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Title: The Graves: Srebrenica And Vukovar by Eric Stover, Gilles Peress ISBN: 3-931141-76-4 Publisher: Scalo Verlag Ac Pub. Date: August, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent
Comment: This is an amazing book, detailing evidence collection by the ICTY war crimes tribunal at two mass grave sites - Srebrenica, a predominantly Muslim town in eastern Bosnia; and Vukovar, a mixed Serb-Croat town in eastern Croatia (contrary to the view of the previous reviewer, Vukovar is neither Muslim nor Bosnian). The photos are phenomenal. After a wrenching reading, one comes away with a few scattered thoughts. Namely: 'never again, and 'thank god there is an international tribunal to carry out prosecutions for these events when domestic courts are unwilling to do so'.
There have now been two ICTY indictees arrested for Srebrenica, the trial is ongoing as of this writing. None of the 'Vukovar Three', reportedly hiding out in Belgrade have been arrested yet.
Justice is far too slow. But at least with the ICTY, there is some chance for a bit of justice after all.
Rating: 4
Summary: Sickeningly beautiful; tough to take but necessary
Comment: This is a hard book to rate, for any number of reasons. For one thing, it's not nicely rounded; it doesn't tell a complete story, but provides a blistering snapshot of a small slice of history and an investigation still in process. For another, its photos and text don't work closely together, but provide approximately parallel looks into the same awful tale. Hardest of all is the stunning vividness of the photography by Gilles Peress, and the nagging suspicion that we share some small portion of blame for this.
Simply put, _The Graves_ is a collection of photographs of dead bodies and skeletons, the anonymous mass graves from which they were exhumed, the remnants of their clothing and contents of their pockets, the relatives that survived them; and a text that describes the painstaking and horrifying process of trying to identify them and divine how they came to die.
Srebenica and Vukovar are two towns in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, where in July of 1995, hundreds of Muslim men -- unarmed, defenseless, and bound -- were apparently shot by soldiers of the Serbian army under Ratko Mladic and then bulldozed under mounds of earth.
Five years later, most of those responsible still roam freely in the former Yugoslavia, though the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague steadily sifts evidence and issues warrants for their arrest. This book depicts some of the effort to establish evidence of their guilt ... and is itself damning evidence.
The photos by Peress, all black and white, are horridly beautiful in their mute, pinpoint clarity. They record a creepy new form of archaeology, where shiny white teeth peek out of the dirt, leg bones remain encased in socks and athletic shoes, entire bodies rise out of the near past, shorn of flesh but still comfortably clothed. They could be ancient remains, and one struggles to comprehend that they were alive, page after page of them, not very long ago.
Stover's text gives some historical context for these graphic images, records the testimony of surviving witnesses, and offers brief portraits of the men and women -- forensic pathologists, archaeologists, x-ray technicians -- who sift through this grisly treasure. Peress also photographs them at work, relaxing with a guitar, and the waiting, anxious families with their charity canned goods and stuffed toys.
This is a stark, stolid book, one that serves as a necessary reminder that what happens on the other side of the planet matters, and that no matter how much relative attention we give them, some things are worse than being sent back to Cuba to live with one's father. Much worse.
Rating: 4
Summary: Powerful, Powerful Account of War Crimes
Comment: Stover and Peress, through searing words and photographs, have created a record of the two greatest war crimes in the conflicts that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia. The sack of the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991 by Serb forces, and the subsequent mass murder of over 200 patients and staff from the local hospital is still a powerful and pivotal event, not only because of the sheer magnitude of the atrocity, but also because it was the first. Vukovar came before the siege of Sarajevo, the rape and torture camps in Prijedor and Foca and elsewhere, before the destruction of Mostar bridge, and the massacre at Srebrenica. Vukovar set the standard for the atrocities that were to come, and eight years after its destruction, the town is still a hollowed-out ruin with weeds poking through shattered buildings and one-fourth of its prewar population clinging precariously to subsistence in a destroyed economy. The siege and fall of Bosnia's Srebrenica in 1995, engineered by indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic has been amply documented elsewhere, but this book is not a military history or the reconstruction of the crime. Rather it is about the search for the missing and the identification of bodies pulled from mass graves. The authors follow the forensic specialists, the anthropologists and physicians who have created a sad but necessary specialty in this field. The exhumations are part of the search for the truth, not only for the half-grieving, half-hopeful survivors who cling to rumors about their loved ones, but for all people of compassion who hope that finding some finality, and perhaps some justice, at the bottom of these graves will serve both the living and the dead. The exhumations and identifications are carried out according to strict forensic standards so the results can be used as evidence at the Hague war crimes tribunal. If we are to forge any positive legacy from these atrocities, it may lie in allowing the children of both the victims and the executioners to lead normal lives, free from fear and revenge and poisonous hatred. Memories are long in this region, and vengeance can take decades. The woman who runs an orphanage for young Srebrenica survivors observes, "What is important now is the message the international community sends to these boys and what they then tell their own children. If you say to a child, 'Look, that man there killed your father, and now he lives in your house.' What kind of message is that going to send? But if you say, 'That man killed your father and that is why he is in prison.' The message is very different. So, for now, there might not be a lot of hatred or revenge, but if we don't find a way to punish those responsible for these crimes, it will surely be something we can count on in the future." To date, neither Mladic nor the "Vukovar Three" are in the tribunal's custody. For the children's sake, we can do better.
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Title: Between Vengeance and Forgiveness : Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence by Martha Minow ISBN: 0807045071 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know by Roy Gutman, David Rieff ISBN: 0393319148 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: United Nations: The First Fifty Years by Stanley Meisler ISBN: 0871136562 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Key to My Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda by Elizabeth Neuffer ISBN: 0312302827 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 09 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: A Force More Powerful : A Century of Non-Violent Conflict by Jack DuVall, Peter Ackerman ISBN: 0312240503 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 05 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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