Bosnia week lectures inform U.

and JOSH FINEMAN As part of Bosnia Awareness Week, the Penn Coalition for Peace in Bosnia sponsored a series of speakers who discussed American foreign policy and the status of women in Bosnia. The opening talk was held in Hillel Tuesday and included a speaker from the Bosnian Embassy to the United States and the founder of the national Friends of Bosnia committee. Alma Musanovic, advisor to the Bosnian Embassy and survivor of the war, discussed the history of the conflict and vividly described many of the atrocities through which she lived. "Life in Sarajevo is reduced to a prison," Musanovic said. "[Yet] you survive somehow under the constant understanding that any moment you can be killed." Musanovic said that she even had two "close calls." She said she witnessed more than murder -- almost her entire city was destroyed. "My university library was burnt down...[and] for three days Sarajevo was covered in the ashes of the books," Musanovic said. Joyce Galaski, founder of the Friends of Bosnia, urged the forum participants to do all they could to help the Bosnians. "I think it's time that we take it to the streets," Galaski said. "The lesson that we took [from the Holocaust] was 'never again.' "We want the world to know that human beings are capable of those things," he added. Galaski said it is vital people write to their congressmen and senators, and "tell our government what we want." "We can turn away and stay silent or we can decide to help save the people in Bosnia," Galaski added. "We can decide it's time to take a stand." Wednesday's discussion featured visiting Philosophy Professor Rada Ivekovic and Marie Bloom, the director of Global Action To Help End Rape, who both discussed how women have been affected by the Bosnian conflict. Ivekovic, who lived in the former Yugoslavia, told about 30 people gathered in Houston Hall about the atrocities women have endured throughout the war. She said women have been subjected to horrible rapes throughout Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian. And, the professor explained, men in war do not rape women for their own pleasure, but instead they are actually symbolically telling their enemies they will not give in. "When a community of women are raped it is really a message to the men that we will go to the end in order to win," she said Marie Bloom, a self proclaimed feminist and peace activist, provided an American perspective on the issue of women and war in Bosnia. Last year Bloom and some friends decided that action speaks louder than words and began the Center for Women War Victims, based in Zagreb, Croatia. The purpose of the center is to provide medical care and mental support for victims of rape, said Bloom. "It was all publicized, but nobody came," Bloom said, referring to the new center. "At first women were too embarrassed or ashamed to come to the clinic." In her speech, Bloom said rape has been a part of war since the beginning of time. She added that the press's coverage of rape in Bosnia has been lacking. "Attention to the situation of women is atrocious," she said. Forum organizers said some of the goals of the events are to educate people about the "atrocities" that occur in Bosnia and also to raise money for Bosnian college students who have been displaced from their schools as a result of the war. David Myers, a second year Medical student and founder of the Penn Coalition for Peace in Bosnia, said the week's events were a sign of optimism. "Without hope there's nothing else," Myers said. "You can take everything away from a person, but the one thing that you should never take away is their hope." College senior Laura Palmer, who went to high school in Bosnia, said that one of the reasons she participated in the program was to teach people about the Bosnian situation. "We really don't have a political agenda now. [Rather it is] getting people educated," Palmer said. Myers added that many groups throughout the country are trying to bring talented Bosnian college students to America.

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