GET ANGRY

So the Yugoslav wars were pretty horrific, and when the Calvin group was in Croatia last fall, we still saw the wretched effects of it all over the countryside and especially in the pits of our stomach. (See a former post called "Vukovar" if you need to recall some of that.)

Why am I talking about this now? I just had an aha! moment as I was skimming over my human rights textbook; one human right specified by international law is this: "Physical destruction includes the destruction of crops by chemical defoliants or the pollution of water reservoirs. Violations would also occur if landmines were to render agricultural areas useless...(yada yada yada)..." This is considered a war crime.

But if you drive through the Croatian countryside, through its ethnically segregated Hungarian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian villages, you will notice this exact crime arrogantly branded on all the fields—all except the Croatian fields.

The Croatian government has thus far failed to remove these red, skeleton-stamped minefield signs from much of the land that could be used for cultivation, for feeding people, for giving poor rural communities the freedom to profit, flourish, work, and be free from hunger. It's not that there are necessarily leftover landmines from the Yugoslav wars in the field; in fact, most fields have been swept of them. But leaving that red sign there mandates that the field can't be cultivated, and so the Croatian government continues to exact vengeance on minorities—Bosnians, Serbs, and Hungarians—isolating them in an island of poverty and fruitlessness.

Oh, that makes me so mad. I hope you are getting seriously angry about this. Otherwise, in ten years, our indifference will ensure the continuation of this and all other human rights violations.