Rezak Hukanovik (Little Brown & Co 14.99) READERS will recall television and press pictures of a Bosnian man with a wasted body standing behind a barbed wire fence. This was in August 1992 in Trnopolje prison camp.
The story was subsequently put about by pro-Serb nationalists that the man was suffering not from starvation and maltreatment at the hands of Bosnian Serbs, but from cancer. He did not have cancer. Nor, contrary to more recent allegations in Living Marxism, was he posing behind barbed wire so that ITN could cook up a story!
Rezak Hukanovic also survived an ordeal in a prison camp run by Serb nationalists. He was in Omarska.
The Tenth Circle of Hell is Hukanovic's account of what happened to him, his son and his neighbours. 40 pages £1.50 including past & racking tree sacialist antook PO Box 1109 Wily 20 the fate of many thousands of Bosnian people. "Over the course of two days more than three thousand inhabitants of Prijedor and its outlying villages were arrested in their homes and brought to ... Omarska".
Hukanovic's own arrest happened like this: Soldiers burst into his cousin's home, apparently looking for weapons. One of the soldiers said "There's shooting all over the place. We'll take you some place safer until it stops." They knew his name but Hukanovic did not recognise them behind their masks. He was taken to the local police station and questioned. He had "passed into the first circle of hell".
From the police station, prisoners were taken on buses to Omarska. Hukanovic describes the filthy and overcrowded conditions in which only lice and disease could thrive. They were not given food for four days. On the fifth day there was food but, the prisoners were told, not enough. Many had to wait another day.
In one building, so many people were crammed that they had to try to sleep standing up. prived of water. "When somebody took a leak, others gathered round to cup their hands and catch the urine, wetting their chapped lips and even drinking it."
Hukanovic writes in the third person, giving himself the name of Djemo. He says that at the time he felt that the events he endured must have happened to someone else.
The writing style is calm and matter of fact. The content is devastating.
We are told of the constant stream of beatings and of methods of torture so shocking that you wonder how a human mind can think of them. And we are told of the enjoyment which the torturers seemed to derive from their actions.
The purpose of the beatings and torture was not primarily to extract information or confessions, although this was done. The aim seems to have been to humiliate and instil fear in the prisoners.
"When new prisoners were brought to the camp... they were given a bloody welcome with all kinds of truncheons as soon as they stepped out of the bus. Many never made it as far as the dorm: the guards would have smashed their heads against the brick walls of the building.
That was a truly horrible sound -a skull being smashed... fear got under the skin.."
With the frequent new arrivals there were frequent departures: prisoners who were taken away and who have not been seen since.
For those who did come back after being tortured, the prisoners sanded what help they could. Splints were made from.wood torn from the doors and bandages were made from shirts.
There seemed to be no limit to the cruelty of the prison guards.
One prisoner disobeyed an order from drunken guards to undress. For his refusal he was savagely attacked by two guards with knives. "Never in his life was Djemo to see a more horrifying sight.
Rezak Hukanovic was eventually transferred to Manjaca prison camp where a less barbaric (but still barbaric) regime prevailed. Later he Get the facts, from International Viewpoint, monthly publication of the Fourth International, carries all the background information you cannot find in the bourgeois press. IVP's normal selling price is £2 per month, but British readers can subscribe jointly to IVP and Socialist Outlook for just £30 per year.
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A foreword to this book by Elie Wiesel makes some questionable observations, including the often repeated but never explained assertion that Germany's recognition of Croatia's independence helped to ignite the war against multi-ethnic Bosnia.
But this in no way detracts from Hukanovic's powerful testimony and one can only agree with Wiesel that this book is "overwhelming, often unbearable" and that it is imperative ... to read this book - and to ensure that it is read."
While attention tends to focus on ending the repression in the North, this book reminds us that the Southern Irish bourgeoisie is nearly as big an obstacle to socialism as the British IBE AL Sociinist Dutiook Jack Lynch as leader. He attempted to tackle the crisis by negotiating a "National Understanding" with the trade unions.