In the fall of 1992, with
Bosnia-Herzegovina in its sixth month of appalling ethnic
conflict, reports of rapes that were being committed on a
massive scale became the shocking headline news in Western
Europe and the United States. Particularly shocking about
these rapes were their enormous scope, their extraordinary
brutality, and the fact that, reportedly, of the three
warring groups the Serbs were the perpetrators. According to
the press, up to 60,000 rapes occurred alone in the period of
April to November 1992, and the terror of rape was magnified
by reports of repeated beatings and other tortures as well.
Sexual violations were said to be frequently carried out in
numerous so-called "rape camps," set up in
Serb-controlled areas to facilitate the systematic
brutalization of women. The other characteristic feature of
the Serbian rapes, as disclosed by the media to an
increasingly outraged public, was that they formed an
integral part of the official Bosnian Serb
"ethnic-cleansing" policy against the Muslims. The
policy itself, press and television repeatedly charged, was
rooted in the preconceived plan of the Bosnian Serb
government and military to rid Bosnia of its Muslim
population; this would be achieved through a series of
genocidal sweeps, of which systematic "mass rape"
of Bosnian Muslim women was the centrepiece.
In the months following this grim
newsbreak, the United Nations (UN) and the European Community
(EC) set up official fact-finding commissions, while other
international organizations, semiofficial and private groups,
and reporters- individually or as teams-also conducted
inquiries, involving the gathering of testimonies from rape
victims or secondary accounts from eyewitnesses.1
Already the first findings of international investigative
commissions, made available to the public at the end of 1992
and in the spring of 1993, diverged sharply from the media's
insistence on Serbian "mass rape" affecting more
than 50,000 victims.2
The line of division henceforth ran between international
agencies on the one hand and a host of reporters and
political commentators on the other. Both sides generally
agreed on the horrific nature and widespread occurrence of
rapes in Bosnia, as well as their systematic use as an
instrument of terror against civilian women. Their
disagreement over the Bosnian rape issue concerned three
major aspects which became closely interrelated in the media,
namely, that rape occurred massively and systematically so as
to warrant the accusation of "genocide," that the
Serbs-to a lesser extent also the Croats-were the
perpetrators, and that the Serbs used rape-predominantly of
Muslim, but also of Croatian women-as a tool to implement
their predetermined genocidal program of "ethnically
cleansing" Bosnia of its Muslim population.
These disparities, above all, have
prompted the following examination of the Bosnian rape issue.
The gap between the assessments of international fact-finding
(and, later, war crimes) commissions, on the one hand, and an
ever growing number of media reports on "mass rape"
and "genocide" in Bosnia, on the other, was
immense. Who was right?- The host of journalists, political
commentators, and academic authors with their insistence on
the enormously high number-between 50,000 and 60,000-of rape
cases? Or were the international agencies to be believed,
whose estimates amounted to 20,000 in January 1993, steadily
decreasing in the course of 1993 and later years to 2,400,
then 800, and finally to estimates of 330 documented cases, a
fraction of the original assertions in the media? Did it
indeed make a difference whether it was 50,000, 20,000,
2,400, 800, or 330 women in Bosnia who were raped by the
Serbs (and sometimes by Croats)? After all, a rape is a rape,
a terrible crime, an age-old instrument of terror against
women,3 and one
or a few are too many, giving justifiable cause for outrage.
It was not the wide divergence of
statistical figures per se, of course, that was worth
examining, but the specific interpretation which hinged on
them. Enormous numbers of Muslim rape victims, within a short
span of six months no less, were central to the allegation
that this was a case of genocide and that the Serbs were
culpable. Thus, from the moment the rape issue was
publicized, the media propounded the close correlation
between the extent of rapings by Serbian forces and the
existence of a calculated policy involving the mass
expulsions and mass killings of Bosnian Muslims. This goal,
supposedly, to achieve a Greater Serbia through territorial
conquest and purification, drove Serbian forces to prosecute
this war as a genocidal war. In this sense, the astronomical
figures cited by the media testified to the systematic policy
of genocide as well as to the fact that the Serbs were the
genocidal rapists and killers.4
These and other issues concerning
the representation of the Bosnian rapes in the media and, to
some extent, the literature on the war in the former
Yugoslavia form the subject of the following paper. Since the
view that the Serbs were the perpetrators and the Muslims the
victims probably found its most persistent, if not most
vehement, advocates in the United States and Germany, my
analysis will focus primarily on the German and American
press.
