Time To Help

Time is a Harvard student's most precious commodity. Between coursework, extracurricular pursuits and the oft-ignored need to sleep at least a little bit each night, taking on anything extra is usually out of the question. But an event that has been unfolding thousands of miles from Cambridge is anything but usual. Atrocities akin to those committed by the Nazis and by the Khmer Rouge occur every day in the civil war pitting Serbs, Croats and Muslims against one another in what was once Yugoslavia.

Harvard students cannot simply stand by and watch as civilians are taken from their homes and executed in the name of "ethnic cleansing." Overall, more than 17,000 Bosnians have already been killed as Serbian forces have captured more than 70 percent of Bosnia.

Student activism need not approach the politically-charged issues of naval blockades, peace-keeping forces or U.N. resolutions. Non-partisan humanitarian efforts to prevent genocide should take high priority. The Harvard Islamic Society, with the assistance of Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel, recently completed a valiant effort to collect warm clothing from students--clothing that will help refugees trapped in besieged cities survive the winter months.

Still, a greater and more ongoing effort is needed to help those who survive the concentration camps. In a comparable situation one-and-a-half years ago, Harvard students formed a group called Harvard Against Repression of the Kurds (HARK) to publicize and help alleviate the plight of the Kurdish refugees fleeing Saddam Hussein's oppression in the wake of the Gulf War. The group raised over $1,000 to assist U.N. relief efforts and organized petitions, forums and a campus benefit concert to raise attention to the humanitarian disaster in Iraq.

We would welcome any attempts by Harvard students to form a similar organization to support the Bosnians. Such a group is needed now to organize the campus effort to help those facing death in Bosnia and other regions of the former Yugoslavia. In the meantime, here's what you can do--send money earmarked for Bosnian relief efforts to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Refugees, Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel or the Harvard Islamic Society.

Time is not on the side of innocent civilians caught in a bloody war zone. Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky said it best recently in The New York Times: "As you pour yourself a scotch, crush a roach, or check your watch, as your hand adjusts your tie, people die. In the towns with funny names, hit by bullets, caught in flames, by and large not knowing why, people die."