Balkan Nightmares
The ghosts of history haunt the Balkans.
Ancient passions, unbending hatreds
turmoil the region.
Painful tragedies of the past
are recycled by memories.
Permanent hostage of bound
and determined remembrance,
Race, religion and poverty clash
in violent convulsions.
Ethnic warfare and ruthless fright
sweep across nations,
fuelled by explosions of grief, revenge
and fear.
They are immersed in horror,
terror, chaos and bloodshed,
the sufferings of children,
the sorrows of fathers,
and the agonies of widows.
In 1453 the Turks led by Mehmet II
captured Constantinople
and the Eastern Roman Empire
ceased to exist.
The Ottomans became the new masters
of the Balkan provinces,
ushering in long centuries
of rugged struggles for freedom
and independence.
In 1697 Prince Eugene of Savoy
conquered Sarajevo,
A historic city that he left burned down
and plague-infected. Although by 1717
the prince liberated Belgrade
and the Danube region from Ottoman rule,
he failed to retake the Bosnian capital.
In the 19th century Austria-Hungary
annexed Bosnia, but together with Albania,
it remains a Muslim stronghold
in the heart of Europe.
In one summer day in 1914
the driver of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
took a wrong turn to Franz Josef Street,
at the edge of the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo.
On an official visit, the heir presumptive
to the Austro-Hungarian throne was riding
in an open car along with his pregnant wife,
Sophie.
A young Serb, Gavrilo Princip, a member
of the secret Pan-Slavic Black Hand Society,
spotted them. He approached the car
and from a distance of five feet
he fired twice
his FN model pistol, shooting the Archduke
in the neck and Sophie in the abdomen.
Bleeding, but still conscious,
he pleaded her:
"Please, don't die. You must live
for the sake of our children".
But they both died
on the way to the hospital.
The assassination of the royal couple
was a main catalyst that precipitated
the outbreak of the First World War.
On July 28,1914, Austria-Hungary
declared war on Serbia.
Yugoslavia, the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes,
came to existence in the Great War.
However, peace did not last long.
When Yugoslavia refused to join
Hitler's New Order in Europe,
the Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade
and Nazi Germany invaded the country.
The Fuehrer's armies occupied Sarajevo
on April 16,1941.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
as well as Croatia
became Nazi satellite states.
Fascist Bosnian Muslims,
Croatian Ustasha,
Serb Chetniks clashed with each other
or fought against
Tito's anti-fascist partisans.
The fighting was bloody and brutal.
The occupying German forces
Committed dreadful atrocities.
The Croatian Ustasha
had been especially notorious
for wanton acts of cruelty,
torturing and murdering
thousands of Serbs and Jews,
men, women and children.
During World War II
over one million Yugoslavs died.
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
was born out of the flames and ruins
of the Second World War.
Yet, after Tito's death
and the collapse of communism in the 1980s
the ethnic communities of the republic
wanted independence.
The Serb Communist Party leader
Slobodan Milosevic became a nationalist
and changed the Serbian constitution.
He annulled the autonomy
of the Albanian province of Kosovo
and introduced repressive measures
against ethnic Albanians.
Seeking independence,
Slovenia and Croatia in 1991
voted to secede
from the Yugoslav federation.
A year later Bosnia, too,
declared independence.
In the Yugoslav Dissolution Wars,
Slovenia gained sovereignty,
following brief skirmishes
with the federal Yugoslav People's Army.
In other parts
of the disintegrating communist republic
the tragedy of war struck
with enormous devastation,
enfolding as a long lasting conflict,
a violent catastrophe
that engulfed a large part of the Balkans
in flames.
In November 1991 Serb militias
supported by the Yugoslav Army
murdered hundreds of Croatians
in the Vukovar region.
They continued to bombard the town
for three months solid.
In December,
the Serbian Autonomous Oblast declared
its independence under the name
of the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
It controlled one third of Croatian territory
and pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing,
expelling the Croatian population
from the oblast.
But by 1993
the newly created Croatian Army
was strong enough to start an offensive
against the Serbs. The conflict escalated
into a full scale Yugoslav civil war
and entered its bloodiest phase.
In August 1995 the Croatian Army
invaded Krajina. Within a few days
more than 200,000 Serbs fled their homes.
NATO forces intervened
but supported the Croats.
They patrolled the skies and attacked
Serb surface-to-air missile radar sites.
Croatian planes raided Serbian towns
and army positions.
A dreadful nightmare
descended on the Balkans.
Croatian aircrafts bombed and strafed
Civilians, as frightened Serbs; old and young,
women and children, trying to reach safety,
had been trapped on roads
clogged with refugees.
Adding to the horrors, Bosnian Muslim troops
crossed the border into Krajina and cut off
the Serbian escape routes.
Along with the Croatian assault,
the Bosnian artillery pounded
the fleeing Serbs and burned down
Serbian villages.
Meanwhile the Serbian enclaves in Bosnia
had striven to join a greater Serbia
and engaged in ethnic cleansing.
In July 1995 Serb forces
of General Ratko Mladic
slaughtered thousands of Bosnian Muslims
in Srebrenica.
The wounds of the Second World War
had not healed yet and Yugoslavs
found themselves now fighting a new
and terrible tribal war.
They realized that peace
is precious and fragile,
that it has to be constantly nourished,
that it can never be taken for granted.
