaughter, killed by Serbian shelling while fetching water.

Firmly, the grey-bearded Muslim clergyman spoke of his abiding faith and his certainty that his family awaits him in paradise. But when asked if, perhaps, he thought the government of a largely Muslim Bosnia should be a secular one, he seemed astonished that anyone could ask such a question.

“Absolutely,” he said.