Amnesty Demands Justice for Bosnia War Rape Victims

As rights group slates local courts and authorities and Hague tribunal for failing to defend rape victims, researcher Marek Marczynski says it’s time courts addressed this taboo issue.

On Wednesday, September 30, the rights group Amnesty International published another report on the victims of the 1992-5 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The report, “Whose Justice? The Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina Are Still Waiting” contains sharply worded criticism of the local authorities and judiciary as well as the Hague war-crimes tribunal.  

Amnesty states that only 18 cases concerning rape and sexual abuse have been tried before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, since 1993, while 15 such cases have been processed and 12 people convicted before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2005.

Amnesty considers that this number of deficient because there were thousands of victims of rape, including both women and men.  

The domestic authorities have still not developed an efficient system for protecting rape victims, Amnesty International says. It considers their basic human rights have been ignored or violated by the failure to secure reparation to the victims, supply material or psychological help or to provide adequate protection to witnesses who appear at trials.

“They’re double victims,” Marek Marczynski told Justice Report. “First, they were victims of what happened to them during the course of the war but they are also victims of a society that does not care for what is happening to them now.

“Many receive no psychological help, retirement benefits, compensations and they do not have access to health services… They are the victims of the fact that they have been forgotten for the past 14 years.”

A taboo topic:

Amnesty International started research on women victims of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina last in December. Its researchers visited the country on several occasions to talk to victims, non-governmental sector and officials.  

“Rape continues to be a taboo topic in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The survivors are stigmatized,” this is one of the conclusions drawn 18 years after the first mass rapes were committed in the war in Bosnia.  

The report notes that rape is the only sexual crime recognized by the Statute of the ICTY as a crime against humanity. In practice the ICTY has categorised wartime rapes as war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.

Amnesty criticizes the work of the Tribunal as well, expressing concern over the way some indictments have been shortened, particularly those parts of indictments pertaining to rape committed in the war. The indictments have been shortened to meet the ICTY’s so-called “exit strategy”, announced back in 2003, which means the Tribunal completing its work in 2010.

However, Tribunal officials have said the last trial may not be completed until 2012, while the Appeals Chamber may continue work until 2015.

“Removing these counts has resulted in wartime rape victims not having access to justice and the perpetrators not being punished,” the report says.  

Marczynski mentions the case of Milan and Sredoje Lukic as an example of this. The indictment described Milan as leader of the Beli Orlovi (“White Eagles”) or Osvetnici (“Avengers”) paramilitary group and in July 2009, the Tribunal sentenced them to life imprisonment and 30 years respectively for murder, persecution, mistreatment, beating and setting people on fire in Visegrad from 1992 to 1994.

But Amnesty is indignant that their rape crimes were more or less ignored in the trial, although much evidence was available to the court.

“Reliable evidence on the abduction of young women who were then kept and raped or exposed to other sexual crimes… near Visegrad was collected by the Tribunal and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the report notes.

“Numerous non-governmental organizations have also documented those crimes. Nevertheless these allegations were not included in the indictment or verdict,” the report reads.  

Two days after the verdict, Amnesty urged the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina to open an investigation against the Lukic cousins.

“In cases like this one it is not important to see someone sentenced to a longer imprisonment sentence,” Marczynski says.

“What is important for the victims is to see recognition of what happened. Pronouncing the most severe sentence against someone is not the most important thing. What is more important is for the crime to be recognized.”

Political pressure:  

Amnesty International believes that “from a legal aspect” Milan and Sredoje Lukic could still be tried in Bosnia and Herzegovina for crimes not included in the ICTY indictment. It says it will continue to advocate this idea until it is realized.  

“We shall call for this until the case has been processed in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Marczynski says.

“We shall hold meetings with local authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to try to persuade them that this is very important for the victims but also for perception of justice in general.

“Victims often tell us they cannot rest until they have seen some kind of recognition of what had happened to them,” Marczynski adds.

Amnesty International commends the work of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in terms of trying wartime perpetrators of rape but says more needs to be done soon.  

“There are good and bad sides to the work of the War Crimes Chamber with the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Marczynski said.

“Among the good sides is the fact that the capacity of the local judiciary to deal with these complex cases is beginning to be built. At the same time, there are some lessons to be learnt from the ICTY in terms of witness protection and support programmes. A lot needs to be done.”

On the basis of the research, Marczynski has concluded that the State Court is still exposed to political pressures on the part of various political actors.

He also considers that, in practice, the political will to work on war crime cases is lacking.

“Instead of discussing whether international [judicial] staff should stay or not, local politicians in Bosnia should consider how to support the Court in its efforts to bring perpetrators to justice, without making it an ethnic or political issue,” he says.

“Those people should be arrested for what they did,” Marczynski concludes.

Merima Husejnovic is a BIRN – Justice Report journalist. [email protected] Justice Report is an online BIRN weekly publication. 

See:

Amnesty International: Suffering in Silence
No Justice for Rape Victims
Visegrad Rape Victimes Say Their Cry Go Unheard
Life Sentence to Milan Lukic for War Crimes
Indictment Expansion Motion Rejected