They looked back with nostalgia
to past days of tranquility.
Not very long
before the troubles started
Yugoslavia hosted
the Winter Olympic games.
The games were held in 1984
in the city of Sarajevo.
But now, eight years later,
Serbian troops encircled the Bosnian capital.
In a siege that lasted 43 months,
the nationalists cut off food supplies,
utilities and communications.
Serbian snipers shot at Sarajevans
going to work or to shop.
More than 12,000 Bosnian Muslims,
as well as Serb and Croatian residents
of the city were killed in the siege,
among them,1,500 children.
At the same time Serb nationalists
throughout Bosnia shelled and burned down
villages and towns, deported people
to detention camps and terrorized
Bosnian Muslims and Croats.
They systematically raped the women,
tortured and executed the men.
They conducted a scorched earth policy,
destroying houses, schools, roads,
bridges and railways and forced millions
of people to flee their homes.
In 1999, in the same decade
that the Rwandan genocide took place,
President Milosevic of Serbia attempted
another ethnic cleansing campaign
against the Albanian population of Kosovo.
After NATO intervened
and bombed Serbia in order to stop
the expulsion of Albanians from the province,
the returning Albanians attacked
the Serbian residents of Kosovo.
Now the former victims of ethnic cleansing
Became the perpetrators of the same crimes
against humanity. The Albanians drove out
one hundred thousand Serbs from Kosovo.
Human tragedies know neither political,
nor ethnical, nor religious frontiers.
The Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Albanians
involved in the conflicts
of the Yugoslav Dissolution Wars
became both aggressors and victims.
Many of them committed
heinous war crimes.
Civilians, especially the women
and the children, suffered terribly
on all sides.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Related quotes
For me the much more significant question is what did the Americans do, if anything, to help the Croatian army, because they are the ones that changed fundamentally the map of Bosnia, not the Bosnian army.
quote by John Pomfret
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The European Bin Laden!
After sixteen years Bosnian Serb General Ratco Mladic was hauled into Courtroom to face charges of ordering torture, rape and the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim Men & Boys in the Bosnian town of Srebernica in 1995.
-News-
O 2011! The year is not good for killers, dictators, liars & etc.,
Luckily he's caught alive to see the Hague
Otherwise he could have gone to a sea bed?
*Buddha said; 'There's no place to hide in the Sky, Earth, Sea or elsewhere for his Karma that chase behind him.'
poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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Bosnia
I would like to state my vision
Life was so unfair
We live in our secure surroundings
And people die out there
Bosnia was so unkind
Sarajevo changed my mind
And we all call out in despair
All the love we need isnt there
And we all sing songs our rooms
Sarajevo erects an undertune
Sarajevo, sarajevo, sarajevo
Bosnia was so unkind
Sarajevo, sarajevo, sarajevo
Bosnia was so unkind
Sure thigns would change if we really wanted them to
No fear for children anymore
There are babies in their hands, terror in their heads
For life, for life
When do the saints go marching in?
When do the saints go marching in?
song performed by by Cranberries
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I had my life threatened by Bosnian Serbs on numerous occasions.
quote by John Pomfret
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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So as far as Serbia is concerned, it does not have the right to influence the privatization or to claim any property, because Kosovo is a former member of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
quote by Ibrahim Rugova
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Armenia, Armenia
After the great flood Noah’s ark landed
on Mount Ararat, says the Bible.
Nowadays, the snow-capped summit
of the mountain soars over Yerevan.
Although the dormant volcanic cone
of Ararat lies south of the border,
in Turkish Anatolia,
the view of the mountain dominates
the skyline of the Armenian capital.
Most of the territory
that was once part of historic Armenia
belongs to Turkey today.
Under the yoke of the Muslim Ottomans,
the aspirations of the Christian Armenians
to obtain autonomy clashed
with the dreams of their rulers
to establish a pan-Turkish Empire.
In the 19th century the government
of the crumbling Ottoman Empire
started a campaign to wipe out
the Armenian population.
It perpetrated a genocide,
which reached its peak
during the First World War.
In 1908 an extremist wing
of the Union and Progress Party,
the Young Turks, came to power
in the Ottoman Empire.
They rejected demands for ethnic autonomy
and launched a systematic state organized attack
on the Armenian community.
It began on April 24,1915,
when the Ottoman authorities arrested
some 250 Armenian leaders in Istanbul
and murdered them.
Then armed Turks began uprooting men,
women and children from their homes.
Rape and murder became a commonplace.
Depriving them food and water, Turkish squads
forced Armenian communities to march
through the deserts of Syria where they died
of dehydration, starvation and exhaustion.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses
from all over the world recorded
and documented state-supported massacres.
In 1915, for example, Leslie Davis,
the American consul in Kharput, reported
that 10,000 bodies of murdered Armenians
had been discovered near Lake Göeljuk.
In the same year Giacomo Gorrini,
the Italian consul in Trabzon, testified:
“I saw thousands of innocent women
and children placed on boats,
which were capsized in the Black Sea”.
Armenians call the mass slaughter
of their people Metz Yeghérn, the calamity.
Historians estimate the number of those
who lost their lives
in the great Armenian tragedy at 1.5 million.
The government of Turkey, however,
refuses to admit that a state organized genocide
took place.
