Three decades after the reintegration of Grbavica, the construction of the first monument to women victims of war rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina was planned, as a symbol of remembrance of their suffering and recognition of the crimes that were systematically committed during the war and in this Sarajevo settlement, while the survivors still point to insufficient prosecution of those responsible.
Detektor’s interlocutor was 26 years old when she survived the rape in the Sarajevo settlement of Grbavica. She says that spring used to be her most beautiful season. But the spring of 1992 changed her life.
Trying to get out of Grbavica together with her neighbor, she was captured and later raped. One of the soldiers ordered her to undress and lie down. Then she started crying and begging him to let her go. She found out that the man’s name was Dragan, who then took her to the next room.
– And then he put the gun to my temple and forced me to satisfy him orally. However, I couldn’t do that. I started throwing up. And then he said to me: “Come on, get ready”, took all my things and drove a white car and told me to sit in that car. He kept his gun pointed at me the whole time – she recalls, as well as how she begged him to let her go.
They were passing Grbavica, whom she had watched from the window earlier, looking at the soldiers with weapons, whom she was afraid of. Dragan drove her to a house in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Vraca, where he ordered her to take off her clothes again.
After that, with a knife on the back of his head and his head bowed in a white car, Dragan drove to Grbavica and explained to her where she should go, and every step took an endless amount of time for her. She reached the side that was under the control of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Estimates of the number of women raped during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina vary, ranging from 12,000 to 50,000. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) confirmed that systematic rape and sexual slavery were used as a weapon of war and a crime against humanity. Due to stigma, fear and underreporting, the exact number of victims has never been definitively established.
Victims dissatisfied with the processing of crimes in Grbavica
Alma Kovačević was 16 years old when the war began, she remembers April when a sniper from the Jewish cemetery was targeting people who were moving from Grbavica across the Vrbanja Bridge, today the Suada and Olga Bridge. In May, her mother and she moved to the building across the street with a neighbor, while her father Dževad and uncle Zijah Osmanković remained in their house.
– And then that fateful May 4th came when they were taken from our house (…) I didn’t feel comfortable, I knew. A lot of soldiers came, my father and uncle were alone in the house. Later we heard: ‘Dževad, Dževad’ and I only heard them calling Dževad and I knew that nothing good was going to happen – said Kovačević.
She and her mother stayed in Grbavica until May 9th, and until then they lived in silence, without permission to listen to the radio or watch television.
With the help of a neighbor, they managed to cross the Vrbanja bridge. As they passed through the street, they saw that the trolleybuses were not working, that there was a tank and a lot of glass in Zagrebačka Street.
– I remember the feeling that it was hard for me to go, because I don’t know when I will come back. I’m leaving the house, I’m leaving my childhood, I’m leaving everything. We are not going with anything, we have nothing, we only had one nylon bag each, a checker in hand – says Alma.
She says that on May 18, her father and daija were exchanged. She described that they were gray-haired, thin, with wrinkled faces with bloody clothes and injuries.
Kovačević told Detektor that a large number of citizens of Grbavica and Vraca are dissatisfied with the attitude of judicial institutions and local self-government authorities – both in terms of research and prosecution of crimes committed during the war, as well as the policy of “ignoring” or “forgetting” crimes.
– All of us, immediately upon arriving in the free territory of Sarajevo, repeatedly reported crimes to the police in 1992, but also after the reintegration of these settlements. However, to this day, like many residents of these settlements, we have never been called to testify about the crimes we reported, nor have we ever been informed whether any actions have been initiated regarding the checks, let alone whether an investigation or criminal proceedings have been initiated – said Kovačević.
The president of the Association “Women Victims of War” Bakira Hasečić tells Detektor that since its establishment in 2003, this association has created a database collected from investigative bodies, with which they began to break the silence of women from Grbavica.
She says that they have collected 50 statements from women of Bosniak and Croat ethnicity who were raped in this settlement.
– Some were killed after being raped, which is not talked about at all today. I know that when Veselin Vlahović Batko and Baričanin were tried, we worked for a long time with the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, that we reached the victims, because the victims moved away, changed their address, changed their last name, some did not want their families to know about them – Hasečić tells Detektor.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has four open cases in the works regarding the events in Grbavica and the surrounding settlements.
