Work Address:
Department of Religion
Haverford College
Haverford, PA 19041

To the Editor:

Thank you for the fine coverage of the Rally against Genocide in Bosnia (Inquirer, 4/25, A6) at which I spoke, along with Jasmina Ramic whose family perished when her city of Visegrad was "ethnically cleansed."
I must point out an important error, however. The article referred to my Bosnian maternal relatives as "Bosnian Muslims." In fact, I stressed in my talk that they are Bosnian Serbs, and that I was denouncing--as a Serbian American--the "ethnic cleansing" policies of the Bosnian Serb government.
Many in the U.S. do not realize that the Serbian ultranationalists are attacking not only Muslim and Croat civilians, but also Serbs who refuse to endorse "ethnic cleansing." Serbs have been threatened, beaten, tortured, and killed for trying to save their non-Serb neighbors, for helping non-Serbs escape concentration camps, or for refusing to commit atrocities.
It was as a Serbian American that I urged President Clinton to show vision and leadership by going to Sarajevo and stating "I am a Bosnian." If we value a world in which different religions and cultures tolerate and appreciate each other, we are all Bosnians. As Western "negotiators" try to appease the ethnic and religious "cleansers" in control of the Bosnian Serb government, we might contemplate this thought: the fate of Bosnians prohibited by the UN arms embargo from defending themselves and abandoned to ethnic cleansing may one day be our own.

Michael Sells, President
Community of Bosnia Foundation
Haverford, PA