In the fall of 2001 Pope John Paul II
paid a visit to the former Soviet Republic
of Armenia. He laid a rose at the eternal flame
in the memorial of Yerevan
and prayed for the victims:
The lament that rises from this place,
The call of the dead from the depth of Metz Yeghérn,
The cry of innocent blood
That pleads like the blood of Abel,
Like Rachel weeping for her children
Because they are no more.
poem by Paul Hartal
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European Heritage Invasion Versus Pacific Peace Isolation
Your heritage childhood learning post communist Yugoslavia
splintered by bitter nationalism rural urban divisive civil war
I isolation the Buller West Coast South Island New Zealand
province values were old country colonial family status core
we embrace histories of diversity invasions splinter identities
religion belief nationality posed threats to communist policies
religious differences between Orthodox Serbs Catholic Croats
and Muslim Bosniaks mixes into volatile political aspirations
in contrast isolated colony New Zealand enters European wars
under the banner of British Empire assumes her own identities
heritage ancestry denomination Christian mixes with Polynesian
the government encourages Asian immigration multiculturalism
post Maori New Zealand Wars NZ embraced peace in isolation
post Yugoslavia accepts European power surge manipulation?
accept 'the situation in the terrain' common message it's a mess
up manipulation crime spiral from local to global level policies?
poem by Terence George Craddock
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It is difficult to say today whether the Battle of Kosovo was a defeat or a victory for the Serbian people, whether thanks to it we fell into slavery or we survived in this slavery.
quote by Slobodan Milosevic
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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But we acted pre-emptively in Kosovo in 1999 to stop Milosevic from doing what he was doing and increasingly doing the ethnic cleansing in a systematic way.
quote by Lord Robertson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Osman Pazvantoglou
A begot of Bosnia Province, 'son of the guard',
mercenary in service to Wallachian Prince Nicholas
Mavrogenes, friend to Rigas Feraios Greek Bard,
revolts an army of mercenaries rebels to amass.
Freed from Ottoman Sultan Selim, acts independent,
his state recognized by Western Europe diplomats,
In 1798, held territories spread from river Danub
to the Balkan Mountains, from Belgrade to Varna.
Osman, warrior of North, fierce, in deathly defeat,
in deathly victory, honored by a Glory transient,
wins in Vidin, loses in Smederovo, fear to transmit
a new Carpathian Vlad Tepes' vindicatory punishment.
Defeats a 100,000 soldier army of Huseyin Kucuk,
ruthless warrior, raiding territories in blind moksha
fighting Sultans Ottoman, and Serbs, win, or lose
as in 1798 the Sultan is forced to make him a pasha.
Raids in Wallachia, against Alexander Mourouzis,
the Phanariote Prince, who in 1800, resigns to Selim,
Osman's pasvangii troops, burn all Craiova houses,
in 1802 Prince Michael Soutzos of Bucchurest deposes.
Blind, indiscriminate absolutism, Osman's warlords
In 1809, retaliation campaign of Oltenian hajduks
led by Iancu Jianu were victorious, for Romanians,
as Osman raids are recalled as extremely ill and old.
As many charismatic rulers, Osman the warlord,
missed the opportunity to organize a state based
on traditional values, fought ambiguously and lost
the trust of Balcanians, who condemned his raids.
poem by Giorgio Veneto
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Massacre in Nanjing
On a clear winter day you can see from Tokyo
The snow-capped volcanic cone of Mount Fuji.
Towering to a height of 3,776 meters on Honshu Island,
About 100 kilometers south-west from the capital,
The majestic mountain is a staunch symbol
Of the Land of the Rising Sun.
During the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945,
Hirohito's armies invaded China, carrying along
A fascist banner of samurai honor and pride.
The Japanese Imperial troops
Advanced with brutal force,
Committing dreadful atrocities
Against prisoners and civilians.
They reinterpreted bushido virtues and believed
That their war crimes elevated the splendor and glory
Of Mount Fuji to new heights.
Articles published in November and December 1937
In the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun reported the exploits
Of Japanese Imperial Army officers Toshiaki Mukai and
Tsuyoshi Noda, who on the road to Nanjing competed,
For being the first to behead 100 Chinese with a sword.
Okumiya Masatake, a Japanese officer,
Was a witness to the atrocities.
He was a principled aviator in the Imperial Navy,
Serving in Jiangsu.
He was shocked by the carnage he saw in China.
On December 12,1937,
He participated outside Nanjing
In the bombing and sinking
Of the American Gunboat USS Panay
In the Yangtze River.
A few days after the sinking of the Panay,
Okumiya rode a chauffeur-driven car,
Searching for the bodies of downed Japanese pilots.
It was then that he had witnessed
His Majesty's Imperial Troops
Perpetrating gruesome Massacres.
In the streets of Nanjing, Japanese soldiers
Were slaughtering indiscriminately
Chinese men and women, young and old.
On December 25 and 27 of 1937,
Okumiya photographed in the capital
Piles of innumerable bodies of Chinese people,
Lying unburied along the Yangtze River
And on the shores of Xuanwu Lake and Xuanwu Gate.
Once he came upon a terrible scene of executions.
About twenty soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army
Forced a large group of Chinese to sit on the river bank.
The prisoners' hands were bound behind their backs.
The soldiers beheaded their victims by the sword.
One warrior after the other approached
A kneeling prisoner and drew his sword.
