Mass rape in the Bosnian War

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During the Bosnian war, Serb forces conducted sexual abuse strategy on the thousands of Bosnian Muslim girls and women which will be later known as mass rape phenomenon. So far, there are no exact figures on how many women and children were systematically raped by the Serb forces in various camps^[1]^[2]^[3], but estimates range from 20,000^[4] to 50,000.^[5] Mass rape was mostly done in Eastern Bosnia (especially during Foča massacres), and in Grbavica during the Siege of Sarajevo. Numerous of Serb officers, soldiers and other participants were indicted or convicted of mass rape as the war crime by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[6]^[7]The events inspired the Golden Bear winner at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006, called Grbavica.

1 Background
2 Mass rape
3 Individuals convicted of war crimes related to sexual abuse
4 External links
- 4.1 Related films
5 References

[edit] 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.^[8]

[edit] Mass rape

Women and girls were kept in various detention centres where they had to live in intolerably unhygienic conditions and were mistreated in many ways including being repeatedly raped. 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. ^[8]^[9]

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.^[8]

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.^[8]