Srebrenica, Zepa: 60 Children, 42 Adults Die from Starvation and Cold

“As for the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, ‘he will lie, keep lying as he has done all the time, and he will kill more of us in the coming days” – Nedjara Beganovic.

Serb blockade claims lives of more children
The Victoria Advocate, p.4C
13 January 1993.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Fifty-one children died of starvation and cold overnight in an eastern Bosnian town [Zepa] blockaded by Serbs and isolated for nine months, according to ham radio reports Wednesday. In addition, 34 adults perished Tuesday night in Zepa, 35 miles east of Sarajevo.

In Srebrenica, a town near the Serbia border, 17 people – including nine children – died during the night, according to the reports.

Amateur radio operators have been the only link to the outside for the 28,000 people of Zepa since April. Serb gunmen and mines prevent U.N. convoys from crossing snowy roads to the town, where some people are living in caves.

Suffering of Sick and Elderly in the Besieged Sarajevo

Photo: Nurse Galiba Secibovic (Bosniak) cares for 72-year-old Vojin Nikolic (Serb), a deaf mute staying in the makeshift shelter in Sarajevo. Nikolic often tries to leave in search of his brothers in Serb-held territory.

“Death is at Home Here”
For elderly Bosnians, outlook is grim from a Sarajevo shelter

By Samir Krilic
The Free Lance-Star, p.A4
21 February 1995.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Crammed onto one floor of a former school, dozens of elderly Bosnians silently await the end of the war, or their lives, whichever comes first.

Sick and elderly Bosniaks, Abid Jahic (69) and Ajsa Smajlovic (81).

The makeshift old people’s home was set up in August 1993 in a shell-shattered school building several hundred yards from the front line. It shelters 64 sick and old people with no one to turn to.

One doctor, five nurses, four orderlies and a social worker try to cope with the needs both of their live-in charges and 150 other elderly people, many living on their own.

Conditions are miserable. Many of the elderly are too sick or feeble to make it to the toilet, so they relieve themselves on the floor or in bed. Natural gas for heat is scarce, so rooms are often icy. For most, frugal meals of beans, lentils and rice are the only break in a day of staring at the walls.

Systematic Rapes of Bosniak Women and Girls in Visegrad

By CHRIS HEDGES
Published: March 25, 1996.

VISEGRAD, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 21 — For the thousands of Bosniaks who fled from this town in eastern Bosnia, and for the Serbs who remained, the war has bound this generation and the next to a Serbian militia leader named Milan Lukic.

Witnesses and survivors say Mr. Lukic, 29, killed scores of Muslims in this region from 1992 to 1995. He has not been indicted by the United Nations’ war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and the Serbs in Visegrad say they do not know his whereabouts.

Beyond Visegrad, his name and story are largely unknown. But detailed accounts collected during the last two weeks from witnesses, many of them now dispersed around Bosnia, provide a picture of slaughter, pillage and abuse condoned by the local authorities and Serbian commanders from Belgrade.