The soldier raised the weapon with both hands,
Its blade glittering in the bright daylight.
And then with a swift and savage sweep
He struck at the prisoner's neck.
The severed head rolled into the river.
When Okumiya asked why the troops execute
The prisoners by sword instead of shooting them,
An officer replied that killing by sword
Saved ammunition.
Okumiya was immersed in his homeland
In the violent culture of the sword.
He was well-aware of its pivotal role
In Japanese history.
Nevertheless, he was shocked by the executions.
The officer's explanation lingered on in his mind
With an unnerving persistence.
Although he was a disciplined naval officer,
Loyal and ready to die for the Emperor,
He still felt that what he witnessed compromised
The samurai way of the warrior, dishonored the spirit
And soul of the bushido.
The reign of terror in China began in 1937,
When the Fascist Imperial Army of Hirohito
Invaded the country.
After three months of brutal fighting,
The Battle of Shanghai ended in late November.
Then the Japanese army marched all the way to Nanjing,
The historical capital of Six Chinese Dynasties.
On December 10,1937, the Japanese mounted
A fierce assault on the walls of the city.
After two days of heavy artillery fire
And aerial bombardment
The Chinese army retreated from Nanjing.
Gunboats of the Japanese fleet were cruising
In the Yangtze River.
By nightfall, on December 13, the historical capital fell.
The Emperor's forces entered Nanjing
Through the ancient city gates.
The masses of defenseless civilians
Trapped in Nanjing
Became prey and pillage of Fascist bestiality.
Brutal crimes of looting, arson, rape and murder
Were perpetrated everywhere.
Soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army
Roamed savagely the streets.
They entered every household,
Searching door to door for females.
And it did not matter
If they were young or old or pregnant.
The troops gang raped thousands of women,
Stabbed them to death with their bayonets
And then mutilated their bodies.
Entire families had been murdered in cold blood.
Men were shot through the head or the heart.
And the soldiers killed even the babies.
They also used young men for bayonet training
Stabbing the screaming victims repeatedly,
Or beheading them by their swords.
Historians estimate that in the horrible war crimes
Committed at Nanjing
The Japanese army slaughtered
Between 200,000 and 300,000 people.
The soldiers raped tens of thousands of women.
Yet in this tragic epoch of Chinese history
There were still beacons of light that shone through
The long and cruel nights of barbarism.
Confronting the bloody maelstrom of atrocities
A few courageous foreigners in Nanjing
Risked their lives and came to the rescue.
These righteous Europeans and Americans
Helped many people to escape.
They hid and protected
Thousands of Chinese men, women and children
From the massacres.
One of the rescuers was
Bernhard Arp Sindberg of Denmark.
When the war broke out Sindberg worked as a driver
For the British journalist Pembroke Stephens.
One day in Shanghai,
They climbed a water tower to observe the fighting
And Stephens was killed by a machine gun salvo
Fired from a Japanese airplane.
Shortly before the occupation of Nanjing,
Sindberg moved to the capital.
Here he was employed as a guard
At a concrete factory in the city,
Owned by a Danish firm.
During the massacres he flew the swastika flag
To protect approximately 6,000 Chinese refugees
Camping on the factory lot.
Another foreigner
Who saved thousands upon thousands
From Japanese brutality
Was the German businessman, John Rabe.
Employed by the Siemens AG China Corporation,
He helped to establish the International Safety Zone
Of Nanjing.
The Safety Zone had sheltered
Approximately 200,000 Chinese men, women
And children from the massacres.
Ironically, Rabe was a member of the Nazi Party.
However, he was a conservative man fostering
Traditional values and he had a compassionate heart.
Displaying the swastika at his house
And presenting his National Socialist documents,
Rabe negotiated, argued and protested
With the Japanese military in order to keep
Hirohito's troops out of the Safety Zone.
He even wrote Hitler a letter
Requesting him to interfere
With the Japanese authorities
To stop the bestial bloodbath.
The Fuehrer did not reply.
When Rabe returned to Germany,
The Nazis forbade him
To lecture about the Japanese war crimes.
Another angel during the dreadful days
Of the Rape of Nanjing was Minnie Vautrin,
An American missionary and Dean of Jingling College.
She harbored and protected up to 10,000 women
At the school.
She kept a diary in which she had recorded
The horrors of Nanjing.
Once, late on a winter evening,
She saw an army truck in the street,
Carrying a group of young Chinese girls.
As the truck passed by, the girls called out:
'Jiu ming, jiu ming', 'save our lives, save our lives'.
A Buddhist monk once told me
That rivers and mountains have their own soul.
Nature is alive.
And so, in this terrible time of history,
Those who had listened carefully enough, could hear
The mountains and the rivers of the earth sigh.
And then in the glorious Land of the Rising Sun
The snow-capped peak of sublime Mount Fuji
Hid its head in the clouds, ashamed.
poem by Paul Hartal
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No Secret: The Rwandan Genocide
A remote source of the Nile,
the Kagera River originates in Burundi.
On its way to Lake Victoria it flows
into a steep gorge along the natural border
between Rwanda and Tanzania.
Before entering the ravine,
the river cascades in a small waterfall
that swells in the rainy season.
As the Kagera sweeps down from
the highlands it carries within its currents
vast clusters of uprooted trees embedded
in gigantic dollops of elephant grass.
