DIJANA IVANOVIĆ: I AM CONFUSED OVER SERB VICTIMS BEING DISCRIMINATED BY THE UN

NEW YORK, MAY 22 /SRNA/ - Dijana Ivanović, a witness to crimes against Serbs in BiH, says in New York that she was confused over Serb victims being discriminated by the UN.

"Instead of uniting us, they are dividing us. The people of BiH have healed their wounds in their own way: today, we are reopening them," Ivanović said at a panel discussion at the UN where Serb victims are testifying about the horrors they survived during the war. She said that she was born in Livno and that before the war, in 1991, there were 5,000 Serbs living in this area, but only 20 of them live there today. Ivanović said that her parents believed before the war that no one would harm them because they were good people, well-known in the community and they helped everyone, both Croats and Bosniaks. "But my parents were Serbs, and then it all started. In May 1992, five Croat soldiers came and took my father for interrogation - he never returned home," Ivanović said. She added that her father was in the police station, and was later transported to Ivan Goran Kovačić high school, which was turned into a concentration camp for Serbs, managed by Bosniaks and Croats. "He was placed with 12 other Serbs there who worked as season workers in Croatia and Slovenia. They were captured and brought to the camp in Livno. They were tortured for days and then killed. My father was tortured for five months," Ivanović said. She pointed out that the history of the Second World War was repeating itself on a large scale. "The torture that my father survived was fisting, caning, hitting with wires, kicking with boots... They stomped on him maniacally, put a gun in his mouth threatening to kill him. My father was in so much pain that he begged to be killed. They told him that, because he is a Serb, they would torture him first, and then kill him," Ivanović said. According to her, when one soldier got tired, another would replace him until he got tired of torturing her father. "One night, they blindfolded him and told him that they were taking him to be shot. When they took him out of the car, they told him to be careful where he was walking not to step on the bodies of his brothers and cousins. This kind of pressure was applied every day. The electric chair was the worst, they would pour water all over him and put him on the chair. He had burns all over," Ivanović said. She added that in the end, her father was put in solitary confinement, where he slept on the concrete floor for five and a half months, and during that time her mother lived in constant fear over constant robberies, disappearances of Serbs, burning of houses. "One morning our neighbor was found dead in the house. She was naked and raped. She had a gunshot wound to her chest and broken limbs. My mother was taken to a camp, where she was regularly beaten and tortured in the electric chair, as they did to my father. They threatened her, along with torture, that they would bring all her children and kill them in front of her eyes," Ivanović testified. The panel "We speak as they cannot - voices that need to be heard", was organised by the Permanent Mission of Serbia to the UN.