February 1993 | Voices from the Drina

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Featured Authors

🧵 Serbian forces continue to commit violent attacks on the municipalities of Srebrenica and Bratunac with advanced technology and live force. Six brigades from the Uzički and Valjevski corps are even most often hitting residential buildings in Srebrenica municipality.

The Chetniks continue to prevent the entrance of humanitarian aid in this area; food and medicine for the people living there. Cold and hunger are taking a heavy toll.

The situation is particularly severe in Cerska, where aid also cannot arrive, since the aggressor is not allowing the passage of convoys.

So the US has a new president. Bill Clinton. He was inaugurated on 20 January. The radio says the change in administration will bring change for the better in Bosnia. We’re all listening to the news again, gathering around the few transistor radios we have. (1/2)

Our hopes rise once more, and this despite our hunger and the fact that our fighters are struggling hard to maintain the existing lines of defence. (2/2)

Children and babies are crying because of the cold weather, and their parents barely have any food to give them – it breaks my heart. (2/2)

People are freezing to death on the streets in besieged Srebrenica. Refugees without homes have to start a fire by the asphalt on the side of the street. Other refugees are packing themselves into burned out buildings to shelter from the weather. (1/2)

Military setbacks are just as reliably announced by the unnatural silence that shrouds the town. Amid silent weeping, the dead are buried in numerous new cemeteries.

But worse than the dead are the wounded. They lay in hospitals without medication, without hope of recovery, and the doctors can only pray for them.

I’m now 16 years old. After 7 months of captivity by Serb soldiers, I have now been sold to two Montenegrin soldiers for 500 Deutschmarks. They will be my new masters. I’m 16 years old and a sex slave.