In the spring and summer of 1994
it was still much the same.
However, this time also thousands
of human corpses floated on the river.
Rwanda and Burundi
are two tiny African countries,
each with a territory somewhat smaller
than Belgium. Most of the population
belong to Hutu tribes,
who are traditionally crop growers.
But beginning in the 1300s
warrior herdsmen
from the highlands of Ethiopia
migrated to the region.
They originally spoke Somali or Oromo,
but in adopting the local Bantu language
and settling among the Hutus,
they became known as Tutsis.
The German colonists favoured
the Ethiopian look of the Tutsi minority.
They employed them as overseers
in the administration of Ruanda-Urundi,
as the colony was called then.
Then during the First World War Belgium
took over governing the territory
but continued to support the Tutsis
as the ruling class.
In 1919 Brussels received a mandate
from the League of Nations to administer
the colony. The Belgian colonists divided
Tutsis and Hutus on the basis
of cattle ownership, church documents,
physical measurements
and physiognomic appearance.
Basically, they had designated
the wealthy and tall as Tutsis,
and classified those poorer
and shorter as Hutus.
The Tutsis got used fast
to their privileged status
as Rwandan aristocrats.
They worshipped their king
as a god-like ruler and treated
the Hutus with disdain as peasants.
But the aristocratic Tutsi monarchy
came to an end in 1959
when Belgium allowed holding
universal elections.
King Kigeli V of Ruanda-Urundi
was forced to go to exile
and the majority Hutus
assumed control of the government.
These were turbulent times
that deteriorated into wide spread
communal violence.
In 1962 two independent countries
emerged from the former colony,
Rwanda and Burundi.
But the transition from colony
to independence was not
a peaceful one.
At the time that Rwanda
became independent,
Hutus comprised more than 80 percent
of the country’s seven million people.
Nevertheless, the Tutsi minority
was reluctant to give up
its privileged ruling status.
Consequently, Hutus and Tutsis
were at each other’s throat
in the power struggle
for governing the country.
In Rwanda hundreds of Tutsis
were killed while thousands of others
fled to neighbouring Burundi and Uganda.
In the aftermath of the atrocities,
President Grégoire Kayibanda
made the Hutus the governing majority
of the nation. Yet the leaders
of the new regime did not choose
a policy of national reconciliation.
Instead, they opted for oppression
and discrimination.
They blamed the problems of Rwanda
on the Tutsis. In the 1970s
the Hutu-led military
continued to murder Tutsis in Rwanda.
They excluded the Tutsis
from the governmental administration,
the armed forces, even from schools
and universities.
Yet meanwhile Tutsis had their share
in violent ethnic cleansing as well.
In 1972, in response to a Hutu rebellion,
the Tutsi controlled army
in the Republic of Burundi
killed over 100,000 Hutus.
Similarly to Rwanda, over 80 percent
of the population in Burundi
consists of Hutu tribes.
Harking back on the shame and humiliation
of the past, the Hutu leadership in Rwanda
intensified their hateful propaganda,
inflaming bitterness and hostility
against the tall, aristocratic Tutsi.
They claimed that the Tutsis
intended to restore a feudal system
to enslave the Hutu population.
They recruited writers and teachers
to travel the country to raise Hutu pride
and to create a pan-Hutu consciousness.
They sowed the seeds of spite,
unfurled the propaganda of hate
and prepared the hurricane of genocide.
However, in the neighbouring countries
the Tutsi refugee Diaspora organized
militia forces to overthrow
the Hutu regime in Rwanda.
In 1990 civil war broke out
as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)
of the Tutsi minority
invaded the country from Uganda.
Then on April 6,1994, an airplane
carrying the Hutu presidents
of two African nations,
Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and
Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi,
had been shot down.
The fanatic Akazu organization
of the Hutu Power ideologists
immediately blamed the Tutsis
for the shooting down of the plane.
They spread hate and hysteria.
By radio and word of mouth
they told Hutu civilians that it was
their patriotic duty
to “fill the half-empty graves”
with the bodies of Tutsis.
They called for the slaughter
of all Tutsis, as well as of Hutus
who sympathized with the Tutsi.
They even incited Hutu wives
and husbands to murder
their own spouses.
Although throughout the centuries
both Hutus and Tutsis
unleashed violent actions
and slaughtered each other,
the tragic events of 1994 culminated
in one of the most horrible atrocities
of history.
The Rwandan radio exhorted people
to fight for Rwanda and to kill
the Tutsis like ‘cockroaches’
and sweep them from the country.
The radio inflamed the Hutus
to massacre the Tutsis,
urging them to use
every kind of weapons;
if not guns and grenades,
then arrows, spears,
machetes, knives and clubs.
And so they did.
Frenzied Hutu squads killed
Tutsi men, women, children
and babies by the thousands
in the streets, in churches,
schools and in their houses.
In the countryside the murderers
covered the dead with banana leaves
in order to screen them
from aerial photography.
In about100 days,
between April 6 and mid-July in 1994,
approximately one million people
were killed. The victims also included
Hutus who refused to participate
in the massacres or were
on friendly relations with Tutsis.
The cold blooded murderers
who perpetrated these heinous crimes
were fuelled by fanatic dedication
to a pan-nationalist identity politics.
