Bosnian war rape victims suffer in silence, wait for justice

 Fika was 15 years old, and her sister 17, when they were captured and repeatedly raped by Bosnian Serb soldiers who swept through eastern Bosnia early in the country's 1992-95 war.

"We were forced to watch each other being raped, and I still feel my pain and the pain of my sister," she said. "They wanted us to admit we were spies, so they beat us till they knocked out our teeth."

Twenty years on, Fika is among thousands of Bosnian Muslim women whose search for recognition and support from the Bosnian state is being blocked by Bosnian Serb leaders who fear a wave of compensation claims. Her sister died at the hands of their torturers.

Rights groups are losing patience, warning that the psychological toll is only getting worse with time.

"The silence surrounding the wartime rape of women in the Serb Republic ... is deafening," Amnesty International wrote in October.

Fewer than 40 rape cases have been prosecuted in the 17 years since the war ended, and legislation at the state level to extend compensation and rehabilitation rights to rape victims of the war is gathering dust, hostage to ethnic politicking.

The lesson of Bosnia has spurred a push by Britain to raise awareness of sexual violence in war when it takes over the chairmanship of the G8 group of industrialized nations next year.

Under the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, the British government plans to send police officers, lawyers, psychologists and forensic experts to Bosnia and other conflict and post-conflict countries to work with local authorities on the issue.

"Bosnia and Herzegovina is seen as a priority country," Ann Hannah, a spokeswoman for the initiative, told Reuters. She said a team would arrive in Bosnia early in 2013.

"We have a very strong feeling there is a window of opportunity to make a significant breakthrough on this issue," Hannah said. "Without its resolution, any peace process is incomplete."

A delicate balance of Muslims, Serbs and Croats, Bosnia was torn apart as federal Yugoslavia dissolved. An estimated 100,000 people died, most of them Muslims. Some estimates put the number of women raped at up to 35,000, again the majority of them Muslims.

"MY HEART IS ROTTEN"

With peace, the country was split into two autonomous regions - the Serb Republic and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, home to mainly Muslims and Croats. The country is ruled by a system of ethnic quotas, with each region enjoying a high level of autonomy and the central state often left powerless to legislate over the entire territory.

The story of Fika, as she asked to be called, is indicative. She declined to give her real name, fearing the stigma attached to many wartime rape victims in Bosnia. Reuters reached her through a non-governmental organization that helps rape victims.

Caught up in a wave of ethnic cleansing of Muslims from eastern Bosnia, Fika was captured and held at a Serb-run detention camp in the town of Vlasenica. She says she lost count of how many times she was raped by her captors.

Finally released, Fika fled to the northern town of Tuzla, now part of the Federation, dropped out of school and struggled to support her mother, who was widowed during the war, and younger sister.

Now 34 and a mother, she has not told her three children what happened to her, nor will she return to her home in Vlasenica, which is now part of the Serb Republic and where she believes her rapists still live.

Three years ago, spurred by recurring nightmares, she raised the courage to report two of them, whom she recognized as locals of Vlasenica, to police in the region, but charges were never brought.

She has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and receives 250 euros ($330) per month from the Muslim-Croat Federation as compensation for her war trauma.

Those like her who live in the Serb Republic receive nothing, however, because the law there only recognizes those who can prove damage to at least 60 percent of their body as civilian victims of war, disregarding psychological trauma.

Fika told her husband what happened to her, but says she regrets doing so because of the toll it has taken on their marriage.

"I have no idea what keeps me going," Fika said. "My heart is rotten."

At least three separate bids have been made in recent years to enshrine the rights of wartime rape victims in state law, so far without success. Bosnian Muslims accuse the Serb Republic of blocking their efforts.

"We have created a nation-wide strategy designed to ensure reparation for the victims of wartime rape but from the very beginning we knew the government of the Serb Republic was hardly likely to accept it," said Saliha Djuderija, assistant minister for human rights and refugees in the Bosnian central government.

PERPETRATORS STILL FREE

Amnesty International said the Serb Republic "is still failing to acknowledge the needs of wartime rape survivors - indeed, the existence of a problem at all."

