It was a neat strategy with a single aim-
the 'cleansing' of Herzogovina :

' Kill the men and rape the women'- familiar war-cry
to the dispossessed.

Then it was that Serbian betrayed Muslim neighbour:
Forgotten the meals shared,

the kitchen chats over the filjan - all the intimacies
of community life.

Friendly neighbour became brutish enemy:

First, the muslim men were herded into lorries and
carted away, corralled like beasts and left to starve;
Then their women and children became the
Front line of battle, soft targets for the chetniks



Oh who can stifle the screams of agony
which echo forever across Herzogovina?

Who can stem the flow of tears, wash clean
the defiled bodies? Gather up the blood spilt?

Still the racing images of violation?
Who can exact atonement?

Let the screams forever echo in the ears
of their tormentors,

And pictres of torture haunt us too
Lest we forget, in our complacency.