‘Stop the Genocide!’ Is Protesters’ Cry : Ethnic strife: About 300 local Bosnian and Croatian supporters call for U.S. and U.N. action against Serbia.

About 300 supporters of Southern California’s Bosnian and Croatian communities demonstrated outside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, demanding that the United States and the United Nations intervene to “stop the genocide” in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“We have kept informing (President) Bush since last year about the (Serbian-run) concentration camps,” said Valentine Ivankovic, director of the Croatian National Assn. in Los Angeles. “It is unpardonable that our State Department is not taking any action. Mr. Bush, you have not responded to our cries. What is this Adminstration doing? Nothing!”

The demonstration in front of the building at 400 N. Los Angeles St. was in response to allegations that Serbians are torturing and murdering Bosnian and Croatians in prisoner-of-war camps. Serbians have denied the charges, but personal accounts of terror from the former Yugoslav republic have sparked international outrage.

Monday’s crowd waved Bosnian and Croatian flags, chanted anti-Serbian slogans and carried signs urging Bush to “Stop the Nazi-Serbian Killers.” At times, the demonstrators mingled awkwardly with a simultaneous protest march by Korean-Americans seeking reparations for damages their businesses suffered in the riots.

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said it is “unthinkable” that “the world sits on its hands while this oppression is going on.”

“It is time, once and for all, that we stop this violence. If we remain silent while dictators and bigots commit crimes against humanity, then they will continue to commit crimes against humanity.”

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who is of Croatian descent, echoed Yaroslavsky’s theme, calling upon “the President, the United States Congress and the United Nations to become involved today . . . to end this senseless bloodshed.”

Antonovich was followed by three local religious leaders--Maher Harthout, director of the International Islamic Center in Los Angeles; Father John Segaric of St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church in Los Angeles, and Bernard M. Cohen, rabbi emeritus of Temple Solael in West Hills.

“What is happening now (in Bosnia-Herzegovina) is threatening the very fabric of a decent, civilized humanity,” Harthout said. “It is not a civil war, it is the aggression of thugs.”

Cohen explained what it was that brought people of three different faiths together to make a common plea.

“We are here today as one family,” he said. “It is never OK when people are oppressed, when people are persecuted, when people are killed. . . . We have no option but to become involved.”