Bosnian refugee discusses experiences

Lounging in the Bishop White Room in Houston Hall, Bosnian refugee Nihad Atlic looked like just another University student. But while most students were spending their days learning in the classroom, the award-winning filmmaker and emergency medical specialist was busy learning another lesson. Atlic was imprisoned in a Serbian concentration camp in the early years of the Bosnian conflict, but escaped with the help of a guard who was a childhood friend. Speaking in slow, halting English, Atlic told the story of how he worked as a doctor in the city of Srebenica -- where he helped the victims of the daily shelling. Here, he helped create the award- winning documentary To Europe With Love, which showed the brutality of the war. After speaking for approximately one-half hour, Atlic showed the assembled students the beginning of his film. He then muted the television and let the images serve as a grisly backdrop to his description of conditions in the hospital. "In just one day, 6,000 grenades landed at this city," Atlic said. "Some days I worked 24, 30, 40 hours without stop. "In Bosnia, there has been an Oklahoma City every day for four years," he said. In his discussion, he also expressed bitterness over the role that the West has played in the conflict. "I think that many broadcasting companies and many governments from the West [have] tried to hide what's happening in my country," Atlic said. Worse yet, he said, some Western countries have tried to benefit from the war. Under the guise of humanitarian aid, he explained that they have dumped hundreds of tons of old medicine on Bosnia since this was cheaper than destroying it. "I remember there was one truck full of 21 tons of 24-year-old medicine for malaria," he recalled. "Bosnia doesn't have malaria." Atlic then turned his attention to the Clinton administration's stance during the war. He said that Bosnia did not need American help -- they just need the United States to lift the arms embargo that it currently enforces on the region. "We want just one thing of the U.S.," Atlic said. "We [do] not need U.S. soldiers, we just need [the] embargo lifted." Atlic's appearance, titled "The Bosnian War, A Refugee's Story," was sponsored by MIR, the University Coalition for Peace in Bosnia.