Eleven women were murdered in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the past year. Eleven times we have been warned that concrete and urgent solutions are necessary. However, the authorities have not yet reacted, at least not adequately.
Breaking news 2024, but not an alarm for the system. The statistics book has recorded the names of 11 more women who became victims of system failures and loopholes that are unlikely to be patched up. With low sentences, the authorities are telling us that they neither hear nor want to hear. So, Tuzla police officer Elvis Ćustendil was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the first-instance verdict for the murder of Amra Kahrimanović. Her family believes that – not enough.
“I had a glimmer of hope in talking to my lawyer and friends and I was convinced that she would get no less than 35 years,” says Nedžad Kahrimanović, brother of the murdered Amra Kahrimanović.
Low sentences, citizens on the streets dissatisfied with the work of the authorities and the authorities – blindfolded so that they could not see either their failures or possible solutions. Appeals in vain, pleas in vain, numerous protests in vain. And initiatives, one after another, to include femicide in the Criminal Code. There is always some excuse for inaction.
“The existing legal framework provides exceptionally good protection for women when it comes to femicide, because hate murder is already included in the Criminal Code and provides for sentences from ten years to long-term imprisonment. A separate designation of femicide would, in fact, represent a duplication of this type of criminal offense,” explains the Minister of Justice of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vedran Škobić.
For now, the Federation Government has only submitted the Draft Law on Protection from Domestic Violence, which is gathering dust in a drawer until it is in the parliamentary procedure.
“We will see when we receive the draft amendment to the Criminal Code as seen by the Ministry of Justice, but I am sure that an argumentative discussion will be held in the Parliament on how to define it in order to finally fulfill what internationally ratified conventions oblige us to do,” emphasizes Alma Kratina, President of the Commission for Gender Equality of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (DF).
The Convention is for now just a letter on paper that we signed and forgot about. Prevention is also a foreign concept to us. Due to inertia and shortcomings in the system, instead of reacting, we are just counting victims.
“What kind of prevention, what is being done about prevention in Bosnia and Herzegovina? We are only working on the consequences. I warned that it would happen to us, that we have become callous to crime. It seems to me that this is happening and that we are slowly saying to murder that it is just another one,” says sociologist Vladimir Vasić.
Another, and then another, and so on from Amra Kahrimanović killed in February to the woman killed in Ključ just a few days before the new year, we count to 11. And while we are just counting, the families of the victims are calculating how much the lives of their mothers, sisters, and daughters are worth before the law.
This is also asked by Sevda Kadić, the mother of Alma, who was killed by her husband in 2021, and for whose murder he was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a second-instance verdict of the Federation Supreme Court at the end of 2024. Omitting the word long-term, the Cantonal Court pronounced a first-instance verdict of 35 years, which is a non-existent sentence according to the Criminal Code of the Federation. One word reduced the perpetrator’s sentence and finally killed Alma’s mother’s faith in justice.
“It’s no wonder to me that he is now being released. Those 35 years of the Cantonal Court’s verdict, I never believed it, nor do I. I no longer trust anyone after my child,” says Sevda Kadić.
A society without faith in the authorities and the strength to fight for justice, authorities blind and deaf to the problems of society and newspaper articles that warn of shortcomings. Eleven victims in 12 months are 11 alarms for the system, which some postponed and some slept through, Federalna writes.
