"This is not our war!" (blood, attend, church)

[Djamila]

Officially, the first victim of the war against Bosnia and Herzegovina was a 24-year-old Muslim student named Suada Dilberovic. She was shot and killed by a Serbian sniper while crossing the Vrbanja bridge with protestors demanding an end to the war between Serbia and Croatia. Suada, though Muslim, was a Croatian - having moved to Sarajevo from the Croatian coast to attend medical university.

Her last words, immortalized by a television news crew, were a tearful, blood-choked, "Oh dear God, please don't let them do this to Bosnia...". There is a memorial to her and another woman, an Orthodox Christian, who was also shot by Serbian snipers that day but largely forgotten (Olga Sucic).

All of this, though, is a lie. In a sense, that is. It's all true, but Suada Dilberovic was not the first victim of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The first victims were Bosnian Croats, Roman Catholics - slaughtered in their hundreds in several Bosnian towns during the war between Serbia and Croatia. These massacres took place almost a full year before Suada Dilberovic lay dying on the Vrbanja bridge.

They caught Bosnian politicians completely off-guard. Video still exists of Bosnia's President at the time, Alija Izetbegovic, receiving word of the news. Wide-eyed and visibly shaken, he stammered, "This is not our war!". No one believed the Serbs would try to do in Bosnia what they were doing in Croatia - carve out a "Greater Serbia".

Unlike in Croatia, Serbs in Bosnia generally did not live in homogenous enclaves and to carve out land for a new "Greater Serbia" would require nothing short of a genocide committed against Bosnia's majority Muslims and Roman Catholics. We now know that's exactly what happened.

But this thread is a glimpse back, in honor of the Roman Catholics of one village slaughtered in 1991 - Ravno. Their tragedy was and still is largely forgotten by most Bosnians.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BeG2Y5Pf7Lk

[Hema]

Originally Posted by Djamila

But this thread is a glimpse back, in honor of the Roman Catholics of one village slaughtered in 1991 - Ravno. Their tragedy was and still is largely forgotten by most Bosnians.

May their souls rest in peace and may they be happy wherever they are.

[Yugo]

Very sad!
Even with these tapes of Ravno durring the war, I have a feeling that the village was was very pretty before the war! Looks more Dalmatian then it does Bosnian..
I don't mean to undermine your post here, but I had heard the first acts of aggression in Bosnia were the shooting on an Orthodox Church ceremony in Sarajevo, and a slaughter of an Orthodox Village in northern Bosnia..

[Djamila]

Originally Posted by Yugo

Very sad!
Even with these tapes of Ravno durring the war, I have a feeling that the village was was very pretty before the war! Looks more Dalmatian then it does Bosnian..
I don't mean to undermine your post here, but I had heard the first acts of aggression in Bosnia were the shooting on an Orthodox Church ceremony in Sarajevo, and a slaughter of an Orthodox Village in northern Bosnia..

The village I've never heard of - not even a whisper, so I'd doubt that's true.

The wedding incident is true. An Orthodox Christian man was shot and killed by a Muslim at a wedding in Sarajevo. Many Serbs regard this man as the war's first victim - but it also happened almost a year after the attacks against Roman Catholics in Herzegovina.

The Muslim/Roman Catholic point of view about the wedding incident is that both men since both men involved - the victim and the shooter - were involved in organized crime, this was just one of numerous assasinations leading up to the beginning of the war.

But it is true, that much I can guarantee you.

The village, I've never even heard of it.