With all we know, how can we let the Bosnia killings continue?

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

The photograph by Agence France-Presse no doubt will win a Pulitzer prize. It is the face of war, a 77-year-old man, his white hair wild, his eyes wet with tears, his cheeks and forehead scraped and bloodied from shrapnel, holding up a hand that says, "stop" to the photographer, but that also says "stop" to the world.

Mensur Dragnic, the man in the picture, lost his entire family last Monday: his 68-year-old wife; his 49-year-old son; his 42-year-old daughter; his son-in-law, 41; and his two grandchildren; 16 and 10.

They were just a normal family in their Sarajevo apartment, sitting together playing rummy when Serbian gunmen, who have held this city hostage for 21 months, began their daily murderous blitz. Before the family could reach safety in the cellar, a shell blew a 10-foot hole in the wall of their home. Everyone but the 10-year-old was killed instantly. Her right arm was severed, but she lingered a while, dying in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

The shell that obliterated Dragnic's family was just one of 203 that exploded last Monday in Sarajevo. The United Nations tallies up the shells and the number of people killed every day, but it can't quite figure out a way to put a stop to this indiscriminate, insane bloodshed.

Another Pulitzer prize winner will probably be a diary just published in France, written by 13-year-old Zlata Filipovic, who was recently rescued from Sarajevo, flown out of the country with her parents on a military plane. Already "The Diary of Zlata Filipovic" is being compared to "The Diary of Anne Frank." Already its young author is winning accolades for recording her actions and feelings as her world collapsed around her.

Filipovic hopes that her experiences will cause the world to wake up and pay attention to the killings going on in Sarajevo. She told a reporter, "When people read my book, when they see me on television, they may help the children of Sarajevo because we must not forget the children. I want to say to people, `Stop! You live normal lives. Please help the children of Sarajevo. If you forget, it will be the end.' "

But people have seen and people do know. The whole world knows. And still the killings continue. In 21 months, 141,065 people have been murdered and 160,000 wounded in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Sarajevo alone, there have been 9,700 deaths and 56,000 injuries.

What, then, is the purpose of gripping pictures and eyewitness accounts if nothing changes because of them? Prestigious prizes? Accolades for the work done? Why take the pictures? Why tell the stories? Why count the shells? Why list the dead? Why torture cold, starving, shell-shocked survivors with missing limbs and missing friends and missing families by dangling hope in front of them when the world has no intention of helping them stay alive?

It's deception of the worst kind. Once the world knows, then things will change, then we will get help, these captives whisper, not realizing that the world knows and doesn't care.

Ironically, "The World Must Know" is the theme of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. People flock there in an effort to understand how the world could have stood by while millions of human beings were systematically exterminated.

In theaters all over the country, people are waiting in line to see "Schindler's List" for the same reason. The museum and the movie affect people. Most bow their heads and weep.

But weeping isn't enough learning is, knowing is. The world must know so the world will know better next time.

It is next time. People in Bosnia are being exterminated now. Fifty-five years ago we psychoanalyzed, rationalized and tolerated evil instead of confronting, condemning and stopping it. Despite all we know, despite all we've learned we're doing the same thing now.

Lt. Gen. Francis Briquemont of Belgium, head of the United Nations peacekeeping task force, resigned this week. He couldn't tolerate the sham of heading a "peacekeeping" force in a growing war zone.

What can anyone do? the world asks. France sent in a plane to save the life of a single child whose book caught a publisher's attention. Cannot the world's great powers do the same on a bigger scale? Is it truly possible that in 1994, a band of rebels in a backwater country can hold the world at bay while it slowly and methodically starves and slaughters ordinary people sitting at home with their families?