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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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KALOPER ORULI: O PREŽIVJELIM ŽRTVAMA NASILJA MORAMO GOVORITI KONTINUIRANO

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

Međunarodni dan borbe protiv nasilja nad ženama obojen je u narandžastu boju koja simbolizira vedriju budućnost, lišenu nasilja (fizičkog, psihičkog, seksualnog, ekonomskog) nad ženama. Svakog 25. novembra u godini prisjećamo se i govorimo o zločinima koji su brojne žene preživjele i o onima koje su i dalje u opasnosti da ga dožive, u cilju senzibilizacije i upoznavanja javnosti o ovom problemu. Prisjećamo se i na preko 20.000 žena koje su silovane ili seksualno zlostavljane u toku rata 1992-1995 godine u Bosni i Hercegovini – tačan broj nikada nećemo znati, jer čak i 25 godina nakon rata brojne preživjele, zbog stigmatizacije, traume, nedostatka informacija i novčanih sredstava ili straha od počinitelja koji i dalje živi u njihovoj sredini, neće nikada progovoriti o zločinu.

“Zato je važno da o njima mislimo i govorimo kontinuirano, a ne samo da ih se prisjećamo na svaki međunarodni dan posvećen njihovim pravima. Mnoge od njih nikada neće ni istupiti sa svojom pričom o onome šta su preživjele, ali zato mi moramo podizati svoj glas i boriti se za njihova prava”, kazala je Midheta Kaloper Oruli, sekretarka Udruženja žrtava “Foča 1992-1995”.

Strah od stigmatizacije je jedan od razloga zašto brojne preživjele žene ne govore o zločinu, navodi Midheta. Stigmatizacija se ispoljava u vidu rodno motiviranih stereotipa koji dovode do marginalizacije: stav da su one “to tražile”, da žrtve seksualnog nasilja lažu, da je silovanje sramota za preživjele.

“Meni je žao što više žena ne prekine šutnju o onome što su preživjele, ali razumijem da do toga neće doći dok se cjelokupno društvo ne suoči sa ovim problemom. Najteže mi je što se često ta stigmatizacija javlja i u užem krugu porodice, gdje se stid i krivica nameće žrtvi a ne počinitelju koji bi taj teret i treba da nosi”, kazala je ona.

Iz tog razloga sudske presude za ove zločine, tačnije osuđivanje i kažnjavanje počinitelja je ključno, jer sa sobom nosi lekciju za buduće generacije, kako se ovi zločini ne bi ponovili.

“Kada govorimo o borbi za pravdu, naknada preživjelima i osuda počinitelja jako su važne u pogledu suočavanja sa strašnim zločinima koji su se desili. Osim što predstavljaju određeni vid satisfakcije za preživjele, one su ključni element za slanje jasne poruke da će zločini biti kažnjeni”, poručila je Midheta.

Napomena: Kako se u ogromnoj većini slučajeva seksualnog nasilja koji se spominju u ovom tekstu radi o ženskim žrtvama, u njemu se najčešće koristi ženska zamjenica “ona” kad se govori o žrtvama. To svakako ne umanjuje iskustvo muškaraca koji su također bili izloženi ovom zločinu tokom rata, a tačan broj takvih slučajeva ni danas nije poznat, iako se procjenjuje da ih je bilo na hiljade.