11/05/1992 | Voices from the Drina

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🧵 I’m being detained by Serb occupying forces in the Vuk Karadžić School in Bratunac. There are over 500 Bosniak men being held here with me. Atrocities are taking place every day.

The detainees are forced to huddle in a section of the sports hall. There are so many of us that some men have suffocated to death.

The Serb guards regularly select men to be taken outside to be tortured and killed. Today I was ordered to carry a dead body to the hangar, where there is a heap of dead Bosniaks.

I can’t understand how this is happening in 1992. Are the EC and Western leaders going to stand by while we are killed?

We’ve been left no choice but to leave our hometown of Bratunac. The terror is too great under Serb occupying forces. We’ve left our belongings and property under the care of our Serb neighbours, who drove us out of Bratunac. My heart is broken.

We’ve fled Bratunac. I ran out of the house wearing a tracksuit and slippers. We’re fleeing across a forest right now. We’ll probably end up in Srebrenica. The shelling is coming from across the Serbian border. My Edin tells me its “MLRS firing 12 rockets at a time”. I’m in shock.

I’m being detained by Serb occupying forces in the Vuk Karadžić School in Bratunac. There are over 500 Bosniak men being held here with me. Atrocities are taking place every day.

We’re still in hiding in the woods above Bratunac. Dad and I are watching villages around Bratunac go up in flames. Thick pillars of light-coloured smoke. We don’t want to believe this is happening. If we believe it’s happening, it means we’ve reached a point of no return.

I’ve just been told by my cousin that my Uncle Zekir was detained in a concentration camp by Serb forces. They released him, only to kill him once they’d driven him to his home. I will never forget my cousin’s sobbing.

🧵 Bosniaks in Bratunac are being deported, and the men are being killed. A thread.