Rape during the Bosnian War

During the Bosnian War, mass rape and sexual enslavement were conducted by Serbs against Bosniaks. Many women were raped on all sides, but the largest number of reported victims have been Bosniaks, and the largest number of perpetrators have been Serbs whose forces conducted a sexual abuse strategy on the thousands of Bosniak girls and women. Estimates of the numbers systematically raped by the Serb forces in various camps, range from 20,000 to 50,000. More occurrences were recorded in Eastern Bosnia, (especially during the Foča and Višegrad massacres), and in Grbavica during the Siege of Sarajevo. Numerous Serb officers, soldiers and other participants were indicted or convicted of mass rape by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.The events inspired the Golden Bear winner at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006, called Grbavica.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia declared mass rape, systematic rape, and sexual enslavement in time of war to be a crime against humanity, second only to the war crime of genocide, for the first time in justicial history, in the (ICTY Kunarac case). According to the verdict, rape was used by the members of the armed Serb forces as an instrument of terror. Soldiers abducted girls as young as 12 in the summer of 1992 and subjected them to appalling sexual torture in sports halls and a variety of "rape houses" in complete view of Serb authorities and locals.

Background

At the outset of the Bosnian war, Serb forces attacked the non-Serb civilian population in Eastern Bosnia. Once towns and villages were securely in their hands, Serb forces - i.e. the military, the police, the paramilitaries and, sometimes, even Serb villagers – applied the same pattern: Bosniak houses and apartments were systematically ransacked or burnt down while Bosniak civilians were rounded up or captured and, sometimes, beaten or killed in the process. Men and women were separated, with many of the men detained in local camps.

Some of the reported rape and sexual assault cases committed by Serbs, mostly against Muslims, are clearly the result of individual or small group conduct without evidence of command direction or an overall policy. However, many more seem to be a part of an overall pattern whose characteristics include: similarities among practices in non-contiguous geographic areas; simultaneous commission of other international humanitarian law violations; simultaneous military activity; simultaneous activity to displace civilian populations; common elements in the commission of rape, maximizing shame and humiliation to not only the victim, by also the victim's community; and the timing of the rapes. One factor in particular that leads to this conclusion is the large number of rapes which occurred in places of detention. These rape in detention do not appear to be random, and they indicate at least a policy of encouraging rape supported by the deliberate failure of camp commanders and local authorities to exercise command and control over the personnel under their authority.

Many reports states that perpetrators said they were ordered to rape, or that the aim was to ensure that the victims and their families would never return to the area. Perpetrators tell female victims that they will bear children of the perpetrator's ethnicity, that they must become pregnant, and then hold them in custody until it is too late for the victims to get an abortion. Victims are threatened that if they ever tell anyone, or anyone discovers what has happened, the perpetrators will hunt them down and kill them.

Mass rape

Women [and girls] were kept in various detention centres where they had to live in intolerably unhygienic conditions, where they were mistreated in many ways including, for many of them, being raped repeatedly. Serb soldiers or policemen would come to these detention centres, select one or more women, take them out and rape them.[..] All this was done in full view, in complete knowledge and sometimes with the direct involvement of the Serb local authorities, particularly the police forces. The head of Foča police forces, Dragan Gagović, was personally identified as one of the men who came to these detention centres to take women out and rape them." There were numerous rape camps in Foča. "Karaman’s house" was one of the most notable rape camps. While kept in this house, the girls were constantly raped. Among the women held in "Karaman's house" there were minors as young as 15 years of age.

Muslim women were specifically targeted as the rapes against them were one of the many ways in which the Serbs could assert their superiority and victory over the Bosniaks. For instance, the girls and women, who were selected by convicted war criminal Dragoljub Kunarac or by his men, were systematically taken to the soldiers’ base, a house located in Osmana Đikić street no 16. There, the girls and women, were raped by his men or by the convicted himself. Some of the girls were just 14. Serb soldiers demonstrated a total disregard for Bosniak in general, and Bosniak women in particular. Serb soldiers removed many Muslim girls from various detention centres and kept some of them for various periods of time for him or his soldiers to rape.

The other example includes Radomir Kovač, convicted also by ICTY. While four girls were kept in his apartment, the convicted Radomir Kovač abused them and raped three of them many times, thereby perpetuating the attack upon the Bosnian Muslim civilian population. Kovač would also invite his friends to his apartment, and he sometimes allowed them to rape one of the girls. Kovač also sold three of the girls. Prior to their being sold, Kovač had given two of these girls, to other Serb soldiers who abused them for more than three weeks before taking them back to Kovač, who proceeded to sell one and give the other away to acquaintances of his.

Particulars of Sexual Slavery

The soldiers and local Serbs made a business and economic profit out of the enslaved girls by selling and renting them to customers. After being 'sufficiently' raped and used for the pleasure of the local perpetrator, the younger and more helpless girls were often sold on to other soldiers or people. Often to Montenegro where they had to work as slaves in cafés and similar (as the patterns of sexual abuse continued). Due to widespread disbelief between Serbs/Montenegrins (Orthodox) and Bosniaks (Muslims), especially at the time of war, the girls couldn't simply appeal to locals or even the police station for help (they were almost always sent back).

The patterns of abuse was evident: day and night, soldiers came to the house taking two to three women at a time. They were four to five guards at all times, all local Foca Serbs. The woman knew the rapes would begin when 'Mars na Drinu' was played over the loudspeaker of the main mosque. ('Mars na Drinu,' or 'March on the Drina', is reportedly a former Chetnik fighting song that was banned during the Tito years.) The United Nations, Seventh Report on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia states 'While 'Mars na Drinu' was playing, the women were ordered to strip and soldiers entered the homes taking the ones they wanted. The age of women taken ranged from 12 to 60. Frequently the soldiers would seek out mother and daughter combinations. Many of the women were severely beaten during the rapes.'

Stories like those of Almira Bektovic, whose forced defloration by a Serb at the age of twelve was the beginning of a long ordeal of forced labor and sexual slavery for the numerous Serb masters to come, illustrate the kinds of torture and humiliation that even the younger female Bosnian Muslims had to endure. One case had Serb soldiers telling a Bosnian woman they were raping, "You should have already left this town. We'll make you have Serbian babies who will be Christians." Another 28-year-old woman was taken by Serbian soldiers around midnight on August 12 to the outdoor sport stadium in Foca. There she was raped by 28 soldiers before losing consciousness. In addition the soldiers burned her body with cigarettes and cigarette lighters.

In many instances Serb women of the community were aware and actively participated in organizing the rapes, further elevating the fact that the rapes were used as a 'historical revenge of the Serbs for the past', since these women had no pure sexual use of the detainees. Also significant are those cases in which medical personnel was used to calm the girls and treat gynecological and psychological complications resulting from the rapes in order to 'prolong their sexual capability'.

External links

• Odjek: Zločin silovanja u Bosni i Hercegovini Template:Bs icon
• Women's International League for Peace and Freedom: Mass Rape in Bosnia: 20,000 women, mostly Muslims, have been abused by Serb soldiers
• Gendercide Watch - Case Study: Bosnia-Herzegovina

Related films

• Grbavica at IMDb
• The Death of Yugoslavia at IMDb - Part III. The Struggle for Bosnia

Related audio documentaries

• BBC - Only One Bakira