Jews, Christians and Muslims Call for Strong Action Against

Serbia’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Bosnia

The following article, entitled “Jews, Muslims and Christians Have United in Calling for Strong Action
Against Serbia’s Alleged ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ Campaign” was originally published on 8 August 1992 by
The Times-News.

Reports of Serbian war atrocities in Bosnia involving Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Bosnians and Catholic
Croats have provoked outrage among many U.S. religious leaders and is creating some unusual
alliances and conflicts.
Amid reports of intensified Serbian aggression in the former Yugoslav republic, many Jews, Muslims
and Christians have united in calling for strong action against Serbia’s alleged “ethnic cleansing”
campaign.
A strong dissenter is the U.S. leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, who charged that reports of
Serbian atrocities are a “propaganda campaign.”
Meanwhile, Jewish organizations have reacted to reports of Serbian concentration camps and torturing
of Bosnia prisoners, comparing reports of a Serbian ethnic cleansing to efforts by Nazis to exterminate
Jews during World War II.
Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J., who led a delegation of U.S.
Catholic leaders to Bosnia and Croatia last month, also described the war, which has left thousands
dead and 700,000 homeless, as “reminiscent of the Holocaust.”
Metropolitan Christopher of Libertyville, Ill., who presides over 68 Serbian Orthodox churches in the
United States, responded sharply to those charges.
“Labeling Serbia the aggressor is like calling the National Guard the aggressor in Los Angeles riots,”
he said. “People are to blame equally for this fighting.”
Two major Christian organizations, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches and the New York-
based National Council of Churches, have been slow to respond with statements on the war. The
organizations represent both Protestant and Orthodox Christians.
But Thursday, as reports of atrocities grew, the National Council issued a news release saying its top
officers had sent a letter to President George Bush asking him to give financial and diplomatic support
to the United Nations “to help end the tragic war raging in Bosnia.”
Among other recent reactions:
• Muslim organizations are sponsoring a march outside the White House Saturday to protest the
Bush administration’s policy on the war.
• A member of the interfaith committee of United Muslims of America called on President Bush
to marshall military forces against Serbia. The United States, he said, “went to war to remove
one man from power (Saddam Hussein) because he posed a threat to oil fields. Bush’s failure to
act in Bosnia-Herzegovina is an insult to the civilized world.”
 • Three American Jewish organizations – the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish
Congress and Anti-Defamation League – placed a quarter-page ad in The New York Times on
Wednesday under the headline “Stop the Death Camps.”
• The American Jewish Committee issued a separate statement saying, “The Western world must
not turn its back on this unfolding catastrophe, the most hideous factional bloodletting in
Europe in half a century.”
• The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America is organizing a letter-writing
campaign aimed at the White House and asking that Secretary of State James Baker and other
U.S. leaders “actively pursue an immediate end” to the acts of aggression.
The U.S. Serbian leader Christopher pointed to a statement issued in May by the Holy Assembly of
Serbian Orthodox Bishops, which criticized the current Serbian government but also charged that
Croatia had set up concentration camps and slaughtered Serbs. “No power on earth” could force Serbs
to live in a country ruled by Muslim fundamentalists,” he said.
American Muslim leaders reacted strongly to that statement.
Issa Smith, deputy director of the American Muslim Council, said, “Bosnia does not consider itself a
Muslim state. We took at this as a humanitarian issue, not a Muslim issue.”
The National Council statement was signed by the Rev. Syngman Rhee, president, and the Rev. Joan
Brown Campbell, general secretary. Copies were sent to the U.S. State Department and Gov. Bill
Clinton, Bush’s Democratic opponent in this year’s presidential election.
The letter proposed that the United States offer temporary protective status to Bosnian refugees.
Council leaders also supported a call by the United Nations Security Council that international agencies
be granted immediate and continuous access to any areas in which prisoners are being kept.