Disclaimer: This article has sensitive content regarding descriptions of rape and sexual assault which may be triggering for some. Reader discretion is advised.
During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in 1992-1995, which is just over 20 years ago there was large-scale violence and war crimes, ethnic cleansing and displacement, mass rapes, and other forms of sexual violence directed against women, men, and children.1 The civil war in BiH attracted international interest and pressure due to which for the first time in history, rape was recognised as a war crime by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (‘ICTY’).2 During the war an approximate 20,000 women were sexually assaulted in the form of rape and torture.3 Even though this estimate may not be a true representation4 of all the women and young girls who were sexually assaulted, it was apparent that the Serbian governmental and military powers utilized systematic rape as a weapon of war to serve their overall objective of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ a euphemism for genocide. As Salzman (1998, p. 349) writes, this was an assault against the female gender, violating her body and its reproductive capabilities as a “weapon of war.”
This article brings to the forefront the atrocities the people in BiH suffered, in particular the women and how they relive the violence every single day with the “alive” reminder of the Velina Vlas hotel and the significance of this one surviving symbol of the past.
Vilina Vlas: The ‘Rape Hotel’
‘The prominent leader in tourism development in Visegrad spa, is the hotel and a rehabilitation centre “Vilina Vlas”’
Tourist organisation of Municipality of Visegrad 2020
Vilina Vlas, situated in the town of Višegrad was one of the biggest, and most infamous rape camps in BiH, where hundreds of Bosnian Muslim women were raped by Serb paramilitary forces during the Bosnian War (1992-95).5 The building also served as a command station in 1992 for the members of the White Eagles6 (the Serbian paramilitary). Vilina Vlas is now a fully operational hotel and spa and is paraded as such on tourism websites. On the official tourism website of the Municipality of Višegrad there is no mention of the role the Vilina Vlas hotel played during the Bosnian War.
A report by Amnesty International (1993) details the experience of a 17 year old girl from Višegrad who was raped at the Vilina Vlas hotel by whom she identified as Beli Orlovi, a member of the Serbian paramilitary group. She was taken to Vilina Vlas with her sister and a friend, all of whom were then separated into different rooms. She was questioned by the soldier and afterwards was raped. She heard her sister’s screams from another room. She was taken back to her house while her sister and the friend remained behind. The girl’s mother went to the police station multiple times to enquire about her other daughter, however the police could not offer any help even though they knew what was going on at the hotel. The girl stated that numerous women and girls were taken to the hotel and most of them did not return.
Another documented report of sexual abuse was given by VG131 (prosecution witness) in the case Prosecutor v. Milan Lukić and Sredoje Lukić.7 Milan Lukić on the pretext of identifying some people led VG131, her sister and her friend to Vilina Vlas. While another soldier interrogated VG131, her sister was taken by another soldier. Milan Lukić then proceeded to rape VG131. She heard screaming shouting and cursing of the other soldiers and among this commotion she could hear the screams of her sister and her friend. VG131 was taken home the next day and was raped on the way there as well. She was then told by Lukić that her sister and her friend would be taken for exchange and that if she moved from her house she would be killed. VG131 never saw her sister or her friend again.
Yet another narrative is that of VG094. On the day of 29 May 1992 Milan Lukić raped VG094 at the Vilina Vlas hotel. Once he left the room another man came in and raped her. She later learned from the other detainees at the Vuk Karadžić school that this man was Sredoje Lukić.8
Vilina Vlas has come to be known as a place for murder, rape and torture through the recounting of the ordeal by several victims.9 According to the reports documented by the United Nations, Amnesty International and foreign journalists, the abuse faced in the hotel was so severe that some women had jumped to their death out of second and third storey windows.10
Transitional Justice
‘…these women are forced to live with the memories of their suffering without being able to receive acknowledgment and compensation’
Simić & Volcic 2014, 382-383
The efforts made in terms of transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina are far and in between. Globally driven transitional justice projects have found themselves at loggerheads with conservative, patriarchal values, and norms that tend to grow stronger in the aftermath of the war, paving the way for gendered discourses and practices.11
An important factor that has had an effect on the absence of transitional justice, has been the role group narratives have played in understanding the past as well as the root causes of the conflict. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there were three different group narratives, from the Bosniak, Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Croats, without a common understanding of the past.12 Additionally, the gendered dynamics of peacebuilding and transitional justice have produced a post-conflict order characterized by gendered peace and justice gaps.13
Björkdahl and Selimovic (2014) have elaborated on ‘gendered peace and justice gaps’ in the transitional justice process in BiH, evident through the mechanisms of accountability, acknowledgement and reparations. The convictions made by the ICTY is an important place to begin to gauge the accountability gap. While there were some key individuals convicted for rape as a crime against humanity by the ICTY, the recognition of these within BiH remains low. The verdicts by the ICTY are viewed as biased and used by ethnonationalist entrepreneurs to entice divisionism.14 Since the domestic legal system took over, there have been a couple of convictions and a few ongoing trials.15 An important aspect to note here is that the domestic legal system is inconsistent with international standards. An example of such an inconsistency is that, in Bosnian law there is a need to present and prove the use of threat or force for the act to be deemed not consensual, which is at odds with international jurisdiction.16 Furthermore, there are no adequate conditions or protection for the witnesses. Witnesses have been threatened, have had to share waiting rooms with the accused and their identities been leaked despite guarantees of anonymity.17
The acknowledgement gap is evident through the multiple attempts and failures of establishing a national truth commission. With each side having a different and highly politicised version of the truth, there is a struggle around who was the victim and who the perpetrator, accounting for little political will to acknowledge the crimes committed by one’s community.18 This further puts the women and their experiences in the background rendering them and their agency invisible.19 This struggle between determining the boundaries between the victim and the perpetrator lends itself to the gaps in reparation. It makes it difficult to identify eligible claimants as the recognition of a victim would be a tool to negotiate the nature and causality of the conflict, once again making it highly politicised.20 Reparations have further, divided victims and survivors within the ethnic communities (Björkdahl & Selimovic 2014, p. 214).
