The Ground Hard and the Sky High

For a year-and-a-half, F.K. was mentally and physically abused in the Rasadnik detention camp in Rogatica, where she was repeatedly raped and forced to have sex with another detainee. She says that thanks to her faith, she stayed “sane”.

Speaking to BIRN – Justice Report, F.K. says that she lived in a village near Rogatica with her husband and son, while her daughter was living in another city. She points out that she had everything in life: a healthy family, houses, barns, cattle…
 
At the beginning of the war, she was hiding in the woods with her family and neighbours, but on November 11, 1992, two neighbors came to their house with guns. Together with her 14 year-old son, her husband and fifty other villagers, she was taken to the Rasadnik detention camp. As she said, she was repeatedly raped there, her husband was beaten, and their son later became ill and died 16 years later.
 
Nothing Was Fine
 
“The first 15 days were peaceful, people were working, and there were 18 women there. Then they started to take away people in the evening to beat them. Horrible beatings started then. One night, when one cousin of my husband was taken away, I was also taken for questioning, too. He was killed that night, without guns, without a knife. He was an old man. We thought that commander of the squad took us away. He held a knife under my throat and interrogated me in the hall. They were drinking and singing… They spit on me, took off my scarf and threw it under their feet. One of them said: ‘Take the gun and kill her’. A young man put the gun under my throat”, recalls F.K.
 
She says that they took her back into the room about 3:30 p.m., from where she heard how they beat her husband in another room. Her son asked her if she was alive, and she briefly answered him that she is alive and to remain silent.
 
“My child shivered under a blanket… They returned my husband, he was all beaten and his head bloated… No one dared to approach him, we were afraid that they would see that we were helping him”, describes F.K.
 
After a while, she was raped for the first time, when, as he says, one soldier which she knew, took her to another room.
 
“He lay on me, drunk. Nor could I escape, nor did I know where to go”, said F.K., who was then 44 years old.
 
She says that one young man, to whom she could be the mother because of his age, also raped her.
 
“He came and said: ‘I must rape you, otherwise they will kill me’… I do not know how I took off my clothes and put them on again”, recalls F.K., who was raped by two people in the detention camp.
 
When she was taken for rape again, F.K. says that that man threatened that he will slaughter her son and husband if she said anything to anyone about it.
 
“Once, one of ours was taken away with me. He was lying, and I was forced to breastfeed his genitals. I spend so many days with this man in the detention camp, and it’s a miracle that the both of us did not go crazy. The ground hard and the sky high. Other soldiers watched it… When they took me back to the room, I do not know for how many days I could not come to my senses, or whether I was alive or not”, describes F.K.
 
She claims that her worst memories are of one soldier who was entering the room licking the knife and telling them: “I want some Muslim blood”.
 
“Whether a human brain could do it, I do not know… For example, 20 people sit there, and you have to undress yourself completely… The faith saved me and kept me sane”, points out F.K., who knew most of those who abused the detainees in Rasadnik.
 
She remembers well June 18, 1993, as a particularly tough night, when they were transported to Zvornik.
 
“That night was the most dangerous for us, as if they were trying to slaughter us. My 90 year-old mother was with me…… That night even the men urinated, there was everything then. Afterwards we were taken by truck to Bijeljina. And we stayed all day there, they were walking and negotiating, I do not know what was happening. Once again, they took us back from Batkovici to Rogatica and we stayed there until April 30, 1994”, says F.K.
 
She said that all of the things that they used before the closing were burned.
 
“They brought us the bloody blankets, we slept on pallets. We had not taken a bath for six months, there was no drinking water. We melted the snow. We had lunch and breakfast, but I was eating poorly because it was fat and bacon. I was skin and bones. I know that in these circumstances it is not a sin, but I just couldn’t do it…. Doctors never came, no way. The Red Cross came in June and registered us. They brought us jackets, shoes and clothes, but as soon as they left, they took all that for themselves”, recalls F.K.
 
As she said, eight people were killed during her stay in the detention camp, and that she heard that another 18 people were killed prior to their arrival.
 
“When we came back to Rogatica, the rapes were rarely repeated. One miserable man tried to rape me… A piece of scum. But nobody touched me there anymore… Then we were taken to Kula. There was also no food there. There, they did not beat or touched us. My son lay down there, he could not stand it anymore, he did not even talk”, said F.K., adding that the two of them were exchanged in May 1994, and her husband six months later.
 
Painful Loss of the Son
 
She did not speak with her husband about what happened to her in Rasadnik, but she assumes that he knows.
 
“My son didn’t know, I told him that they were beating me. He was 30 years old when he died. He left behind a one-year old daughter, now she is going to school… Oh dear, he was terribly ill, that fiend took him away…”, says F.K.