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  • EASTERN BOSNIA - APRIL 2001: This are my grandmother’s hands. She survived two wars. 2nd World War and the Bosnian war for independence. Most of her family was exterminated in 2nd world war. Pretty much the offspring of the people that killed her family in 2nd world war committed atrocities in Bosnia in early 90’s. Eastern Bosnia is on the border with neighboring Serbia with river Drina as a natural border. Through the history Bosnia was always a border country between East and West, during the Ottoman period it was the border post towards Austrian empire, before that it was border between Eastern and Western Empire. This position made Bosnia quite a unique conglomerat of ckutures,traditions,religions. Other than that it didn't bring us too much good. When the war was over, a foreign journalist came to interview my professor of poetry, Marko Vesovic. Entering his appartment, the journalist noticed my professor's dog who was lying in a corner. 'What remarkable blue eyes he has,' the journalist said. 'Well, you see,' explained my professor, 'the dog used to eat the same food we ate during the war. Now he is blind. Dogs are ageing seven times faster than we do, so with us it is different. We still have to wait for the effects on us. I never witnessed a mortar shell exploding in front of the people in the market place or a sniper shooting someone in front of my high school. I was always a couple of seconds or minutes late, or I would pass by the market place just before the shell exploded and killed more than sixty people waiting to buy groceries, or I would be running in a dark street with broken glass falling on me. But I've seen people cleaning the streets after shelling, I've seen what was left of a young man after a thirty-kilo shell exploded near him, and I've also seen the face of woman who survived this unhurt. Lately, when I was in Jerusalem for the first time, I wanted to visit the Al-Aksa mosque. At the entrance I was stopped by an Israeli soldier, a native Russian, and an Arab guard of the mosque. 'You are not allowed to enter,' said the soldier. 'You are not Muslim.' 'But I am!' I insisted. They wouldn't believe me. In Italy, I told an acquaintance of mine that I was a Muslim. He was irritated. 'But then,' he said, 'you cannot be a European.' 'But I am!' I replied. The Turks have left us with an unsolved national question. Religion and culture have always been strongly intermingled in our country. When the Ottoman Empire conquered Bosnia in 1453, the strategy it used to establish its rule was Roman: Divide et impera. Religion was the vehicle. Favouring the Muslims helped the Turks run the country, but it divided the Bosnians. In the 19th century, during the era of Romanticism, when Central Europeans began to build up their ideas of nationhood based on concepts of cultural uniqueness, Bosnians developed their own cultural identities out of religious affiliations. But these cultural identities failed to develop into the idea of a Bosnian nation: Bosnian Catholics and Bosnian Orthodox were seduced by the ideas of a Great Serbia or a Great Croatia. Today Bosnia is a resort of moderate, autonomous European Islam. Actually most of the population are Christians: Orthodox and Catholics. The Arab countries were not too impressed by the Bosnian version of Islam and their help wasn't sufficient to help us defend ourselves against the former Yugoslav Army, one of the strongest armies in Europe. The body count in the recent war was almost all Bosnian Muslim, but for the first time in the last two hundred years we have a state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a language that is recognized….We've never been closer to a nation. I'm afraid that the fact that Bosnians are white helped us a lot. Probably that's why it took only four years for NATO to intervene in Bosnia. Before the fall of Srebrenica, the UN safe haven zone, foreign involvement was on the level of bringing humanitarian aid, mostly only where the Serbian Army allowed, and counting the shells and bombs falling on Bosnian cities. Then after the fall of Srebrenica and the massacre of Bosnian Muslims that followed it, NATO bombed the Serbian positions and brought peace. The first shelling of their positions around Sarajevo came at night. I remember our windows, covered with humanitarian nylon sheeting with UN signs instead of glass, opening because of the detonations, this time on the Serbian side. My mother cooked a pie to celebrate it. Our lives during the war were reduced to the basics. Having a bath with five-litre canisters and then using the water for the toilet. Making meat pie without meat. We became experts at peeing in the dark. The path to happiness was very short, and the learning curve was steep. Once we all adopted these vital skills, and even got used to our little limbo and for a moment stopped talking about peace, our politicians signed the peace agreement. We have a new anthem now. We also have a new flag. It shows a dark blue ground on which is placed a golden triangle, a row of golden stars on one side. The triangle is meant to represent Bosnia and the row of stars I guess imply the European Union. Today we have to stand in a queue to get a visa for every European country. The writer Ivo Andric, one of two Bosnian Nobel Prize winners, described Bosnia in one of his novels as a 'valley of darkness'. The valley is surely dark; it is dark with Bosnian blood, it is darkened by American ignorance and European impotence, it is dark because of the clouds above. Yet it is our valley (Photo by Ziyah Gafic/Exclusive by Getty Images)

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I 25 GODINA NAKON RATA, I DALJE SE NE POŠTUJU PRAVA SVIH ŽRTVA RATNOG SEKSUALNOG NASILJA

Written by TRIAL International - Ured u BiH on . Posted in Novosti

Međunarodni dan borbe protiv ratnog seksualnog nasilja ne smije biti obilježen samo deklarativnim izjavama podrške za preživjele. Potrebni su konkretni koraci ka unapređenju njihovih prava, kako od strane nadležnih vlasti, tako i od strane cjelokupnog društva.