– The cases relate to the detention facility established in that settlement, as well as other events, mainly from 1992 – this institution answered Detektor.
The cases that have been finally concluded in the Court of BiH are against Veselin Vlahović, who was sentenced to 42 years in prison, Saša Baričanin, who was sentenced to 18 years, and Zoran Dragičević, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for crimes in this settlement.
Hasečić notes that prosecutors working on war crimes cases, especially rape, communicate less with associations and believes that the number of cases has been very low in the past few years.
Monument to victims of war rape
The first monument to the victims of war rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina should be built in Vogošće, in the complex of the former “Kon-Tiki” camp. The project was initiated by the Sarajevo Memorial Center and the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Policy.
The original plan is for the monument to be opened on June 19 this year, on the International Day of Combating Sexual Violence in War.
The director of the Sarajevo Memorial Center, Ahmed Kulanić, told us that no one responded to the first tender that was announced in February of this year, and a new one is planned. He says that the conceptual and implementation solution has been completed and that only the execution of the works remains.
He hopes that he will be able to get a contractor in the repeated procedure, so that the monument can be opened on June 19.
– I think this kind of monument creates a turning point when it comes to memorial culture, paying tribute to all victims in one place that is a symbol of the war crime of rape in the former ‘Kon-Tiki’ camp in Vogošća, where brutal crimes took place. But a monument that will be a place of collective conscience, that we have a place where we will acknowledge both as a society and also the world all the brutality that our mothers, sisters, daughters experienced during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina – said Kulanić.
For Hasečić, who was also a member of the Commission for the Memorial in Vogošća, the construction of a monument would mean a lot, as a message of remembrance of their suffering and torment, of what they survived, and at the same time they are fighting against the evil that was done to them.
– But I would also like such a monument to be built in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Where all the institutions are, where the judiciary is, where justice is, where more people come, as we say, from all over the world. That such a monument should have the image of a woman or the image of a woman with a child in her arms, because we have 62 children registered in the database who were born as a result of rape – says Hasečić.
The survivor from the beginning of the story believes that the construction of the monument is a commendable and great idea that must be realized. It is needed to remind for centuries of the Golgotha that women went through.
– Although women who went through all that suffering will never forget it, it should also exist to be a reminder for future generations not to allow themselves to do so and to be ready to defend themselves. Future generations must know what happened in the unfortunate war, which is why a monument should be erected to these heroines – she said.
Three decades since reintegration
Kovačević says that soldiers were in Grbavica throughout the war and that it was occupied until integration on March 19, 1996. Along with Grbavica, the settlements of Vraca and Kovačići were reintegrated on the same day.
According to Detektor’s Database of Judicially Determined Facts, crimes in Grbavica were established by the Hague Tribunal verdicts against former President of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadžić, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, and former President of the RS Assembly Momčilo Krajišnik, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while the Court of BiH has three cases against Vlahović, Baričanin and Dragičević. Several cases have also been processed in the Sarajevo Cantonal Court.
A broad and systematic attack by the military, paramilitary and police forces of the so-called Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina covered the area of the city of Sarajevo, as well as its immediate surroundings, and the non-Serb civilian population of the settlements of Grbavica, Vraca and Kovačići was subjected to murders, rapes, seizure of personal property, restriction of movement, unlawful imprisonment and detention in inhumane conditions.
The Hague Tribunal and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina have determined that the Serbian army, police and paramilitary forces in Grbavica committed persecution, numerous murders, rapes, torture, physical and psychological mistreatment, taking to detention facilities, robbery and theft of property of Bosniaks and Croats, and several residents of this settlement were taken from their homes and have not been traced since.
The property of Bosniaks and Croats was arbitrarily searched and confiscated, while some were expelled from their homes and forced to move to the other bank of the Miljacka due to intimidation and threats. According to the verdicts, a large number of women were raped in Grbavica, and some of the victims were sexually abused multiple times.
In the Grbavica area, according to the verdicts against former commanders of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps Stanislav Galić and Dragomir Milošević, as well as Karadžić and former commander of the VRS Main Staff Ratko Mladić, there were positions from which fire was opened on civilians in Sarajevo, whether they were walking down the street or riding in the tram, BIRN BiH reports.