In lieu of the above, it is important to note that Milan Lukić and Sredoje Lukić (also mentioned above), were indicted and sentenced for murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts however, the judgement did not mention the rapes in Velina Vlas.21 In fact, none of the 20 counts in the original indictment specifically mentioned rape (Simić & Volcic 2014, 381). This silence around the trauma and the acknowledgement of it, is problematic and needs to be adequately addressed.
Consequences of Non Addressal of the Issue
‘they [the rape victims] are all in a terrible state … They suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of them are not able to lead a normal life.’
Mirsada Tabaković22
This section discusses three specific consequences of non addressal namely, genocide denial, experiences of victims during and after the war and transgenerational trauma.
While the word genocide is highly contested when it comes to the Bosnian war, it is difficult to not acknowledge what happened in BiH as genocide where the Serbian governmental and military powers sought out rape as a weapon of war leading to their objective of “ethnic cleansing”.23 There is documented evidence to support this claim within the RAM plan.24 The Yugoslav National Army (JNA) Psychological Operations Department in Belgrade developed a plan to drive Muslims out of Bosnia based on an analysis of Muslim behaviour which “showed that their morale, desire for battle, and will could be crushed more easily by raping women, especially minors and even children, and by killing members of the Muslim nationality inside their religious facilities” (Salzman 1998, 356). When detained in the rape camps, the Serbian captors would tell the women that they were trying to impregnate them with “Chetnik babies” who would later grow up and kill the Muslims.25 Furthermore, the fact that many women who were victims of sexual assault, torture and rape sustained physical injuries to the extent that they can no longer conceive, fulfils one of the UN criteria that defines an act of genocide as one “intended to prevent births within the group.”26
Despite being in the midst of the same war, the experiences of each victim and/or survivor vary, bringing us to the second consequence, of the ripples these experiences have formed affecting them years after the war.
According to Ruth Seifert, “[a] violent invasion into the interior of one’s body represents the most severe attack imaginable upon the intimate self and the dignity of a human being: by any measure it is a mark of severe torture.”27 What in all likelihood made the ordeal of having been raped and sexually assaulted worse was that the women recognized their assailants as neighbours, law enforcement personnel, or other members of the community. The recognition seemed to be important to the Serbian policy as it made sure that the persecuted would be less likely to return to their towns and villages if their assailants were local inhabitants.28 Furthermore, there is a misplaced masculine and patriarchal understanding of how rape is regarded. A woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape is often viewed as tainted and unworthy for reproduction and the children born out of such an assault are never fully recognised as a part of the community.
Testifying and identifying yourself as a victim of rape is a gruelling process for anyone and it is no different for the young girls and women of Bosnia. There is worry of bringing shame on themselves and to their families, being rejected by their husbands, being blamed for the rape, having their experiences trivialized, or being blamed for fabricating their stories.29 Long term consequences of being stigmatized and ostracized in their communities coupled with ongoing threats and feelings of insecurity, hampers any ability to heal emotionally, physically or psychologically.30 At the same time, being aware of the consequences of testifying, women have come forward to do so because they want “to make the perpetrator accountable for what he did and to see him punished, to prevent other women and girls from being raped, and to tell “what really happened”.31 They wanted to act against impunity and increase security: “I decided to testify to protect our children…We had to testify in order to remove war criminals from the streets”, and they wanted to contribute to far-reaching transformations of underlying societal values: “These person cannot be idols and role models to future generations. The only way to prevent this is to reveal the truth about them”.32
The experience of violence during the conflict or its legacies seems to have manifested itself in an increase and more severe cases of domestic violence worsening women’s lack of rights and vulnerability,33 which leads us to the last consequence of transgenerational trauma.
A study conducted by Svob et al. (2016) points to the importance of placing one’s own life within the context of an ethnic heritage and family history as doing so provides a framework for understanding oneself as a member of a group that extends before one’s birth and provides the context and direction for an individual’s life story to unfold. The results from their study support the importance of identity in the intergenerational transmission of collective memory. War related memories from a parent’s life may impact the subsequent generation’s sense of self.34 Children born to parents who have experienced a war would be affected by that legacy and more so the children that were born of the women who were raped. Moreover, the thought that these children may serve as constant reminders35 of the trauma these women faced, is not all that far-fetched.
