Personal Reflection By Shannon Mason

Shannon Mason Reflection Period 6 6/12/07

I was in a group with Sarina, Brittany, and Bridget. Our group’s topic was “Ethnic Cleansing” in former Yugoslavia. When I first saw the topic I was shocked to see that these kinds of events are still recently happening, even after the Holocaust and the Nuremburg Trials. As I was looking up I was surprised and sad about what “ethnic cleansing” was.

The people behind it were Serbian Military and Ratko Mladic- The commander of the whole Serbian Army-I thought it was horrible how someone could do this kind of stuff to another person/ group of people. Ratko had his soldiers torture and kill as many Muslims as they could. Then had their homes and businesses looted for valuables. And they didn’t even care. They forced the Muslims out of their homes and towns. It made me want to cry when I was reading about it and looking pictures up of women, men and children dead in the streets.

I think one of the worst things about the “Ethnic cleansing”, besides the torturing, killing and moving out of the Muslims, was the fact that it happened so recently. This was going on from 1991 to 1995. That’s four years of blood shed, and nobody was stopping it. The United States was still powerful then and they didn’t stop it, even though they could’ve. Thousands of people were killed before the end of it.


It made me upset to read about what happened during this “ethnic cleansing” of former Yugoslavia. Women were raped, some more than 100 times. Men were tortured and killed. I saw one picture pictures of a man getting alcohol poured on him, after being thrown out of a window by some Serbian soldiers. Also, whole families were forced to become refugees or die.

I kind of didn’t and kind of did like doing this Blog. I learned about the mistreatment of groups of people by other people, because they were considered not as good or sub-human. A lot of the information I learned about made me want to cry, but I liked learning something new.