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Indicting The Criminals
By Dina Rashed
03/03/2001
"I wasn't afraid of the killing. I was afraid of the raping," one of the victims testified.
Throughout history, rape has been practice of war. In modern history, however, its widespread use in the Balkans
conflict has upgraded it to the level of a strategic instrument of armed conflict. Only because of the widespread sexual violence committed against women in Bosnia-Herzegovina and, later, in the Kosova conflict, has rape finally been documented as a part of these war crimes,
with the international community coming to understand the horrors women face in armed
conflict.
The recent indictment of the three Bosnian Serbs found guilty of rape and sexual enslavement charges brought against them by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is considered the first verdict of rape and sexual assault as a war crime. Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic were found guilty of the mass rapes committed by Bosnian Serb troops, and sentenced to 28 years, 20 years and 12 years respectively.
Despite the statement included in the Fourth Geneva Convention, Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (article 27): "Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor; in particular rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault," rape and sexual violence were not explicitly specified as breaches of the Geneva Convention or their additional protocols. As a result, no state has been obliged to prosecute those committing such crimes during the course of an armed conflict.
Aggravated by the scope of atrocities against civilians during the Yugoslav conflict, the U.N. Security Council established the ICTY in 1993 to look into crimes committed during the war. It set a precedent by stating explicitly that rape is a crime against humanity, and went so far as to charge specific defendants with crimes of sexual assault as war crimes. A later tribunal (the ICTR) set by the U.N. to investigate and prosecute defendants for crimes committed during the Rwandan civil war had a similar mandate.
Human rights organizations and special UN reporters have documented, to some extent, cases in which women - even minor females - were sexually assaulted (not only raped, but sexually tortured) by primarily Bosnian Serb military officers and soldiers, and gang-raped by militias supporting the Bosnian Serbs. According to reports by the Human Rights Watch, the rape took place in the victims' homes in front of family members and in the village square.
Women have been arrested and then raped during interrogation. In some villages and towns, victims have been gathered and taken to holding centers - often to schools or community sports halls - where sometimes, one victim would be raped by several men at a time or repeatedly over the course of few days. Other women have been taken by soldiers - seemingly at random - from their communities or from a group of refugees with whom they were traveling and then raped. In all cases, the assault was performed primarily against Muslim Bosnians and, later, against Muslim Kosovars as a method of terror during ethnic cleansing campaigns.
Despite its use as a means of physical torture, rape remains first and foremost an act of dishonor that creates lingering emotional distress in victims due to their feelings of shame and disgrace. Human rights organizations have also documented widespread male rape against Chechens by Russian Soldiers.
During the Bosnian war, the assailants used raped as a means of terrorizing both women and men - to gain information from females about men in their families and villages who were fighting as a part of the resistance, and to force men to flee their homes and country. In other cases, men were terrorized while being detained at detention camps in order to break their morals.
Documented cases show that rapists often attempted to impregnate their victims in order to have a permanent psychological effect and a continual terrorizing memory of the enemy. In many cases, rape was not limited to the simple sexual act but was followed by sexual torture and mutilation of victims' bodies.
Records also show that rapists often identified themselves to their victims, and frequently committed their offences in front of witnesses - family members of the victim and colleagues of the rapists - to intensify the trauma experienced by the women.
The mass rapes in Kosova were foreshadowed by the Bosnian experience. Kosovar men were forced to flee their homes and towns while fearing that a similar experience would occur with their women. Reports even suggest that some of the Serbian paramilitary groups active during the Bosnian war, such as Arkan's Tigers and Vojislav Seselj's White Eagles, allegedly joined in the "ethnic cleansing" campaign in Kosovo. Since they had reputations for using rape as a weapon of war in Bosnia, their involvement immediately created an atmosphere of terror.
Mothers recount how they dressed their younger daughters in loose clothing and headscarves in an attempt to make them look like older women; some even went as far as putting dirt and mud on themselves or daughters so that they would not look attractive to the soldiers and paramilitary Serb troops. However, these simple methods did not stop the mass sexual assaults.
Again, as in the Bosnian war, the Serb forces targeted members of the KLA, using rape as a punitive measure. Documented cases show an increase in the rapes of young women - particularly in the Drenica region, considered a KLA stronghold especially before the NATO bombing.
A study on Serb propaganda towards Albanians conducted by human rights expert Sevdie Ahmeti a decade prior to the war showed that the Serbs always stereotyped Albanian women as dumb, stupid, open-legged females only fit for sexual enslavement while portraying Serbian women as educated, bright and active members of society. This propaganda over the course of ten years helped to emotionally justify raping them.
Some estimates place the number of rape cases throughout the Balkan wars as high as 20,000.
Future Indictments and the Community's Response
"It is a very important victory to the Bosnian women that finally sex enslavement is considered a crime against humanity," said Francis A. Boyle, professor of International Law at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who acted as legal adviser to Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, and was later awarded the Bosnian citizenship for his role in defending Bosnians' rights in international court.
"But I have a bittersweet reaction to it because it is only a drop in the ocean of the tears cried by those suffering women," added Boyle in an interview.
He believes that the only way these women will be ultimately vindicated is through the prosecution and indictment of the Yugoslavian leaders as war criminal - a case that has been filed with the ICTY in which he has been personally involved as an attorney. He says that nothing has come out of the case so far, and that it remains unclear whether anything will develop later.
Despite the precedence to indict the criminals with prison sentences, which should encourage more women to come forward and demand justice, several other Bosnians share Boyle's doubts about its actual effect. A lot of women are traumatized by the experience and would rather not relive their memories in lengthy trials; others, bound by cultural views of rape as an act of dishonor, still feel a sense of shame and humiliation and would rather close the files than speak out against it.
"We feel that they all should have got life sentence for such horrible crimes; we salute the verdict but disagree with the sentence," said Becir Tanovic, a prominent member of the Bosnian community in Chicago. He stressed the fact that many Bosnian women are still very shaken by the experience and feel extremely uncomfortable about pursuing justice. "It is not easy for them to go and accuse and testify," he added.
But some women in the Bosnian community feel proud of those who testified as witnesses in the case. "We are proud of those girls of Bosnia to do such a job. We are happy that they did not have to live with it for the rest of their lives without seeing the criminals punished," said Zumreta Kunosic, Director of the Bosnian Refugee Center in Chicago. Kunosic, who served as a translator in some of the rape cases investigated in the U.S., refused to give any account of specific cases but said that the horrors and sufferings of these innocent civilians should be vindicated.
Numerous counseling efforts are available for victims in refugee centers and clinics, but it remains the responsibility of Muslim communities at large to join the fight in international courts against rape as a war crime, and to encourage victims to come forward against their assailants to have their rights restored and ensure that justice is done.
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