Authorities there, it said, "have never made a meaningful attempt to collect data on this population, to understand and quantify their problems or to develop policies that would address their specific needs."

Bosnian Serb War Invalids Minister Petar Djokic denied this, saying his government was exploring ways to resolve the issue while safeguarding against the possibility of false claims.

"We have already discussed this with some non-governmental organizations dealing with this problem to see how we can resolve this institutionally in the best way," Djokic told Reuters, "without creating another problem for ourselves through any attempted abuse of the social support system.

"We want to protect the victims of sexual violence in a just manner, but all such victims will have to prove exposure to sexual violence, though not necessarily medical confirmation of the level of bodily damage," Djokic said.

As time passes and victims are left to deal with their trauma alone, the psychological scars deepen, psychologists say, worsened often by the knowledge that the perpetrators are still walking among their victims.

"It only aggravates the condition and their experience of trauma reaches the level of psychological terror," said Teufika Ibrahimefendic, head of the ViveZene NGO and a psychologist who has worked with rape survivors for years.

"The community must recognize the rape as a war crime and each victim must be recognized."

Fika agreed: "For me, the war never ended. And it never will."  Source

One Jewish Woman’s Fight for Palestine

 By: Yasmin Mogahed

For Jennifer Loewenstein, April 19, 2002 was a “waking nightmare”. She stood silent at the edge of the camp, in disbelief–and horror.

Listening to the sound of wailing, she watched as medical workers lay out the bodies of the dead. The corpses, wrapped in white, were loaded onto the back of a pick-up truck.

“I will never forget this time,” Loewenstein recalls. “I stayed in the camp for two days, picking through the ruins and debris of people’s former lives–watching children and families look for their belongings–anything they could salvage from the wreckage.”

Loewenstein was in Jenin.

She had spent much of the previous two years working as an editor and freelance journalist at the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza. During that time she traveled frequently to the Rafah refugee camp to visit friends. It was in that way that she came to know Rafah so well and later started the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project in December of 2002.

But Loewenstein’s decision to take on the plight of the Palestinian people was not an easy one. She has since been shunned by her community and accused of being a “terrorist sympathizer” and “self-hating Jew”–a term she considers as ludicrous as calling her a “self-hating human” for opposing human rights abuse.

Despite this opposition, Loewenstein continues her struggle to expose an injustice she wasn’t always aware of herself.

“I never really knew much about the plight of the Palestinians until I was much older,” says Loewenstein. “I didn’t begin to question all the information I’d gotten on Israel and on Arabs until I got to college (at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem).”

Loewenstein grew up in a secular Jewish family, but was instilled early on with a concern for Israel. She still remembers the day when her favorite dress was sent to her cousin overseas. She was only six, but gave up the dress because her family in Israel needed it.

Although her parents were not “avid Zionists”, their loyalty to Israel was strong. But even stronger than their loyalty to either Israel or Judaism was her family’s loyalty to peace.

“One year at Christmas/Hanukah time we refused to celebrate either holiday,” remembers Loewenstein. “Instead we made a ‘Peace Tree’ and celebrated our hope for peace.”

Her mother’s concern for peace was complemented by her struggle for civil rights. Loewenstein never forgets the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated because it devastated her mother so much.

It was this early awareness of civil rights that Loewenstein carried into adulthood and would bring with her to Jerusalem. In 1981 she traveled to Israel for a semester-long study abroad program. During her stay she was exposed to a world she never knew existed.

One day during a tour of Gaza Strip instead of listening to the tour guide, Loewenstein sat at the back of the bus and looked out the window. She discovered “thousands of people living in tents and shacks.” Loewenstein was appalled.

“It was the first time I had ever seen this kind of poverty and the first time I understood the meaning of “occupation” in a concrete way,” says Loewenstein. “I saw a woman with about three children carrying a jug of water on her head and a soldier watching her and the others around her with his gun slung over his shoulder.”

It was at that moment that she first realized “something was terribly wrong.” But nothing she saw that day would prepare her for what she experienced in April of 2002.

Loewenstein was among the first internationals—and only a handful of Americans–to enter the destroyed Jenin refugee camp the day after the Israeli incursion.