In the United States, the media's
revelations of the Serbs as genocidal rapists undoubtedly owe
their greatest debt to the publicity given them by the New
York Newsday
reporter, Roy Gutman. In the summer of 1992, as a horrified
world looked on an increasingly vicious war in Bosnia, with
the daily occurrence of atrocities and the
"ethnically-cleansed" refugees already numbering in
the tens of thousands, Gutman launched a series of articles
that sent a clear message to the world community: none other
than the Serbs were responsible for this catastrophe. His
"dispatches" out of Bosnia, dramatically entitled:
"Prisoners of Serbia's War: Tales of Hunger, Torture at
Camp in North Bosnia," "Death Camps: Serbs Imprison
Thousands for Slaughter, Starvation," "Gulag: The
War against Muslims and Croat Civilians ...,"
"Serbs' Death Camps: How the Guards Chose the
Victims," "Deadly Transfers: Many Reported Killed,
Missing in Move from Serb Camp," attested to alleged
genocide and holocaust in the former Yugoslavia.5
On the basis of these and similar reports, assembled in his
Pulitzer-Prize winning Witness to
Genocide, Gutman concluded that
"random slaughter, organized deportations, death camps,
systematic rape and castration, and assaults on refugees
fleeing for their lives"-all by the Serbs-took an
enormous toll. By June 1993, according to Gutman, possibly
one quarter million, that is, "well over 10 percent of
the Muslim population," had allegedly become victims of
this Serbian genocide.6 The
horror of the "Serbs' Death Camps," to which
thousands of Bosnian Muslims were being carted off-in boxcars
cars "like Jews ... to Auschwitz"-was equalled only
by the horror of the "rape camps." Gutman's
"dispatches" also capture stirringly the ordeal of
Muslim women, who were beaten and tortured, repeatedly raped,
and often killed after that. Alone the titles are indicative
of the victims' ghastly experiences, suffered-tens of
thousands of times over-at the hands of Serbs: "Bosnia
Rape Horror," "The Rapes of Bosnia,"
"Nights of Terror at Makeshift Bordello," "A
Daily Ritual of Sex Abuse," "'One by One'. The
Ordeal of Women Raped and Beaten in Bosnia Camp," and
"Mass Rape: Muslims Recall Serb Attacks."7
In the same summer of 1992,
Gutman's explosive stories of the Bosnian cataclysm in the
wake of Serbian "aggression" were given a
photographic face. A number of "shocking images from
battered Bosnia," of scantily dressed, skeletal figures
behind barbed wire, or prisoners with shaven heads shuffling
along in long queues, was to demonstrate Gutman's previously
announced Serbian operation of genocide at work.8
More importantly, the harrowing images
of inmates, ostensibly testifying to staggering numbers of
victimized Muslims civilians-at Omarska, Manjaca, or
Trnopolje, to name the three most notorious camps-were to
pressure the international community into action. In the
United States, the combined stories and images out of Bosnia
galvanized public opinion from general disinterest in the
events in the former Yugoslavia to approval of government
intervention in the Bosnian war. During his campaign for
presidency, a visibly moved Clinton, sounded the call for
tougher measures; in February 1993, the new Secretary of
State, Warren Christopher, assured the American public that,
with reference to the "terror and bloodshed"
brought on by Serb aggression, "[o]ur conscience revolts
at the idea of passively accepting such brutality."9
The widespread publicity generated
around these gender-and ethnic-directed crimes against
humanity, all attributed to the Serbs,10
explains in part the immediate
sympathy for the (Muslim) victim and the wholesale
condemnation of the (Serbian) aggressor. More critically, the
strong impact of the "mass-rape" issue was possible
because it was fit into an environment that was particularly
sensitive to rape. This was as much the case in Germany as in
the United States.
In Germany, the feminist Alexandra
Stiglmayer became the major proponent and popularizer of the
argument that Bosnian Muslim women were systematically
subjected to "mass rape" by the Serbian military.
The results of her inquiries, which, like Gutman, she had
conducted in Bosnia in the summer of 1992, were first
published in the Weltwoche
of November 5. The article, under the dramatic title
"Die Demütigung als Waffe: In Bosnien-Herzegowina wird
systematisch vergewaltigt, um die Moral des Gegners zu
untergraben-Die totale Degradierung der Frau zur Ware"
(Humiliation as a Weapon: In Bosnia-Herzegovina Rape is
Systematic in Order to Undermine the Morale of the
Opponent.-The Total Degradation of the Woman to a Piece of
Goods) appeared not only in a number of daily newspapers, but
was used as evidential basis for all media articles on the
subject, for example, Stern, Taz, Die
Zeit, and Süddeutsche
Zeitung. Stiglmayer also gained
notoriety through television, especially the 2nd channel
(ZDF) program "Mona Lisa." Indeed, it was due to
her efforts, as one commentator pointed out, that
"Vergewaltigungen in Bosnien international, aber vor
allem in Deutschland und der Schweiz zum Thema der Politiker
wurde (that "rape in Bosnia became, internationally, but
above all in Germany and Switzerland, a topic of discussion
for politicians").11
The national and international
attention which Stiglmayer received for her disclosures on
"mass rape" derived largely from the fact that they
struck a sensitive chord in her audience. In Germany, as in
the United States, this receptivity to issues concerning
rape, and especially mass rape, is closely linked to an
increasing engagement on the part of society and government
in women's and human-rights questions. Moreover, the public's
readiness to take reports on "mass," that is,
genocidal rape in Bosnia at face value was probably
reinforced by a renewed interest in Germans as victims rather
than as the-conventionally portrayed-perpetrators of the
Second World War. Stiglmayer's dramatic news-break of
presumed Serbian "mass rape" as an instrument of
