The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, February 22, 1996, Page 9, Image 9
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He says he doesn’t sleep any more. “I cry and I smoke cigarettes,” he said. “When I drink enough, then I could sleep.” One family’s smuggle On the second floor of the Enver Siljak refugee camp, three women sit on the north end of a long hallway. The three all are gathered near their north facing windows. All are well into their 80s. All wear scarves over their heads. All wear colorful dresses and warm shirts. Dzcvahira Hodzic and Begija and Rabija Golabovic sit and chat and knit and pray to Allah together. They have become friends and family since coming to the camp more than five years ago. The three sit on their beds in their comer of the tiny room. On the other side, a woman sleeps. For their age, they are filled with energy. They laugh and talk, passing the time in the shelter. Talk this day is about the American military presence in the area. The three are thankful the Americans sent troops. “Nobody would have survived if American soldiers not come,” Begija Golabovic says. “The soldiers will help us. “When we hear American soldiers come to Srebrenica, we will be glad.” & The three were taken from their homes by Serbs in and around Srebrenica and turned over to the BiH, the Bosnian Army. The BiH then brought them here. “The day they took (our village), they (the Serbs) took 50 men to die school and cut their neck,” says Dzevahira Hodzic, the feistiest of the three. “It was a dirty war.” Hodzic says she is very angry with Slobodan Milosevic, the leader of the Serbs. Hodzic, and the U.N. war crimes tribunal, blame him for the war in Bosnia and the slaughter of thousands of Muslims. “Until Slobodan Milosevic goes to prison or someone kills him, there will not be peace in Bosnia,” she says. Hodzic says she heard Milosevic on the radio one night say it would not be Yugoslavia but Serbo-slavia. “I don’t know. Everything is politicians,” she says, getting nods from her friends behind her. “If the politicians say...” she says, trailing off with a shrug and a toothless smile. “I want them to make free our prisoners,” Hodzic says. And there is good reason. Her son, Halid, was a prisoner of the Serbs and is now living in the shelter. He is blind in one eye from torture and suffered massive internal injuries during beatings. Before the war, Hodzic says, life was good. “My son was with me, everything worked OK,” she says. Now, she says she has everything. “I make Saleh (pray to Allah). I have everything,” she says. “I have food. I am not hungry. “What I need is peace.” As she finishes her thought, Halid Hodzic walks into the room. The barrel-chested man with a thick mustache and a broad smile sits next to his mother on a bed. His mother tells him that she was talking about Slobodan Milosevic and the war prisoners, and his smile disappears. Halid Hodzic says it is very difficult to talk about the camp. Doctors give him anti depressants to help him deal with his experi ence. Hodzic says the first thing he remembers about the camp was when the Serbs put firecrackers in his eyes and his mouth to make him form the three-finger sign of Serbian victory. They then made him sing Chetnik songs. He was blinded in one eye and could not eat afterward because his mouth was burned. After the firecrackers, they beat him with a pipe. “Four times in the head, one time in the stomach,” Hodzic says. When he recovered, they took him to a room with 43 young men standing in a row. One of the men standing in the row was his son-in-law. Serbian soldiers took out knives and cut the young men’s throats, killing them. “I remember the blood,” Hodzic whispers, tears streaming down his face. The torture continued. For two and a half hours each day, he had to stand by a wall and sing the Chetnik songs or be beaten. He also had to do 50 push-ups, of which he could do only three. 4 • After several weeks in Srebrenica, the Serbians moved him to Pale, where the beatings continued. Serbian soldiers would tie his hands up ant hit him with thick electrical cable four times in the head, once in the stomach. He was only in Pale for three days, but he was forced to watch as Serbs beat two other men until they were deaf and mute. “Every moment you wait for them to kill you,” Hodzic says. “I was in praise I could see the sun, and every moment I waited for them to kill me.” He pauses to weep. “In my village, everything was good before the war,” he says, wiping tears from his eyes. “Unfortunately this happened. “I was working in a shop in the village. There was no man that I wouldn’t help.” Hodzic begins to cry again. With a deep breath, he continues. “Their lives were cut off,” he says of the young men killed by the Serbs. “I remember the young people that died. “I saw 43 bodies and for me, there is no problem. They were young. They just started their lives. I have lived mine.” He was released in a prisoner exchange 45 days after he was made a prisoner of war. Hodzic says he could not talk about his ordeal any longer, except to add what he did after his release. He came to Tuzla to find his mother. Hodzic says all he wanted was to see her, drink a cup of coffee and smoke a cigar. He got all three of his wishes. “You can’t imagine that feeling.”