Читать книгу Post-War Identification - Torsten Kolind - Страница 26

Both men and women experienced physical violence, including murder. They also experienced a constant threat of violence. These terrible experiences are central themes in their accounts of the war. For the men violence relates to the brutal interrogations before the internment as well as to the routine beatings of prisoners in the camps. Both the interrogations and the beatings killed several people. As a consequence of the visit of the Red Cross to some of the prison camps about three months after their creation, some of the most exhausted prisoners were allowed to leave – those who had lost the most weight. They were not allowed to return to Bosnia Herzegovina, but had to travel to third countries instead. Emir was one of these prisoners. When he was released, the Red Cross sent him to the small island of Korcula in Croatia. After about two months, Emir had recovered somewhat. As he concisely summed up: “There we were well, we were given food three times a day, we were not beaten, we had a bed to sleep in.” Aspects of life that had been natural and unproblematic a couple of month previously had suddenly become issues of conscious concern. The women experienced the physical violence when they were searched and robbed by Croat soldiers. Violence also marks their ten-kilometre march from the place where the Croat soldiers set them off to Blagaj, a Muslim-controlled area. It was hot, people were scared, and they had to carry heavy burdens – baggage, as well as children or disabled parents in some cases – while the Croat soldiers fired into the air. About nine old women lost their lives on this march, probably from exhaustion. The experience of violence also relates to the time the women spent in Blagaj. One woman, Anvere, occupied a basement. The area was shelled all day, so she and her children had to stay indoors, and they only dared to tend the small vegetable patch they had for cultivating some lettuce or cabbage at night, and then very hastily.