Faculty, Students Rally for Bosnia

A rally organized by several faculty members to protest U.S. policy on the ongoing war in Bosnia-Herzegovina drew approximately 100 people to the steps of Widener Library yesterday.

Speakers at the hour-long event criticized the U.S. policy shift to one of non-action.

"What we are witnessing today is the final picture of the incompetence and impotence of the world," said Kemal Kurspahic, a Nieman Fellow and journalist from Sarajevo.

Professor of the History of Religion and Islamic Studies William A. Graham said the situation in Bosnia "is, in fact, genocide, and that has been documented." He added that the world has not learned the lessons of the Holocaust.

Gurrney Professor of History Roy P. Mottahedeh, one of the main organizers of the event, pointed to a picture in the New York Times in which a Muslim prisoner was being forced to wear a fez. Members of the Bosnia Action Coalition distributed copies of the picture along with other protest fliers.

"Who, seeing such pictures, cannot be reminded of...the Stars of David?" he asked. "This is a terrible human tragedy. The abandonment of Bosnia is the shame of the West."

Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France Stanley H. Hoffmann criticized the array of excuses that have emerged for non-intervention. "[W]e have witnessed every possible attempt...to justify the unjustifiable," he said.

"The result has been shame and humiliation," Hoffmann added.

Elizabeth A. Gittings, a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Fine Arts, stressed the importance of intervening in the conflict.

"What's going on is genocide," she said, "and it's being treated as something ex post facto by President Clinton...it's very important to intervene."

Harvard employee Sherry R. Hahn echoed the sentiment of intervention.

"They (NATO) need to take serious action against the Serbs. They need to start living up to the commitments they've been making all along."

Natalka Roshak '98, who was present at the rally, blamed the Serbs for the bloodshed. "People are dying," she said. "I really think that the Serbs are really brutish. It's making a mockery of the United Nations."

Fine Arts librarian Andras J. Riedlmayer said the rally was "simply a reaction to events." It is meant to convey the message that "whatever the government is doing, it's doing without our consent," he said.

When the U.S. declared the situation in Bosnia to be a civil war, Mottahedeh said, "[w]e gave the green light to a genocide that has already started and that will now reach horrific proportions...I feel heartedly ashamed."

Gittings warned of the consequences of non-action. "It could be any of us," she said. "We can't afford another Holocaust, and we're in the middle of it. We need to do something about it--now."