‘It has begun’: A picture of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia
May 14, 2015
What this picture means to me: The photograph that captured the beginning of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.
I’d been a photojournalist for less than three years when I went to Yugoslavia in 1991 to see what was happening on the ground there.
I arrived in Zagreb and took a train bound for what was to become the first part of the country to secede, Slovenia.
A young girl was crying inconsolably on the train and I asked her what was wrong.
She looked at me as though I were a child and then, in carefully chosen, simple words, replied: “It has begun. First Slovenia, then Croatia and then Bosnia, and more beyond. Yugoslavia is no more.”
I smiled at her and, naively, declared: “Don’t worry. The world will never let that happen.”
By the time the war in Croatia had ended, it was obvious to everyone on the ground that a war in Bosnia was approaching.
