AIC PROJECT MARKS GENOCIDES HORROR
By Mary Ellen Lowney
The Republican, MA
April 18 2007
Posted by The Republican Newsroom April 17, 2007 21:36PM
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SPRINGFIELD – The northeast corner of the campus green at American
International College is now a grim reminder of more than 11 million
people killed in six genocides over the past century.
The memorial – 25,000 popsicle sticks planted in the grass – was
created Monday night through this morning by 30 students aiming to
raise awareness of some of history’s more gruesome moments. It will
remain in place into next week.
"It’s important for us to build awareness of the issues facing the
world," said freshman Darren A. James. "We get caught up in the local
issues of our lives and forget to see the big picture."
But for junior Edina Skaljic, who coordinated the effort, the Genocide
Awareness Week memorial is far more than a history lesson.
The 22-year-old is a genocide survivor, having lived through the
Serbia-Bosnia war that resulted in the deaths of 200,000 Bosnians in
the early 1990s. She looks back on the time as a childhood stolen.
"I had no childhood. Every single day, someone died. People dropped
like flies around you," said Skaljic, whose parents and younger
brother now live in Boston.
She lost a grandfather – he was burned alive – and several cousins
to the war that officially went from 1992 to 1995, though the effects
continued for years.
Skaljic said that shortly after Feb. 26, when the United Nations
International Court of Justice acquitted Serbia of committing genocide
in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Balkan war of the 1990s, she
felt compelled to put genocide front and center on her campus and
wherever she can.
"I was there. I saw what happened," she said.
Skaljic has spoken at American International College, as well as
elsewhere, including Elms College in Chicopee, about her childhood
and the horrors of genocide.
Today’s event was sponsored by the AIC International Club, the Model
Congress and the Young Professionals for International Cooperation,
a student group affiliated with the U.N.
Students placed one stick for each 500 people killed in genocides
since 1915. The holocaust section alone accounts for 12,000 sticks.
The memorial spans nearly a century, starting with the Armenian
genocide at the hands of the Turks between 1915 and 1918, when 1.5
million Armenians were killed.
Students put colored popsicle sticks in the Darfur section, because
the genocide there is ongoing. Since 2003, 450,000 have died in the
ethnic conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
"In Darfur, things can be changed. We can make it right. All these
other places, it’s too late," Skaljic said.