tagged w/ serbs
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In the late 1990s Bill Clinton ordered the heavy bombing of Serbian forces in the Balkans to prevent them from massacring ethnic-Albanians. Today, over ten years later, those ethnic Albanians now have their own state: Kosovo. And Clinton has his own memento: an 11 foot tall statue of himself in Pristina, Kosovo's capital. (clipped by user jeffissleeping)
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="975" caption="AFP/Getty Images "][/caption]
Kosovo is one of the world's newest countries, having declared independence from Serbia last year. It's been a tenuous existence at times, and not without tension. When independence was declared, we produced a Collective Journalism piece about the Kosovars' perspective on this momentous occasion.
Kosovo: Free at Last
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- The economy grows again - Champagne time yet?In the late 1990s Bill Clinton ordered the heavy bombing of Serbian forces in the... more
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LUKAVAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- The man's remains lie on a table. Next to him are the bones of his 22-year-old son and the remains of another son. But no one yet knows which of the man's two missing boys the third set of remains could be.
Cheryl Katzmarzyk wants to be able to put a name to the remains, and to those of hundreds of other bodies stacked around her in a building in Lukavac, near Tuzla in the northeast of Bosnia.
The bones are from more than 8,000 men and boys slaughtered in 1995 during the Bosnian war at Srebrenica in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.
The killers -- Serbs seeking to drive out Bosnian Muslims in a policy of "ethnic cleansing" -- executed the region's fighting-age males, then used bulldozers to dump them into mass graves.
What makes the work harder for the teams trying to put the bodies back together -- so they can be returned to their families for proper burial -- is that so many have been broken up over the years.
Mass graves were dug up and the bodies moved sometimes again and again, to hide evidence as the Serbs retreated amid the NATO bombing that followed Srebrenica and led to the end of the war. Those killed in a warehouse execution at Srebrenica are spread throughout 20 secondary grave sites, for instance.
Katzmarzyk said remains of one of the victims was found in eight different parts of one mass grave. Another man's shoulder was found where he and others were lined up and shot, one of his legs was found near a grave, a hip was found inside the grave, his upper jaw several miles away and his left arm in a secondary grave.
"What we do here is we sort them out," said Katzmarzyk, the head of anthropological examinations for the International Commission on Missing Persons.
Katzmarzyk's team from the ICMP -- a nongovernmental organization set up at the end of the Bosnian war to locate and identify victims of war and human rights abuses -- has pioneered quicker, simpler DNA tests to work out which bones go together. Watch an audio slideshow about the ICMP's work »
Then, a more extensive DNA test is done to see if there is a match with any of thousands of relatives who have donated their own samples in the hope of finding missing relatives.
But DNA can only go so far, and while it can show that the unidentified remains on Katzmarzyk's table are those of a man and his 22-year-old son, it cannot say whether the third set belongs to a missing 21-year-old or his 24-year-old brother -- because neither had children to act as an extra reference point.
It's a particular problem with identifying the Srebrenica dead because so many of the victims were related. Across the room, brothers lie next to each other, but as yet the scientists do not know who is who.
Click link for the rest of the article....LUKAVAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- The man's remains lie on a table. Next to... more
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A judge has ordered ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic handed over to the U.N. war crimes court to face charges of genocide and other atrocities against Muslims and Croats in his country, a Serbian prosecutor said Tuesday.A judge has ordered ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic handed over to the U.N.... more
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Serbs in Kosovo have inaugurated their own assembly set up in defiance of the majority ethnic Albanian government and the United Nations.
The gathering was held in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica. Forty-five members were elected in May during Serbia's general and municipal elections - a ballot which the UN and Kosovo's government said was illegal.
Kosovo's ethnic Albanians declared independence from Serbia in February, despite Serb and Russian opposition.
Kosovo has been recognised by 43 states, including the United States and most European Union nations - but Belgrade and Moscow say the move was illegal under international law.Serbs in Kosovo have inaugurated their own assembly set up in defiance of the majority... more
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Serb rioters broke into the U.S. Embassy Thursday and set fire to the facade after a massive protest against Kosovo's independence.
Masked attackers were seen climbing over a first-floor railing on the building and trying to throw furniture from an office. A blaze broke out along the mission's front facade.
The neighboring Croatian Embassy also was attacked by the same group of protesters.
Earlier today, At least 150,000 Serbs gathered in central Belgrade in a massive protest against Kosovo's declaration of independence, raising fears of street violence.Serb rioters broke into the U.S. Embassy Thursday and set fire to the facade after a... more
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