Author Description

Straight from today's front-page headlines comes this shocking firsthand account of the current genocide perpetrated by Bosnia's Serbs against that country's Muslims. A Witness to Genocide is a compilation of Newsday foreign correspondent Roy Gutman's reports from Bosnia, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Gutman and photographer Andree Kaiser (whose photos illustrate this book) were the first Western journalists to visit the death camps, and Gutman was the first to interview the survivors and report on the atrocities that were taking place there. His articles were partly responsible for the United Nations' condemnation of the camps and insistence that the International Red Cross be allowed to inspect them. The articles include survivors' accounts of being transported to the camps in cattle cars in which many died of starvation or suffocation, the systematic murder of prisoners, the government-ordered rape of all Muslim girls and women, and the destruction of the six-hundred-year-old Muslim cultural heritage, including over half of all mosques, historical sites, and libraries. Not since the Holocaust have such widespread, blatant, and unrestrained atrocities been committed against a defenseless minority. The articles are framed by a comprehensive prologue in which the recent history and breakup of Yugoslavia are explained, and an epilogue in which Gutman gives his recommendations on how to put a stop to this ongoing tragedy, and prevent others in its wake.