12-year-old Bosniak Girl Describes Rape by Serb Soldiers

Daily News, p.2
12 December 1992.

ZAGREB, Croatia — The Serbian fighters who have seized large parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina are being accused of systematic rape against captured Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] women and girls.

Primitive Serb Peasants Blamed for the Destruction of Bosnia

First the Bricks, then the Soul

New Sunday Times
18 October 1992.

By Rohas
(A Bosnian refugee)

ZAGREB: The Serbian academic dissident Bogdan Bogdanovic said:

“Serbian fascism is especially dangerous because it originates in the rural areas, and feels no responsibility for the architecture of towns.”

Their criminal attack on urban areas has been especially directed towards Bosnia-Herzegovinian towns, mainly the Muslim ones of Foca, Visegrad, Zvornik, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Brcko, and the old towns of Prusac.

Bosniak and Croatian architectures of value in Mostar have been especially attacked and religious buildings — mosques, abbeys, Catholic churches, graveyards, and other sacred places, have become particular targets.

Some Acts are Not Forgivable, Genocidal Rapes in Bosnia

An 18-year old Bosnian Muslim rape victim (September 1992, Bosnian Genocide). Photo by Nina Berman, Sipa Press

An 18-year-old Muslim woman in Bosnia recovers one day after aborting a pregnancy resulting from rape in September 1992. This rape occurred three years before the Srebrenica genocide. Rape was used systematically as an instrument of war in the Bosnian genocide. Photo by Nina Berman/NOOR. (note: lower quality photo posted for ‘fair use’ only, non-profit/educational purposes, full credits given to photographer) Please visit Nina Berman’s blog for more photos.

“I was sent to the special department for the pregnant women at Foca (see: Foca Genocide). I had one month to go. For one month nobody touched us, and then Chetnik soldiers visited us, and took all our gold and took two women from our room at 3 a.m. One of those women had given birth to a dead baby before that and the other was three months pregnant. They brought them back at 9 a.m. The next night they came back and took four women, the two from before and another two, who had newborn babies. It happened every night. They came and took those four women all the time. When I noticed someone was coming in the evening hours…I hid under a sink in a cupboard. Everything else was like normal. We got food for the children. A Serb doctor told us the soldiers wouldn’t touch us…and we didn’t tell them anything. I gave birth to my daughter Aida there. After some months, Munira and the other women were told they would be freed in a prisoner exchange. One evening some soldiers came with vehicles to take us. I thought we would be killed. Dr Cancar saved us. Don’t worry, my children while I’m here nothing will happen to you. And at that moment one of the soldiers took away the woman who had had the stillborn baby…”

Legally Validated Foca Genocide is part of Bosnian Genocide

Foca (Bosnian: Foča, pronounces as: FO-CHA) is a town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina on the Drina River, close to Srebrenica. In 1991, the population of the municipality of Foca consisted of 20,790 Bosniaks (Muslims), 18,315 Serbs (Orthodox), 94 Croats (Catholics), 463 Yugoslavs, and 851 Others.

In 1992, the city came under the control of Serbian paramilitaries. Most of the Bosniaks were expelled from the area. Foča was also the site of a rape camp in Partizan hall which was set up by the Serb authorities in which hundreds of Bosniak women were raped.

Once the Serb forces cleared Eastern Bosnia of much of its Bosniak civilian population, the towns and villages were securely in their hands. All of the Serb forces (i.e. the military, police, paramilitaries and sometimes, villagers too) applied the same pattern: houses and apartments of the expelled population were systematically ransacked or burnt down; remaining members of the Bosniak civilian population were rounded up or captured, and sometimes beaten or killed in the process.

Systematic Rapes of Bosnian Muslim Women, An Instrument of the Bosnian War 1992-95

Introduction by Khadija Husain: Systematic rape is a brutal tactic used in times of war to terrorize women by sexually assaulting them. It has also been used as a means to perform ethnic cleansing by degrading and demoralizing the persecuted ethnic group. According to international law, systematic rape has been declared a crime against humanity as well as a war crime. It is also one of the criteria that identifies a genocide.

The concept of systematic rape was utilized during the genocide in the Bosnian War. During the ethnic cleansing performed by the Serbian soldiers against the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian women and girls were tortured by sexual violence. A United Nations committee determined that the number of women who were raped was around twenty thousand, whereas the Bosnian government estimated that there were in fact fifty thousand rape victims. As a result, war crime tribunals are now allowed to prosecute superior officers and hold them liable for the actions of their subordinate soldiers.

Currently in the city of Darfur in Sudan, the Janjawid militia is systematically raping the women there leading to another human rights crisis. This is similar to the brutality faced by Tutsi people in Rwanda where the women and children today still remain distraught and tormented as the deal with the aftermath of the systematic rape by the Hutu tribe that occurred there 10 years ago. There is no question that rape is a tool of genocide even if it does not result in physical death, it does have a decided impact on the rape victims both mentally and spirtually.

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The following is a report from the Dallas Morning news:

Women: Weapons of War

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serb leaders’ policy of “ethnic cleansing” has allowed – or commanded – Serb troops to terrorize, slaughter and rape. Rape required neither gasoline nor bullets and made a powerful weapon, according to local war-crimes investigators.

By George Rodrigue
Dallas Morning News
9 May 1993.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — First Serb prison guards branded Aziza Osmanovic with iron rods. Then they raped her, along with her 12-year-old daughter.

Gorazde Massacre, Serbs Kill 50 Bosniaks in First-Aid Center

By CHUCK SUDETIC,
Published: June 14, 1993

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, June 13— More than 50 people were reported killed today at an improvised first-aid center when Bosnian Serb forces unleashed heavy artillery barrages on Gorazde, which the United Nations designated a safe area less than two weeks ago.

The Sarajevo radio reported that the shelling had left Goradze’s streets littered with bodies and that a rocket had exploded in the first-aid center, killing all 50 or so people inside.