Rape during the Bosnian War concerns the mass systemic sexual violence mainly targeted against women and girls, but in some instances against males. While people from all ethnic groups committed rape, the vast majority of rapes were perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) and Serb paramilitary units, who used rape as an instrument of terror and a key tactic in their programme of ethnic cleansing. Estimates of the number of women raped during the war range between 10,000 and 50,000; ; ; ; ; and of male victims of sexual violence as 3,000. Accurate numbers are difficult to establish and it is believed that the number of unreported cases is much higher than reported ones.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) declared that "systematic rape" and "sexual enslavement" in time of war was a crime against humanity, second only to the war crime of genocide. Although the ICTY did not treat the mass rapes as genocide, many have concluded from the organised, and systematic nature of the mass rapes of the female Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) population, that these rapes were a part of a larger campaign of genocide, and that the VRS were carrying out a policy of genocidal rape against the Bosnian Muslim ethnic group.
The trial of VRS member Dragoljub Kunarac was the first time in any national or international jurisprudence that a person was convicted of using rape as a weapon of war. The widespread media coverage of the atrocities by Serbian paramilitary and military forces against Bosniak women and children, drew international condemnation of the Serbian forces. Following the war, several award-winning documentaries, feature films and plays were produced which cover the rapes and their aftermath.
Background
The Bosnian War was the first time that mass rape was recognised and prosecuted by an international tribunal.
Genocidal rape is a feature of campaigns which involve ethnic cleansing and genocide, as the objective is to destroy or forcefully remove the target population, and ensure they do not return. According to Amnesty International, the use of rape during times of war is not a by-product of conflicts, but a pre-planned and deliberate military strategy. The first aim of these mass rapes is to instill terror in the civilian population, with the intent to forcibly dislocate them from their property. The second aim is to reduce the likelihood of return and reconstitution by inflicting humiliation and shame on the targeted population. Historians such as Niall Ferguson have assessed a key factor behind the high-level decision to use mass rape for ethnic cleansing as being misguided nationalism.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not at its inception a platform for internal nationalist sentiment. Individuals who sought to ignite tensions risked imprisonment, torture or execution. Then, in 1989, Serbian president, Slobodan Milošević inflamed Serbian nationalist sentiment with the Gazimestan Speech which referred to the Battle of Kosovo. Feelings of victimhood and aggression towards Bosniaks were further stirred up with exaggerated tales about the role played by a small number of Bosniaks in the persecution of Serbs by the Ustaše during World War II.
Serb propaganda suggested that Bosniaks had Turkish ancestry. Despite the Serbian government-led hate campaigns, some Serbs tried to defend Bosniaks from the atrocities and were threatened, including instances when troops announced by loudspeaker that "every Serb who protects a Muslim will be killed immediately".
Before the conflict began, Bosniaks in Eastern Bosnia had already begun to be removed from their employment, to be ostracised and to have their freedom of movement curtailed. At the outset of the war, Serb forces began to target the Bosniak civilian population. Once towns and villages came under Serbian control, the military, the police, the paramilitaries and, sometimes, even Serb villagers continued these attacks. Bosniak houses and apartments were looted or razed to the ground, the civilian population were rounded up, some were physically abused or murdered during the process. Men and women were separated and then held in concentration camps.
Occurrence of rape
Estimates Estimates of the number of women and girls raped range from 12,000 to 50,000, the vast majority of whom were Bosniaks raped by Bosnian Serbs. The ICTY estimates between 20,000 and 50,000 rapes, and that 80% of those happened over a prolonged period of imprisonment. UNHCR experts have claimed 12,000 rapes. The European Union estimates a total of 20,000, while the Bosnian Interior Ministry claims 50,000. The UN Commission of Experts identified 1,600 cases of sexual violence.
As ethnic cleansing On 6 October 1992, the United Nations Security Council established a Commission of Experts chaired by M. Cherif Bassiouni. According to the commission's findings, it was apparent that rape was being used by Serb forces systematically, and had the support of commanders and local authorities. The commission also reported that some perpetrators said they were ordered to rape. Others said that the use of rape was a tactic to make sure the targeted population would not return to the area. The assailants told their victims they would bear a child of the assailant's ethnicity. Pregnant women were detained until it was too late to have the fetus aborted. Victims were told they would be hunted down and killed should they report what had transpired. The commission also concluded that: "Rape has been reported to have been committed by all sides to the conflict. However, the largest number of reported victims have been Bosniaks, and the largest number of alleged perpetrators have been Bosnian Serbs. There are few reports of rape and sexual assault between members of the same ethnic group."