The killers were often not strangers
but familiar faces to the victims,
neighbours and workmates,
even relatives or former friends.
The December 1993 issue
of the Hutu Kangura magazine shows
a picture of the Rwandan President
Grégoire Kayibanda next to a machete.
Adjacent to the picture appear the words:
“Tutsi: Race of God”, and then
the magazine poses the question:
“Which weapons are we going to use
to beat the cockroaches for good? ”
The genocide
that followed was no secret!
It occurred uninterrupted
by United Nations forces
that were in place
monitoring a ceasefire.
And journalists and TV cameras
from all over the world reported
the massacres.
Viewers in cities and villages
on different continents
sat in front of their television screens,
sipping coffee or eating popcorn,
and watched in shock
the horrible mass murders.
The genocide ended in July 1994
when the Tutsi rebels of the RPF
defeated the Hutu military forces
of Rwanda. Fearing retributions,
two million Hutus fled
to neighbouring Burundi, Tanzania,
Uganda and Zaire. Many of them
participated in the massacres.
Conditions in the refugee camps were
dreadful and thousands died
in epidemics of cholera and dysentery.
The international community
could have intervened in order to stop
the Rwandan genocide, but governments
lacked the political will to do that.
And, indeed,
the United Nations Security Council
accepted responsibility
for failing to prevent the massacres.
The unchecked brutality
of the perpetrators of this genocide
“made a mockery, once again,
of the pledge ‘never again’”,
said the Canadian Foreign Minister,
Lloyd Axworthy.
He was referring to the promise
made after the Holocaust.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Holocaust Latvia Begins
Holocaust Latvia begins
on June 22,1941 when
the German army invaded
the Russian Soviet Union;
and the Baltic States
of Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia which had
by Soviet military forces;
recently been occupied
after a proud period
of independence after
World War One finished.
Murders of Jews
Communists began
almost immediately
by Einsatzgruppen;
perpetrated by German
killer squads known
as Special Task Groups
Special Assignment Groups;
the German Security Police
Sicherheitspolizei or Sipo
the Security Service of the SS
the Sicherheitsdienst or SD.
The first recorded murders
were on the day after invasion
on the night of June 23,1941
in town of Grobina near Liepāja;
six Jews were killed
in the church cemetery
by Sonderkommando
1a members deployed;
with the 14th Army
Nazi German
Einsatzkommandos
were a sub-group;
of five Einsatzgruppen
mobile killing squads
up to 3,000 men each
composed of 500 to 1000;
officials of dread SS
Schutzstaffel (SS)
and Gestapo thugs
their vile missions;
the annihilation of Jews
Gypsies Soviet political
Commissars to kill Jews
all Polish intellectuals;
Romani, communists
NKVD collaborators
in captured territories
behind the advancing;
German front lines
Nazi occupiers
were also aided
by a unit of native;
Latvians known
as Arājs Commando
Latvian auxiliary police
Wehrmacht commanders;
bolstered the strength
of the Einsatzgruppen
with regular-army troops
whenever required.
Latvia July 29,1941
forty mental patients
from Lódz in Poland
are taken from hospital;
executed in nearby forest
July 31,1941 Hermann
Göring instructs SS Reich
Security Service chief;
Reinhard Heydrich
to evacuate eliminate
all European Jews
in German-held territory;
Göring's letter mentions
'complete solution'
to European Jewry
Jews purified in death;
July 1941 Germans
establish a Jewish
ghetto at Dvinsk Latvia
July-August 1941;
Jews are murdered
by the tens of thousands
throughout western
Soviet Union Lithuania;
Romania and Latvia
who are the murders?
German Einsatzgruppen
Romanian troops militia;
Ukrainian peasants
Lithuanian civilians
August 1941 German
slaughter of Jews;
at Cesis Latvia
is celebrated
by German troops
security police;
celebrate with
a Totenmahl
'death banquet'
August 1941;
in Belgium
collaborationist
military
organization;
Legion Wallonie
Wallonian Legion
is established
September 29-30 1941;
Babi Yar Kiev
Soviet Ukraine
33,771 Jews
killed in two days;
by SS and German
police units
November 30 and
December 8 1941;
at Rumbula forest
near Riga Latvia
25,000 Jews
killed in two days;
Einsatzgruppen
will murder
over one million
people in occupied;
territories the first
Nazi organized
policy mass killing
of European Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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To they who survive on less than one dollar a day
Hobos who're denied a decent shelter
And stripped of all vestiges of human dignity,
And poverty stricken villagers and desperate refugees
Who're denied decent medical care and access to justice,
And children who must forage for food in the dustbins
The just of the world have not forgotten you
And the soldiers who wage the wars of extermination
Against their own people,
And those who're forced to be the sex slaves
Of the moneyed and the toddlers who become child soldiers
And the misguided and greedy drug mules who are raped and
And tortured and hanged and left to rot in foreign jails
Our children
We have not forgotten you
And the world demands a true and more humane
World order that stands up to demand justice
For the victims of state sponsored violence
And justice for the victims of ritual murder and female
Genital mutilation and the victims of AIDS
And the entire universe demands
Justice for the victims of racist attacks and the victims of mob violence
And from the bosoms of their hearts the children of the world stand
Stand up as one and they demand justice for the victims of mindless
Violence and they cry out for justice for the victims of genocide
And they want to see the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing
Brought to justice to answer for their evil deeds
poem by Ngaka Motaung
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Legal Genocide Committed On Industrial Scale
It was legal genocide committed
on industrial scale even in city sized
slaughter camps like Auschwitz!