Furthermore, the children born as a result of their mothers being raped and their acceptance in society, is highly contested on the basis of a genetic and cultural myth. The acceptance of this myth is ignorant as Salzman (1998) puts it, and I agree. The myth, which is unfortunately cross-cultural and common, is based on the patriarchal notion that the male determines a child’s ethnic identity. If a child is born from rape by a Serb he or she will be considered Serbian and will most probably not be assimilated entirely within that culture given the circumstances of the conception,36 affecting how the child views him/herself in the culture and society, in turn affecting his or her sense of self and identity.
To summarise, this article draws on the experiences of the women during the Bosnian War (1992-1995) to highlight the gaps in the process of transitional justice and the far-reaching effects of non-addressal, using the Velina Vlas hotel as an example and symbol of the traumatic past.
Rape is just one of the many layers of trauma that these women have experienced. They are still attempting to cope with witnessing the torture and execution of fathers, husbands, or sons, the rape of their own daughters or mothers, being detained in a camp, or losing their homes and personal belongings.37 However, it was essential to make evident how the woman’s voice and agency is trivialised, not spoken about or just forgotten.
Lastly, I would like to acknowledge that this article fails to recognise here all the other people, who experienced atrocities and viciousness on both sides of the war, men and children included and the varying degrees and kinds of trauma. At the same time I hope this article compels us to see that there is still a long way to go when it comes to working with individuals in a post-conflict situation. And that after 28 years, justice is long overdue for the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Notes
1. Björkdahl and Selimovic. (2014). Gendered Justice Gaps in Bosnia–Herzegovina, 207
2. Simić, O. & Volcic, Z. (2014). In the land of wartime rape 377-401.
3. Salzman, T.A. (1998). Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleansing: Religious, Cultural, and Ethical Responses to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia, 348.
4. Firstly, this estimate is based on 1993 European Commission report where the aim of the investigation was to determine whether rape could be ‘systematic’ and the methodology involved interviews with knowledgeable persons or informants. Secondly, the investigation was conducted in 1992 and the war was far from being over by then. See Palermo, T. & Peterman, A (2011, July 26). Undercounting, overcounting and the longevity of flawed estimates: statistics on sexual violence in conflict. World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/12/11-089888/en/
5. Simić, O. & Volcic, Z. (2014). In the land of wartime rape, 380.
6. See footnote 205 in Prosecutor v. Milan Lukić and Sredoje Lukić (Judgement) (2009) IT-98-32/1-T
7. Prosecutor v. Milan Lukić and Sredoje Lukić (Judgement) (2009) IT-98-32/1-T, p.100.
8. Ibid., p. 222
9. Also see International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. (1996, June 27). Gang rape, torture and enslavement of Muslim women charged in ICTY’s first indictment dealing specifically with sexual offences. https://www.icty.org/en/press/gang-rape-torture-and-enslavement-muslim-women-charged-ictys-first-indictment-dealing; and Detektor. (2020, April 6). Lelek: Horror in Vilina Vlas. http://detektor.ba/en/lelek-horror-in-vilina-vlas/
10. Irwin, R. (2009, Feb 24). Visegrad in Denial Over Grisly Past. IWPR.
11. Björkdahl and Selimovic. (2014). Gendered Justice Gaps in Bosnia–Herzegovina, 204.
12. Kostic, R. (2012). Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Whose Memories, Whose Justice? 653; Moratti, M. & Sabic-El-Rayess, A. (2009). Transitional Justice and DDR: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 20.
13. Björkdahl and Selimovic. (2014). Gendered Justice Gaps in Bosnia–Herzegovina, 201.
14. Ibid., 208.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 208-209.
17. Ibid., 209.
18. Kostic, R. (2012). Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Whose Memories, Whose Justice? 661.
19. Björkdahl and Selimovic. (2014). Gendered Justice Gaps in Bosnia–Herzegovina, 211.
20. Ibid., 214.
21. Simić, O. & Volcic, Z. (2014). In the land of wartime rape. Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity, 2(2), 381.
22. Ibid., 382.
23. Salzman, T.A. (1998). Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleansing: Religious, Cultural, and Ethical Responses to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia, 354.
24. Ibid., 356.
25. Ibid., 359.
26. Ibid., 365.
27. Ibid., 355.
28. Ibid., 360.
29. Björkdahl and Selimovic. (2014). Gendered Justice Gaps in Bosnia–Herzegovina, 209, 370, 375.
30. Ibid., 209, 370.
31. Ibid., 210.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 208.
34. Svob et al. (2016). Intergenerational Transmission of Historical Memories and Social-Distance Attitudes in Post-War Second-Generation Croatians, 854.
35. Salzman, T.A. (1998). Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleansing: Religious, Cultural, and Ethical Responses to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia, 365.
36. Ibid., 364-5.
37. Ibid., 371.
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Deviance Incubator 