The team of European Community investigators, including Simone Veil and Anne Warburton, similarly concluded in their 1993 report that rape carried out by the Bosnian Serb forces was not a secondary effect of the conflict but part of a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing and was "perpetrated with the conscious intention of demoralizing and terrorizing communities, driving them from their home regions and demonstrating the power of the invading forces". Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch also concluded during the conflict that rape was being used as a weapon of war, with the primary purpose being to cause humiliation, degradation, and intimidation to ensure the survivors would leave and never return.
Rape camps
Throughout the conflict, women of all ethnic groups were affected, although not on the scale that the Bosniak population suffered. Serb forces set up "rape camps" where women were imprisoned, tortured and raped over a period of years. Women held at the camps were only released when pregnant. Gang rape and public rapes in front of villagers and neighbors were not uncommon. Many of the reports of the abuses illustrated the ethnic dimension of the rapes. These camps were located at Keraterm, Vilina Vlas, Manjača, Omarska, Trnopolje, Uzamnica and Vojno. In May 1992, Serb villagers from Snagovo, Zvornik, surrounded and captured the village of Liplje and turned it into a concentration camp. Four hundred people were imprisoned in a few houses and those held there were subject to rape, torture and murder.
Testimony from a Kalinovik camp survivor (where roughly 100 women had been detained and subjected to "multiple perpetrator rape") said that the rapists continually told their victims, "You are going to have our children. You are going to have our little Chetniks", and that the reason for their being raped was to "plant the seed of Serbs in Bosnia". Women were forced to go full term with their pregnancies and give birth. A Serbian national song Marš na Drinu was played over the loudspeaker signalling to the women that rapes and assaults were imminent. The age of the victims ranged from 12 to 60 and often women were targeted from the same family group. Many women were also physically assaulted during the rapes, sometimes severely.
Over a five-month period between the spring and summer of 1992, between 5,000 and 7,000 Bosniaks and Croats were held in inhumane conditions at Omarska. At the concentration camp, rape, sexual assaults and torture of men and women were commonplace. One newspaper described the events there as "the location of an orgy of killing, mutilation, beating and rape". Rape, murder and physical abuse were commonplace. At the Trnopolje camp an unknown number of women and girls were raped by Bosnian Serb soldiers, police officers and the camp guards. At the Uzamnica camp, one witness in the trial of Oliver Krsmanović, charged with crimes relating to the Višegrad massacres, claimed that the male detainees were at one time forced to rape women.
Detention camps were set up across the Serb-controlled town of Foča. While kept at one of the town's most notable rape locations, "Karaman's house", Bosniak females, including minors as young as 12, were repeatedly raped. During the trial of Dragoljub Kunarac et al., the conditions of these camps were described as being "intolerably unhygienic". Women and girls selected by Kunarac, or by his men, were taken to the soldiers' base and raped. The local police were accused of involvement, and the head of the police in Foča, Dragan Gagović, was identified as being one of the men who would visit these camps to select women for rape. At least 11 persons were indicted in connection with rapes at the camps in Foča.
At other times, girls were removed from detention centres and kept in various locations for prolonged periods of time or trafficked and sold under conditions of slavery. Radomir Kovač, who was also convicted by the ICTY, personally kept four girls in his apartment, abusing and raping three of them many times, while also allowing acquaintances to rape one of the girls. Prior to selling three of the girls, Kovač appointed two of them to other Serb soldiers who abused them for more than three weeks.
Croat forces set up concentration camps at Čelebići, Dretelj, Gabela, Rodoč, Kaonik, Vitez, and Žepa. At the joint Bosniak-Croat run Čelebići facility, Serb civilians were subjected to various forms of torture and sexual abuse, including rape. At Dretelj the majority of prisoners were Serbian civilians, who were held in inhumane conditions, while female detainees were raped and told that they would be held until they gave birth to an "Ustaša". Both Serbian and Bosniak civilians were held at the Heliodrom camp in Rodoc, and detainees were reported to have been sexually assaulted. Serbian women and girls were raped and tortured in Bosniak-run brothels in Sarajevo.
In Doboj, Bosnian Serb forces separated the females from the males and then facilitated the rape of some women by their own male family members. Women were questioned about male relatives in the city, and one woman's fourteen-year-old son was forced to rape her.
Men and boys A lesser known form of rape during the war was that which was perpetrated against men and boys. Though no concrete number has been determined, it has been estimated that some 3,000 were raped during the conflict. However, it is assumed that many victims have not come forward due to their deaths or the stigma associated with sexual abuse. Many male victims were found to have been ostracised from their communities, often feeling stripped of their masculinity or being accused of homosexuality. Other victims feared that coming forward would result in further abuse.
A majority of the instances took place in detention camps, others happened elsewhere, including during home raids. The range of abuse varied widely. Some victims were sexually tortured, while others were forced to torture fellow prisoners. Acts included forced oral and anal sex, genital mutilation, and blunt trauma to the genitals.