Since I helped put together a panel at last year's MESA conference, I have become immersed in effects of the genocide in Bosnia. I am writing to ask you to help stop the genocide, support a multireligious Bosnia, and support the survivors of "ethnic cleansing."
I hardly need tell you, as a member of MESA, the effects upon the entire Middle East that will result from continued betrayal and destruction of Bosnia and extermination of Bosnian Muslim culture. I need tell you what Bosnia could have represented, and still can become if we do not allow it to be completely abandoned: a major cultural and religious bridge of understand. The symbol of that bridge of understanding, the 1566 Bridge at Mostar (from which Mostar gets its name, "bridgekeeper"), was destroyed. Already there are plans to restore it along with the ancient quarter of Mostar.
The "ethnic cleansers" won cheap victory because with a massive arms advantage, a boycott against their victims, and a political climate of appeasement and complicity. Whether they win in the long run will depend upon the actions, or lack of actions, of people like you and me.
The Community of Bosnia Foundation is working with Bosnians who have lost homes, personal possessions, family members, communities, mosques, cultural heritage, citizenship. Yet they have not given up hope and they have not given in. If their spirit remains unbroken, it would be a luxury and a betrayal for those of us who still have homes to give in to hopelessness.
# Bosnian Student Scholarship Program. We are successfully working with scores of high-schools, colleges and universities this year to get scholarships for Bosnian refugees or positions for Bosnian scholars. We have been involved in helping secure scholarships at Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, West Chester University, Villanova, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania. One of the goals of ethnic cleansing is to destroy the future of Bosnians by destroying their past, including their educational records, birth records. The continued intellectual life for these talented people is a deliberate failure of ethnic cleansing.
When I ask refugees what is the one thing that would give them hope and a renewed sense of belonging, the constant answer is for one of their family to continue education. In addition, when a Bosnian student arrrives at a college community, it galvanizes support and demolishes stereotypes: the "age old ethnic antagonism everyone to blame" lie gives way to the immediate personal reality of a human being who never wanted war, who has not ethnic hatred. I have met these students. They have lost everything. They have been through fire. Yet they have not given up the desire to learn; and are among the more remarkable people I have ever met.
Our task is to reconstruct their destroyed academic records, to explain to financial aid and admissions officers the pecularities of their situation, to help them prepare for toefl and other qualifying exams, and to help them secure student visas. Our first goal is to raise enough money for a full time coordinator. With such help we are convinced we can help obtain 100 scholarships for next year.
# Sister-City Program. Recently, the formerly Muslim majority city of Zvornik in Eastern Bosnia was declared "Muslim free" after 15 months of the most indescribable atrocities of ethnic cleansing. All mosques in Zvornik were dynamited. When asked why he destroyed the mosques, the mayor of Zvornik said "there never was a mosque in Zvornik." Similary, the mayor of the formely Muslim-majority city of Foca has declared that there never was a mosque in Foca. We cannot let such people control memory.
We are working to keep memory and personality alive. At Haverford we have symbolically adopted the city of Foca, formerly one of the more beautiful cities in Europe, where every trace of Bosnian Muslim heritage was systematically annihilated in the summer of 1992, including the Colored Mosque (build in 1550), one of the masterworks of European civilization. We have a data base and are collecting the names of survivors, contacting them, and collecting all information of the former cultural and life of Foca. We will be sponsoring similar campaigns for other cities.
# We are holding officials and organizations accountable. Recently the UNHCR and State Department began denying refugee status to survivors of concentration camps even though they met the first criterion set by the State Department. I am now writing the policy makers in both organizations, with accounts of what the refugees experiences in the concentration camps, the shameful conditions of their present refugee camps in Europe, and asking whether each of these persons wants to go down on the historical record as responsible for this policy.
# We are demanding truth. By joining the Community of Bosnia you will receive facts and data not available elsewhere; including analyses of the UN War Crimes Commission Testimony; chronicles of the systematic attack on culture; the liquidation of Serbs who refuse to engage in atrocities; and the use of code terms to disguise and excuse the genocide. You will receive our quarterly newsletter with information on our specific activities, hard-to obtain facts on the Bosnia conflict, and channels for obtain current films and books.
# We are learning new ways of wielding effective influence. Thousands of Bosnia support groups are growing up around the country. We are working with them to galvanize public awareness and exert strong political pressure.
Aida Buturovic was a brilliant PhD student at the University of Sarajevo. In August of 1993 she volunteered to help save manuscripts from the National Library which was savagely shelled for three days by the Bosnian Serb army. She never made it home.
The Community of Bosnia was incorporated as a non-profit corporation in December of 1993. Our federal tax exempt status (501c3) was granted on March 25, 1994, and all contributions are deductable.
We do this because what happens to Bosnia and its people is important in itself. Years from now when the full horror of what is occuring has begun to sunk in, each of us will ask ourselves what we did and what we didn't do. Our actions, judged individually, may seem small, but we can never judge their full effect. During the holocaust, some people tried to do something. At the time they thought their actions were in vain. Sometimes, decades later, the people they helped were able to track them down and tell them how deeply meaningful their actions were.