Prema podacima Ujedinjenih naroda, između 20.000 i 50.000 žena i muškaraca je silovano ili seksualno zlostavljano u toku rata 1992-1995 godine u Bosni i Hercegovini. Iako je u BiH načinjen znatan napredak u odnosu na zemlje iz okruženja, brojne prepreke sprečavaju preživjele da traže i ostvare svoja prava. Postavlja se pitanje – zašto i 25 godina nakon rata preživjeli ratnog seksualnog nasilja se susreću sa sistemskim problemima kojima nije dovoljno i adekvatno pristupljeno od strane onih koji to mogu riješiti?

Stigma koju nameće društvo, posljedice nezaliječenih ratnih trauma, nedostatak informacija o tome kako da postupaju kroz pravni proces i pristupe pravima, nedostatak sredstava da plate pravnu pomoć, te činjenica da počinitelji zločina još uvijek uživaju slobodu, samo su neke od prepreka koje odvraćaju preživjele od toga da govore o zločinima koje su pretrpjele, kao i da ih prijave. Tome svjedoči i poražavajući podatak da na svakih 15 do 20 slučajeva ratnog seksualnog nasilja samo jedan slučaj bude prijavljen.

Međutim, čak i kada se odvaže na to da pravdu traže sudskim putem, preživjeli se susreću sa problemima kojima je uzrok često usloženi i nefunkcionalni sudski sistem u BiH, koji nedovoljno štiti prava i dignitet žrtava. Iza toga stoje političke blokade i nedostatak resursa – što dovodi do toga da žrtvama nije obezbijeđen potpun i efikasan pristup pravdi, istini i reparacijama. Upravo ova tri elementa su obaveza Bosne i Hercegovine prema žrtvama ratnog seksualnog nasilja, u skladu sa međunarodnim pravnim aktima koji su u bh. Ustavu. Poštivanje ovih prava ima za cilj da zaštiti žrtve koje su prošle nezamislive traume i da im pomogne da izgrade novi život.  

TRIAL International već dugi niz godina radi na poboljšanju situacije preživjelih i unaprjeđenju njihovih prava, zalažući se za sistemska rješenja. Pružili smo pravnu podršku za 36 preživjelih ratnog seksualnog nasilja, a kao rezultat našeg rada 9 počinitelja odgovara za počinjene zločine. U sklopu naših radionica o problemima sa kojima se susreću preživjeli, educirali smo preko 170 sudija, tužitelja, saradnika i advokata, gdje smo značajan napredak imali u eliminaciji stigmatizacije žrtava tokom suđenja. Na osnovu naših inicijativa i zagovaranja, kroz državni zakon osigurali smo preživjelima mogućnost besplatne pravne pomoći za zahtjeve naknade štete pred državnim sudom. Pored toga, zahvaljujući našem radu i zagovaranju počela se dosuđivati i naknade šteta za zločine koje su žrtve preživjele u sklopu krivičnog postupka. Kada smo iscrpili sve pravne mogućnosti na državnom nivou, u dva slučaja smo pravdu tražili i na međunarodnom nivou, pred UN Komitetom protiv torture (UN CAT) i UN Komitetom za eliminisanje diskriminacije žena, što je do sada rezultovalo i odlukom koja je presedan UN CAT-a u korist preživjele. Također, zahvaljujući našem angažmanu u proteklim godinama usklađena je definicija silovanja i seksualnog nasilja u skladu sa međunarodnim standardima.

Unatoč značajnom napretku posljednjih godina, problemi sa kojima se susreću preživjeli i dalje često ostaju u sjeni. Na svim pojedincima, organizacijama i institucijama koje mogu djelovati je da šire svijest o potrebi poštivanja njihovih prava, naročito kako bi pomogle u borbi protiv nekažnjivosti počinilaca ovih okrutnih zločina, i kako bi se eliminisala stigmatizacija, a što bi žrtvama vratilo povjerenje u pravosudni sistem ali i cjelokupno društvo, te dalo hrabrost da zahtjevaju pravdu i traže svoja prava.