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Date: 21 Feb 1996 09:47:20
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From: oliver@dhvx20.csudh.edu
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In 1971 I went on tour with a singing group through Yugoslavia.  We visited

large cities and towns and villages across the length and breadth of the
region.

We went to Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, Skopje, Okhrid, Prizren and

many places in between.  We drank Schlibovitz and celebrated Yugoslav
Independence

Day on July 4.  To a person we were charmed by the people and the region.
Little

did we know that the babies born while we were there would be the young men and

women fighting and suffering and dying today.  Why?  Well, it must be because

of what they learned on grandma and grandpa's knees.  I don't believe that

intolerance is imprinted on our genome.  Only grandma and grandma knew that



You must be carefully taught

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

before you are six or seven or eight.



So today this is their legacy.  I don't save all of my anger for grandma and

grandpa despicable though were their deeds.  Their suffering is of their
own making.

I also save some of my anger for the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian communities

in the United States who to the best of my knowledge have never taken a strong

public stand agains the carnage.  In particular I save a lot of anger for their

clergymen who have remained virtually invisible during the whole sad chapter.

Shame on all of you.



Today I read in the L.A. Times that Bosnian Serbs have been told by their

"leaders" to evacuate a Sarajevan suburb.  Their leaders??  What leaders?

Under what circumstance do they lead?  Are there voices in the Bosnian
government

that have tried to give reassurances of safety?  Are there voices among the

Bosnian Serbs that see their "leaders" as a bunch of intellectual midgets with

no social conscience?  Is there a hidden agenda -- perhaps that a significant

number of the residents of that suburb were collaborators in genocide?  I just

don't know.  And where is that invisible man Carl Bildt in all of this?  Does

anyone know if he is doing anything besides collecting a salary?



There is one thing that I do know and it ought to be known by Bosnians,
Serbians

and Croatians alike.  Gone is the time when any group anywhere on the face

of the earth can any longer feel secure in its cultural isolation.  Not only

is that not going to work any more, but even more profound is the influence

of transportation and communication.  People everywhere need to learn that if

they insist on being sufficiently inhumane in their actions, the eyes (and the

wrath) of the world will be upon them.  Perhaps for a long time.  Perhaps for

generations, while the culprits, the Arkins, the Mladic's and Milosevec's
of the world are

slowly ferreted out and brought to justice.  People everywhere must tell their

youngsters not ever to do anything that would be viewed as a crime against

humanity and expect to get away with it.



The road to understanding and coexistence is long and hard but the task of
passing

along it and building as one goes must be started.  I don't need to tell
Sarajevans

that the other direction is a dead end.



Oliver Seely