“When I got into the camp area I could not believe my eyes. It had been devastated. Thirteen thousand people had lost their homes,” describes Loewenstein. “The camp was destroyed beyond recognition – flattened into a heap of rubble and dust. The smell of death was everywhere.”

What was most traumatic for her was the discovery that many of the dead were unarmed civilians. “Not all the dead were fighters,” says Loewenstein. “Some were old men, women and children.”

The horrors that Loewenstein experienced in Jenin made her struggle all the more urgent–a struggle she fights, not as a Jewish woman, but as a human being.

Source

One Jewish woman's fight for Palestine

For Jennifer Loewenstein, April 19, 2002 was a “waking nightmare”. She stood silent at the edge of the camp, in disbelief—and horror.

Listening to the sound of wailing, she watched as medical workers lay out the bodies of the dead. The corpses, wrapped in white, were loaded onto the back of a pick-up truck.

“I will never forget this time,” Loewenstein recalls. “I stayed in the camp for two days, picking through the ruins and debris of people’s former lives—watching children and families look for their belongings—anything they could salvage from the wreckage.”

Loewenstein was in Jenin.

She had spent much of the previous two years working as an editor and freelance journalist at the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza. During that time, she traveled frequently to the Rafah refugee camp to visit friends. It was in that way that she came to know Rafah so well and later started the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project in December of 2002.

But Loewenstein’s decision to take on the plight of the Palestinian people was not an easy one. She has since been shunned by her community and accused of being a “terrorist sympathizer” and “self-hating Jew”—a term she considers as ludicrous as calling her a “self-hating human” for opposing human rights abuse.

Despite this opposition, Loewenstein continues her struggle to expose an injustice she wasn’t always aware of herself.

“I never really knew much about the plight of the Palestinians until I was much older,” says Loewenstein. “I didn’t begin to question all the information I’d gotten on Israel and on Arabs until I got to college (at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem).”

Loewenstein grew up in a secular Jewish family, but was instilled early on with a concern for Israel. She still remembers the day when her favorite dress was sent to her cousin overseas. She was only six, but gave up the dress because her family in Israel needed it.

Although her parents were not “avid Zionists”, their loyalty to Israel was strong. But even stronger than their loyalty to either Israel or Judaism was her family’s loyalty to peace.

“One year at Christmas/Hanukah time we refused to celebrate either holiday,” remembers Loewenstein. “Instead we made a ‘Peace Tree’ and celebrated our hope for peace.”

Her mother’s concern for peace was complemented by her struggle for civil rights. Because it has devastated her mother so much, Loewenstein never forgets the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

It was this early awareness of civil rights that Loewenstein carried into adulthood and would bring with her to Jerusalem. In 1981, she traveled to Israel for a semester-long study abroad program. During her stay she was exposed to a world she never knew existed.

One day during a tour of Gaza Strip instead of listening to the tour guide, Loewenstein sat at the back of the bus and looked out the window. She discovered “thousands of people living in tents and shacks.” Loewenstein was appalled.

“It was the first time I had ever seen this kind of poverty and the first time I understood the meaning of ‘occupation’ in a concrete way,” says Loewenstein. “I saw a woman with about three children carrying a jug of water on her head and a soldier watching her and the others around her with his gun slung over his shoulder.”

It was at that moment that she first realized “something was terribly wrong.” But nothing she saw that day would prepare her for what she experienced in April of 2002.

Loewenstein was among the first internationals—and only a handful of Americans—to enter the destroyed Jenin refugee camp the day after the Israeli incursion.

“When I got into the camp area I could not believe my eyes. It had been devastated. Thirteen thousand people had lost their homes,” describes Loewenstein. “The camp was destroyed beyond recognition—flattened into a heap of rubble and dust. The smell of death was everywhere.”

What was most traumatic for her was the discovery that many of the dead were unarmed civilians. “Not all the dead were fighters,” says Loewenstein. “Some were old men, women and children.”

The horrors that Loewenstein experienced in Jenin made her struggle all the more urgent—a struggle she fights, not as a Jewish woman, but as a human being.
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