Systematic killing murder of entire
ethnic groups; all chosen people
from chosen ethnic, national or religious
groups selected for extermination!
Terrible things done to millions
of people in slave extermination camps!
Incredibly politicians bureaucrats
made passed laws to legalize the process!
Architects men designed ovens
to gas people burn their bodies
using the latest technology builders
built them; people supplied installed
the gas pipes; people built the huts
where those selected for final solution;
lived awaiting slaughter like animals!
Nazi's killed human beings like bugs
like an infestation of plague rats!
No mercy no regret no shame
because it was legal government...
a Nazi Third Reich declared
it legal righteous a purification
people involved were obeying...
The law obeying Reich law man's law!
Participating in a noble cause! No!
Participating in a heinous crime!
Against God’s law against humanity!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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There's probably one more story about Bosnia that I'd like to do, because I spent a fair amount of time on the Serb side of the lines, which isn't apparent in the other books.
Hot, hotter and now bombastic, (this is not a poem)
The Philippine government on Sunday (24 Aug) rejected a call by Muslim guerrillas for a halt in a massive air and ground assault, and instead intensified the four-day attack, capturing a rebel training camp in a southern province, officials said.
Moro Islamic Liberation Front Chairman Al Haj Murad urged the government in a rare news conference Saturday to stop the offensive, warning it could imperil a years long peace process and escalate violence in the country's troubled south.
About 6,000 troops and police commando forces, backed by artillery and bomber aircraft, have attacked guerrilla positions to capture a rebel commander who occupied and looted Christian farming communities in North Cotabato province. Two other commanders are also being hunted who led a rampage last week in which 37 people were shot or hacked to death in Lanao del Norte province.
'There will be no let up in government offensives, ' Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said.
He said government forces would 'enforce the law' if Murad does not turn over the three commanders for justice. Murad has refused to do so.
After four days of air and artillery strikes and attacks by army rangers, rebel resistance has softened, allowing troops to capture a guerrilla training camp in Maguindanao's Mamasapano township, said Army Col. Marlou Salazar, who was overseeing the offensive.
Troops were checking the camp, which has obstacle courses, assembly areas and small buildings for combat training, for possible booby traps and land mines, he said.
'They're scampering and leaving only token forces to delay our advance, ' Salazar told The Associated Press by telephone.
At least 27 guerrillas have been killed and 21 others wounded in three Maguindanao townships where Salazar's army brigade was pressing its assault against the forces of rebel commander Ameril Umbra Kato. Military and police were continuing a manhunt in nearby Lanao del Norte province for commanders Abdullah Macapaar, also known as Bravo, and Aleem Sulaiman Pangalian.
The National Disaster Coordinating Council reported that at least 40 civilians have been killed and 240,000 displaced by the rebel attacks and the fighting.
'The number keeps growing, ' Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral told the AP. 'There is fighting that erupts in new places almost every day so more and more are being displaced. So we are hoping that there can be a peaceful resolution very quickly.'
Cabral said the World Food Program has increased its emergency rice supplies for refugees from 400 tons last week to 900 tons.
Murad said government troops were attacking the main rebel forces and not only pursuing the three commanders.
The rebels, who have been fighting for Muslim self-rule in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's south for decades, said they regretted a recent upsurge in violence and that the commanders responsible had acted on their own. Murad said peace talks should resume, but refused to turn over the commanders to face the criminal justice system.
'We cannot subject our members to the laws of the government, ' Murad said. 'We are a revolutionary force.'
Just weeks ago, a peace deal to end the decades-long insurgency had seemed within reach after government and rebel negotiators initialed an agreement on an expanded Muslim autonomous region.
But Christian politicians in areas that would be affected challenged the deal in the Supreme Court, triggering the attacks by frustrated rebels.
By JIM GOMEZ/ AP)
Associated Press writer Oliver Teves contributed to this report.
MySinchew 2008.08.25
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Time Displaced Empires Conflict Expire
Byzantium Byzantine Empire survives;
to be time displaced Islam at greatest extent?
Arab Empire this region controlled 75%.
Europe dark Middle Ages slowly recovers;
Renaissance rebirth of 12th century leads
after centuries to European new aspirations?
Naval prowess of growing European powers?
Forced flexes muscles Ottoman Empire confronts
halts further rapid Ottoman Empire expansions?
European Catholic maritime states;
a coalition of southern Mediterranean
a Holy League fleet in 1571assembles?
Illustrious members were the Papal States;
Habsburg states of Spain Sicily Naples;
Republic of Venice Republic of Genoa mobilizes;
Grand Duchy of Tuscany the Duchies
of Savoy Parma Urbino pledged prepares;
Knights of Malta all will fight Ottomans?
50,000 infantry 200 galleys 100 other ships;
4,500 cavalry adequate artillery too late...
too late assembled defense Holy League fleet?
Venetian defenders of island Cyprus;
in July 1570 were attacked by Ottomans
invaded by conquering Ottoman forces?
Too late to aid Cyprus prevent island's;
capture by conquest Islamic Ottomans
Holy League waited too long perhaps?
Who failed to assemble which powerful allies?
