| Rape as a weapon of war |
| Written by Slavenka Drakulic, International Herald Tribune | |||
| Friday, 27 June 2008 06:44 | |||
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On June 20, the UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war. Human rights groups hailed the vote as historic, but it is no legal remedy. Tens of thousands of victims of sexual violence in Bosnia still do not have the status of victims of the war. While working on my book, "They Would Never Hurt a Fly," about Balkan war criminals on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia in The Hague, I came across the Foca case. In 1992, three Serbs in the Bosnian city of Foca - Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic - imprisoned young Bosnian Muslim girls, tortured them, kept them as sexual slaves and raped them. But the men did not really understand why they were being tried. One of them defended himself by saying: "But I could have killed them!" From his own prospective, he actually saved their lives. Rape? What kind of crime is this compared with killing people? This case is important because on Feb. 22, 2001, Florence Mumbal, the International Criminal Tribunal judge from Zambia, found them guilty. The three were the first men in European legal history to be sentenced for crimes against humanity - torture, slavery, outrages upon human dignity and the mass rape of Bosnian Muslim women. This sentence recognized that sexual violence is an extremely effective weapon of ethnic cleansing. It not only shames violated women, but also humiliates their men, who cannot protect them. Sexual violence destroys the whole community because the stigma stays with them - not forgotten, not forgiven. At the trial of the three defendants in the Foca case there was one particular witness, the mother of a 12-year-old girl taken prisoner by Radomir Kovac, who raped her and then sold her to a Montenegrin soldier for 100 euros. The girl was never seen again. Her mother came to confront the perpetrator and to testify against him. But when she took the stand, no words came out of her. Just a sound, the unbearable howl of a mortally wounded dog.
The Security Council resolution on rape will not bring this woman's daughter back. But it is nonetheless historic because, finally, sexual violence is recognized as a weapon, and can be punished. No longer can a man defend himself by saying that he "only" raped a woman he could have killed. We know now, as we knew before the passage of this resolution, that rape is a kind of slow murder. By Slavenka Drakulic, International Herald Tribune
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I remember very clearly the first rape victim I ever met. It was in the autumn of 1992 in a small town near Zagreb. She was a Muslim from Kozarac, in Bosnia. After a few months in a detention camp, she came with a group of refugees to Zagreb. She was in her mid-30s, with short brown hair and very blue eyes. She told me her story in a low voice, almost in a whisper. She was in her house with her two children and her mother when a group of Serbian paramilitary soldiers entered her yard. They said they were looking for arms, but they were after something else. Angrily, one man grabbed her and pushed her into her bedroom. Then the others joined him. "Then they did it to me," the woman said simply, looking down at her hands. 
Comments
Also, there are cases where people are wrongly accused and sentenced for rape. if those people than as well will be chemical castration...
I think chemical castration has its place, when the rapist confess and that its classified that sex was the main drive.
Luisa T.
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