DDI Speech 8/9/95


Statement by CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence John Gannon on Ethnic Cleansing and Atrocities in Bosnia Joint SSCI SFRC Open Hearing on August 9, 1995

Thank you Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to be here. I have a brief statement to provide you, and then I'll show you some related aerial photography.

We have heard and read the statements of many Bosnian refugees since 1992 and have found them compelling and dramatic. Those who were forced from their homes earlier in the conflict told stories of cruelty and inhumanity that we found hard to believe, but we now know that too many were true.

Similar reports of terror--of rape, torture, and murder--have emerged since the attacks last month by Bosnian Serb forces on the eastern enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa.

The testimony and eyewitness accounts of atrocities by those who've been displaced increasingly have been corroborated.

These latest events in eastern Bosnia are especially disturbing because they indicate the continuation of a pattern of activity by the Bosnian Serbs that we can trace back over three years.

We know that Croats and Muslims in Bosnia have also committed atrocities and have forced Serb civilians to flee, but the ethnic cleansing actions carried out by the Bosnian Serbs are unequaled in their scale and intensity.

To conclude, Mr. Chairman, let me refer briefly to the situation in the Krajina. The situation there since the Croatian invasion last week differs from that in eastern Bosnia. We have not heard reports of the kinds of atrocities and human rights violations that so quickly followed the fall of Srebrenica.

Nonetheless, by failing to sufficiently reassure the Serb population in the Krajina or, more accurately, to follow up on Croatian Government pledges that human and civil rights would be respected, the Croatians have added measurably to humanitarian disaster in the region.

That concludes my statement. Thank you, sir.