Holy Roman Empire their truce with Istanbul kept?
France honoured anti-Spanish alliance with Ottomans?
Mighty Portugal could spare no forces;
in ongoing maritime confrontations...
was heavily engaged with rival Ottomans;
in both the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean;
proud Portugal had Reconquista fought...
539 years its Moroccan campaign now fights.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Nazi Death Squads Enter Eastern Europe
Einsatzgruppen ultimate genocide killing machines
plans so heinous Satan glorified as his SS hells legions;
task forces sowed vile atrocious monstrous Nazi deeds
SS paramilitary death squads systematic mass killings;
originally killing by indifferent civilian herd shootings
typically seek primary target Jews Gypsies Communists;
political categories Polish intellectuals Soviet prisoners
early prey physically mentally handicapped homosexuals;
rabid intolerance eradicated Nazi perceived imperfections
great musical voices minds selected for mass executions;
Einsteins Stephan Hawkings earth rare intolerated genius
unique human diversity frog marched to foul gas chambers;
Einsatzgruppen operated throughout invasion territories
occupied by German armed forces following invasions;
like Poland and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Einsatzgruppen systematically carried out evil operations;
ranging from repellent murder of individuals to operations
which lasted over two or more days vast horrific massacres;
at Babi Yar Kiev Soviet Ukraine 33,771 killed in two days
at Rumbula forest near Riga Latvia 25,000 killed in two days;
who testifies 33,771 Kiev Jews were massacred in two days
at Babi Yar official reports by Einsatzgruppe to headquarters;
infamous September 29-30 1941 SS and German police units
auxiliaries under awful guidance of Einsatzgruppe members;
(mobile killing unit) C slaughtered their naked Jewish victims
as quarry marched into a ravine Einsatzgruppe detachments;
shot all women children elderly without mercy in small groups
in subsequent months following the massacre German authorities;
stationed at Kiev rounded up killed thousands more Jews
at Babi Yar and non-Jews including Roma (Gypsies):
executed too were Soviet prisoners of war Communists
100,000 people estimated murdered at Babi Yar massacres;
Latvia during first six months of Nazi occupation Germans
local collaborators slaughtered 90 percent of the 95,000 Jews;
July 1941 invasion 40,000 Jews live in Riga in fear first days
of occupation savage attacks are launched upon Riga's Jews;
racist pogrom arresting beating torturing raping Riga Jews
Latvian 'civilian' nationalists begin burning synagogues;
with families inside thousands are driven toward beaches
nearby woods shot murdered a surviving 32,000 victims;
are forced into 2 separate overcrowded slave labour ghettos
males 16 to 60 are selected war effort 'productive' workers;
Jewish women children old disabled people will be corpses
German abominable massacres indict humanity forever stains;
Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders
of over one million people in occupied territories;
Einsatzgruppen were the first Nazi organizations
to begin as organized policy mass killing of Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Little-Known Death Factory
Operation Barbarossa,
The German invasion of the Soviet Union
commenced on June 22,1941.
Behind the rapidly advancing Wehrmacht forces
mobile SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen,
went into action. They killed Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war and political commissars.
The historian Raul Hilberg estimated
the number of Jewish men, women and children
murdered by the Einsatzgruppen
in the ravines of Babi Yar, in the forests of Riga
and many other places at 1.3 million.
On the outspread yards of a former kolkhoz,
a dusty Soviet collective farm,
the SS task forces set up a secret death factory.
Its horrible assembly lines creaked and cried
in the outskirts of Minsk of Byelorussia,
near the village of Maly Trostenets.
Here the Nazis murdered thousands of Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, Gypsies
and other Byelorussian civilians.
And then, on May 19,1942,
the first transport of Jews from Germany,
Austria and Czechoslovakia arrived.
Maly Trostenets became
a Vernichtungslager, an extermination camp.
Men, women and children
Were shot daily in the forests.
Others, thousands of them,
were killed in mobile gas chamber vans,
on the way from Minsk to Maly Trostenets.
Special groups of prisoners threw the corpses
Of the murdered into deep pits of mass graves.
The 'final solution',
the euphemistic code used in Hitler's Reich
for the extermination of the Jews,
was conducted in great secrecy.
The guards were ordered under oath
to shut their mouth.
The perpetrators of the massacres tried
to obliterate the evidence
that the camp ever existed.
As the Red Army advanced
the inmates were forced to exhume the bodies
from the mass graves and to cremate the corpses.
After they completed their terrible task
the guards killed them as well.
Finally, on June 28,1944,
the SS guards blew up the camp.
One of the victims who was shot by the Nazis
at Maly Trostenets was Vincent Hadleuski,
a Catholic priest and Byelorussian patriot.
Another victim who died here was Cora Berliner,
a German Jewess born in 1942 in Hannover,
She was known in her homeland
as a pioneer of social work and as an economist.
The Austrian-born soprano Grete Forst
was murdered in Maly Trostenets, too.
History has recorded the date: June 1,1942.
The psychologist Margarete Hilferding,
her compatriot, also lost her life here,
on September 23 of the same year.
No survivors of the lager are known
to be alive today.
Since the Nazis did not keep camp records
the exact number of people who perished here
in the genocide is unknown.
Estimates range from 200,000
to half million murdered men, women
and children. At least 65,000 of them
were Jews.
poem by Paul Hartal
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