Current Events & Trends: Balkan floods wash up landmines and memories
Just before the 100th anniversary of World War I, which covered the Balkan Peninsula in violence, the region was covered in floodwaters.
The relentless flooding in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia is considered to be perhaps the worst the region has ever seen.
As of this writing, the death toll had risen to 74, with more casualties expected to be recorded as the cleanup continues. The flooding is just the latest event in the often-difficult and tragic past 100 years of Balkan history.
After drawing the wrath of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when a young Yugoslav nationalist terrorist named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Balkan nations have experienced decade after decade of violence and unrest.
World War II saw Croatia adopted as a puppet Nazi state. Croatian fascists, referred to as the Ustashe, committed countless atrocities against Serbs, Romanies, Balkan Jews, and non-fascist Croats. The seeds of ethnic hatreds and divisions were planted in the battlefields and concentration camps of the Balkan Peninsula of World War II.
These tensions flared up in a deadly way once again in the mid-1990s in the Bosnian War. This time Bosnian Serb and native Muslim Bosniaks shared atrocities in a bloody, three-year war that left over 100,000 dead. An uneasy but mostly unbroken peace has seen no major conflicts in the two decades since the war.
Many old wounds are being washed up in the recent wave of deadly floods, however. Reuters reports that one of the ugliest reminders of past conflict—leftover landmines—are being washed up and are threatening the residents. Reuters reports that "more than 120,000 landmines remain planted across Bosnia" (Maja Zuvela, "Balkan Floods May Have Undone Years of Landmine Detection," May 20, 2014). In a region with such fragile ethnic and religious relations, reminders of past violence can be dangerous. (Source: Reuters.)
An Article from:
Good News Magazine: July - August 2014
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Rudolph Rangel III
Rudy Rangel attends the Cincinnati East, Ohio congregation along with his wife Judy and two children.
Darris McNeely
Darris McNeely works at the United Church of God home office in Cincinnati, Ohio. He and his wife, Debbie, have served in the ministry for more than 43 years. They have two sons, who are both married, and four grandchildren. Darris is the Associate Media Producer for the Church. He also is a resident faculty member at the Ambassador Bible Center teaching Acts, Fundamentals of Belief and World News and Prophecy. He enjoys hunting, travel and reading and spending time with his grandchildren.
Peter Eddington
Peter has retired as Operation Manager of Media and Communications Services.
He studied production engineering at the Swinburne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and is a journeyman machinist. He moved to the United States to attend Ambassador College in 1980. He graduated from the Pasadena campus in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and married his college sweetheart, Terri. Peter was ordained an elder in 1992. He served as assistant pastor in the Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo, California, congregations from 1995 through 1998 and the Cincinnati, Ohio, congregations from 2010 through 2011.
