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Quote by Cherríe L. Moraga

“I am not talking here about some lazy faith, where we resign ourselves to the tragic splittings in our lives with an upward turn of the hands or a vicious beating of our breasts. I am talking about believing that we have the power to actually transform our experience, change our lives, save our lives. Otherwise, why this book? It is the faith of activists I am talking about.”

Quote by Cherríe L. Moraga

Book:This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
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This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

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Cherríe L. Moraga

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“Amor Mašović, the president of the Bosnian government’s Commission for Tracing Missing Persons, confirms that there are hundreds of undiscovered mass graves. To this day, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) is helping identify dead bodies from such mass graves, using technologies such as DNA testing. As many as 150 prisoners were killed every single night in Omarska Camp. Estimates from the United States also suggest that, at a minimum, several hundreds of civilians were murdered during the camp’s evacuation period. Actual numbers are likely to be much higher. All the toilets in the camp were blocked. There were human feces throughout the area. The prisoners’ extremely deplorable and terrifying conditions were confirmed by a British journalist named Ed Vulliamy in a testimony. He also mentioned that the detainees consumed water from an industrially polluted river causing them severe diarrhea and intestinal diseases. There were zero criminal reports filed against the Serb perpetrators. The victims were constantly subjected to abuse resulting in serious psychological and physical deterioration.”

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“During the Bosnian War in 1992, the Serb forces took over the Prijedor municipality. The Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) repeatedly broadcasted the Serb forces’ capture of Prijedor on radio as a display of significant victory. For further hostile takeover, 400 men were added to the Serb forces in Cirkin Polje (town in Prijedor) to seize Prijedor’s governing bodies such as the municipality, post office, police, bank, courts etc. By April, they successfully captured these government entities. This forceful takeover by Serb politicians was declared to be an illegal coup d’état by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The coup was a cold blooded, pre-planned strategic effort to capture Prijedor and convert it into a pure Serb municipality. These strategic plans were never concealed. Milomir Stakić played an important role in the strategic capture by the Serb forces.”

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“Bosniak civilians were forced to flee their homes due to the constant shelling and army attacks by May 1992. Most of the civilians were taken as prisoners or surrendered to the Serb forces. The residents were then gathered and moved to the prison camps operated by the Serb forces in the surrounding area. Within 3 weeks of the hostile takeover of the government entities, the Serb forces mounted large scale military offense and subsequently started rounding up civilians and moving them to the Omarska camp. The Bosnian Serb forces operated the Omarska concentration camp to torture, murder, rape, and abuse captured Bosnian civilians, intellectuals, and politicians in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina (Prijedor municipality). The camp held over 7,000 innocent Bosnian civilians as prisoners for more than five months during 1992. Several hundred people died due to constant abuse by the Serb forces including mass executions, starvation, beatings, repeated sexual abuse, and horrifying living conditions. The camp guards frequently cut the throats of the Bosniak captives. Prisoners ate spoiled food found by scavenging for it.”

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