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Mina lived in Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mina, along with the majority of people in Sarajevo, was a Muslim. Muslims and Croats and Serbs had lived together, side-by-side and in peace in Sarajevo for many years. But no longer! The Serbs had laid siege to Sarajevo. Every Muslim was a target of their violence.

In time Mina became a target of Serbian violence. The nature of the violence was almost unbelievable. Mina's next door neighbors were Serbs. Mina's family and the Serbian neighbors had been friends for a long time. Mina knew the man next door quite well though her contacts with him were rather formal since she was still in high school. One night Mina had to run a family errand which would keep her out after dark. Being out after dark in Sarajevo was a bit like walking through hell. Mina was frightened as she walked toward home that night. She was really startled, therefore, when a man suddenly walked alongside of her. There was still enough light for her to recognize that it was the man next door. She breathed a sigh of relief. The two of them walked on together in tense silence.

Then, all at once, the neighbor grabbed Mina's arm with brutal strength and forced her into a back alley. In the alley, at knife point, he raped her violently. "Now you will have Serb babies," he hissed at her. Rape had become part of the policy of "ethnic cleansing" in Sarajevo! This kind of rape even of one's neighbors sets the atrocities of Sarajevo apart from almost any other form of human inhumanity. It is estimated that 20,000 to 50,000 women were raped in the conflict that tore open the former country of Yugoslavia.

So Mina was a victim of rape. Mina was a victim of "ethnic cleansing." But Mina's nightmare did not end that night. She was taken to a prison camp where Muslim women were systematically raped until they were most certainly pregnant. Once impregnated, they were released.

Mina returned home a totally beaten and shame-filled woman. She was physically ravished and psychologically destroyed. But her plight was not yet over. The men of her own people felt humiliated by what had happened to women like Mina. They felt that such women were a disgrace to their people. She brought shame also upon them. So, one night, the men came for Mina and took her to an abandoned building. She was just one of many women paraded to the building on that evil night. And then the men pronounced a word of condemnation upon the women. "You have brought shame upon our people," the men said. "We, therefore, condemn you to death." Mina didn't have a chance with these men. She was killed by men of her own people -- killed probably out of religious conviction -- for the disgrace she had brought upon them.

The women in Mina's neighborhood could hardly believe what their ears heard when they were told of Mina's fate. They thought they had seen everything. "When will it stop?" one woman said. "How can one people hate another people so much?" another wondered out loud. "And this hatred between peoples happens all over the world," said still another. "The human race needs a vision," she continued. "We need a vision of peoples who can live together in peace. Only such a vision can ever lift us beyond our bitter and petty hatreds of each other."