Nightline: All That Remains

Call Number
350-1-1:442/1

General information

Call No.:
350-1-1:442/1
Part of series
HU OSA 350-1-1 Records of the International Monitor Institute: Europe: Balkan Archive
Located at
BetaSP NTSC #442 / No. 1
Digital ver. identifier
HU_OSA_00000442
Date of air
1996-09-21
Date
1996
Level
Item
Primary Type
Moving image
Language
English
Duration
23 min.
Notes
sponsored by Soros program "How to be citizens", arrogant, provocative

Content

Form/Genre
Television program
Contents Summary
This report by Dave Marash focuses on the efforts of the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights to excavate and investigate a mass grave found in the Serb-controlled village of Lazeta, near Srebrenica. The mass grave is a likely repository for the corpses of murdered men and boys captured by the Bosnian Serb Army after the fall of Srebrenica. Forensic Investigator Bill Haglund heads the Physicians group of international volunteers in an excavation project. Haglund describes the motivation behind his commitment to this type of work in Bosnia and elsewhere, and outlines the main goals of the Physicians' mission: to collect evidence and facilitate the prosecution of war crimes, to identify bodies, to create and preserve historical evidence and thus prevent the occurrence of similar crimes in future, and to ensure that the victims won't have died in vain. One of the survivors featured in the program, Mevludin Oric, links the Bosnian Serb Commanding General Ratko Mladic to the Srebrenica massacre. Oric claims that Mladic was seen in the Lazeta school and its gymnasium before the massacre in Lazeta. Additional statements by two forensic investigators, David Del Pino and Jose Pablo Baraybar, highlight the nature of the Physicians' work. The collected evidence is analyzed with modern technology in a laboratory set in a bombed-out clothing factory in the former frontline village of Kalesija. Morgue crew consisting of Dr. Robert Kirchner, Physicians For Human Rights International Director of Forensic Projects, his assistant Fiona Rainforth, and Mike Warren, graduate assistant at the University of Florida, highlight the details of their work in the morgue. Kirchner explains how forensic experts piece all available evidence together and draw conclusions about the likely causes of death of the people whose bodies are found in mass graves. Kirchner points out that in Lazeta, the exhumed evidence indicated that the victims were systematically exterminated. Pressured by the need of victims' families and relatives, the investigators expanded the scope of their mission hoping to facilitate the identification of the remains. The details of this effort presented through interviews with Laurie Vollen of the Physicians for Human Rights, Munira Hadzic, organizer of protest demonstrations of Srebrenica women and director of programs for refugee women (one such project, the weaving project, is featured on the tape), and Suada Omerovic, a Bosnian Muslim who lost her family in Srebrenica. Footage included: Zoran Petrovic-Pirocanac's footage taken after the fall of Srebrenica, Ratko Mladic in the Srebrenica or Zepa area greeting Bosnian Serb soldiers, forensic investigators in the field trying to uncover the mass grave in Lazeta, John Shattuck in a press conference during his visit to Srebrenica and the neighboring areas, forensic investigators' computer database that contains the findings and information concerning the victims, women of Srebrenica holding a placard that reads "Where are our sons, fathers, and brothers?," Srebrenica women weaving, Srebrenica women refugees with small children, forensic experts working on special machines such as the fluoroscope.

Context

Associated Names
ABC (Copyright holder, Producer)