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Tony Birtley

🧵 My report for ABC, live from besieged Srebrenica:

Starvation in Pre-Genocide Srebrenica / Gladovanje u Srebrenici (1993)

In the dead of night, they make their way to the place where the prepared meals have landed, most often on steep-sided hills where people have to crawl on their hands and needs.

For some, it’s too much. One lady collapses from exhaustion. The shape of a US parachute hanging in the trees shows the drop spot. One person I interviewed tells me: “I found this about 600 yards uphill. I don’t know what it is. It could be medicine or something.”

The lucky ones clutch their treasure packet of 12 meals and head home. But in the morning, the empty packets lying on the mountain track show that some were so desperate for food, they couldn’t wait.

American planes have successfully dropped food into Srebrenica for five nights running. But most villagers say they’d received only one prepared lunch packet, the rest has been taken by the army.

Most people have been eating only bread made from hay and corn for the last two months. That has finished. They now make it from the flour of a hazelnut tree. This can be best described as slow starvation.

Another person tells me: “We’ve got nothing to eat. We’re starving to death.” Another says, “We’re practically naked and barefoot. Look at us. We’re all in rags. We haven’t had anything to eat.”

The airdrops have worked, but the people need land convoys which have been continually been blocked by the Serbs.

🧵 My report for ABC, live from besieged Srebrenica (Part II):

The refugee problem is so acute that people are being forced to live in forests, in homes made of logs. They’re even worse off here, miles from the nearest road with no hope of aid or medical treatment.

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