Tells Tale of Horror to UN's
High Commissioner for Refugees
SARAJEVO, May 9 (Reuters) - A young Bosnian Muslim forced to dig trenches for the Serbs during the siege of Sarajevo, told UNHCR chief Sadako Ogata on Thursday he was scalped by a group of drunken Serb extremists and showed the scars to prove it. Ogata, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, was touring Sarajevo suburbs left deserted by the Serbs in March and stopped to visit two Serb women who protected Muslims and Croats in the suburb of Grbavica.The women, who refused to accept the city's division, made two apartments into a form of "safe house" while departing Serbs looted and burned buildings before Grbavica was handed to their former enemies on March 19. Around 60,000 Serbs fled six Sarajevo suburbs when they were transferred to the Muslim-Croat Federation under the Dayton peace accord. UNHCR officials say they were manipulated into leaving by threats and propaganda orchestrated by their leaders.
One Serb who stayed was Sonja Nikolic, 51, a lawyer who had maintained good relations with her Croat and Serb neighbors. In the final days before the handover she helped around two dozen people to hide from the thugs forcing people to leave. Some who hid were Serbs unwilling to leave their homes, but they also included a gaunt, nervous Muslim man, Djemal Kulenovic, 22.
Kulenovic met Ogata on Thursday when she visited the safe house and told her how Serb soldiers scalped him last year. He said he was forced with other non-Serbs to join work parties, usually digging trenches in the city's front lines. Kulenovic told reporters his story after Ogata's visit:
"One night we were digging a trench, 80 of us, when group of four or five drunken Chetniks (Serb nationalist extremists) came by and started to harrass us. We were handing sandbags along the line and they picked people one by one and took them to the beginning of the trench where they harrassed them and beat them, kicking old people and slapping them on the face. One of the soldiers came and picked me to come with him. He said we were going to inspect a minefield, but of course with me walking ahead of him.
"Then he changed his mind and told me to choose a friend the same age as me who would go instead. When I could not do such a thing, he said, "If you don't I will kill you in 60 seconds'. He started to count loudly from one to 60. Then, after 60 seconds, he said, 'Well I won't kill you but come with me'. I went with him to the beginning of the trench. There were four of them who made me lie down, took a knife and sliced a piece off my scalp... They they forced me to eat it before making me go back to work.
"I was very lucky, because dawn came quickly and I was taken by my friends to hospital. I spent 20 days in hospital but I didn't dare say what had happened. I told them I fell down." UNHCR officials said Kulenovic lifted his hair to show a "shocked" Ogata a flat white scar almost the size of his hand on the right side of his head. "I don't think of revenge," he said. "I can't imagine doing this even to the man who did this to me."
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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Sadako Ogata Biography
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