"ethnic cleansing" coincided with a growing trend
in Germany to emphasize the suffering of the civilian
population; this found repeated expression in the historical
and autobiographical literature, and related, in particular,
to the fate of east Germans in the last phases of World War
Two. Outstanding in these devastating experiences to which
German civilians had been subjected-bombings, hunger, and
mass flight-was the victimization of women through "mass
rape" by the advancing Soviet troops.12
Furthermore, Stiglmayer's story of Serbian "mass
rape" fell on fertile ground - even more so than in the
United States-because it had been well prepared in the
preceding months by a predominantly pro-Croatian German
press. Leading the chorus of anti-Serbian voices was Johann
Georg Reißmüller, co-editor of the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, who applauded
especially Croatia in having broken away from the communist,
Serb-led Völkergefängnis
(prisonhouse of nations), Yugoslavia, in the spring of 1991
and gave his warm support to the German government's decision
to recognize Croatia (together with Slovenia) at the end of
the year despite strong international opposition.13
Following the lead of Gutman and
Stiglmayer, the international community too was quick to
condemn the Serbs, even before the evidence had been
gathered.14
Nevertheless, its various fact-finding commissions were well
aware of the difficulty in accessing specific and reliable
data. In the case of the EC mission, headed by Dame Anne
Warburton, for example, which investigated the charge of
Serbian mass rape, the findings relied on the "general
view expressed by interlocutors ... that a horrifying number
of Muslim women had suffered rape and that this was
continuing." The EC investigators thought "it
possible to speak of many thousands" and initially
accepted the approximate figure of 20,000 as the "most
reasoned estimate" possible.
By January 1993, then, with the
completion of EC inquiries the number rape cases had dropped
appreciably, that is, by a third, from a massive 60,000 to
20,000, still a very high figure. The commission, however,
still held that, even though "rape and sexual abuse
[were] neither nationality - nor gender - restricted
issues," and a number of "disturbing reports"
indicated also "rape of Croat and Serbian women,"
the "vast majority of rape victims were Muslim
women" and the rapes themselves were
"systematic" in nature.15
While the EC mission's findings met
with considerable criticism,16 it
was a special United Nations Human Rights Commission, led by
Tadeusz Mazowiecki, which radically reduced the numbers
reported by both the media and the EC delegation. The most
significant aspect about Mazowiecky's report, which also
asserted the systematic nature of the rapes, was that the
number of estimated rape cases - 2,400 - was calculated from
the basis of documented evidence, such as depositions of
testimonies and reports by witnesses, interviews with medical
personnel, and so on. Furthermore, according to the
commission, there was "clear evidence" for the
rapings of Muslim, Croat, and also Serb women as "rape
has been used as an instrument of ethnic cleansing" in
both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The commission thus
established the complicity of Croat as well as Muslim forces
in the rapes.17
Not only Mazowiecky's team, as Warburton's mission before
that, recognized the difficulty in collecting specific data.
It was a common observation of most investigative and relief
agencies, as of reporters, that, unlike the relative ease
with which stories of witnesses could be gathered, personal
testimonies of raped women were very hard to come by.18
But whatever the uncertainties as
to the evidence that was now available and verifiable, one
thing was sure, already by the beginning but definitely by
the end of 1993. Clearly, what had been occurring in wartorn
Bosnia was neither genocidal "mass" rape nor mass
murder by the Serbs. Yet, Stiglmayer in her introduction to
the collection of articles assembled in Mass
Rape. The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina makes
two completely different statements concerning civilian
casualties. As a result of the "Serbs' march of conquest
through former Yugoslavia," she writes one occasion,
"150,000 to 200,000 people have lost their lives, among
whom the Bosnian Muslims have by far the most victims."
A few pages later, probably in order to drive home the point
about the massive victimization of Bosnian Muslims in the
first year of the war, the author writes that now "the
Muslims are crowded together on 15-20 percent of the area of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and bewail the loss of 150,000 to 200,000
of their people." An oversight? A deliberate distortion?
Who would notice the two different versions anyway? Having
been persuaded of the Serbian military's ability to victimize
between 20,000 and 60,000 Muslim (and Croatian) women within
the span of six months, why should the reader also not
believe the Serb forces capable of murdering-"in
intentional acts of mass destruction"-150,000 to 200,000
Bosnian Muslims within the span of one year?19
One could allege, of course, that what
mattered in the final analysis was not the actual numbers-the
quantitative aspect-but the very enormity of the crime-the
qualitative aspect. Or as a British official stated the
problem when defending the EC mission's assessment of-by now
seriously questioned-20,000 rape cases, "we felt we had
to give our ministers some idea of the probable scale of the
crime that had been committed."20
It is not easy to determine the
reason for the cavalier attitude toward numerical evidence.
With respect to the media, one reason possibly is the almost
narcissistic pride investigative journalists take in their
work, coupled with an intense desire to pressure governments
into action on behalf of the victims whose plight they have
given worldwide exposure. This attitude, for example, finds
repeated expression in the contributions to Mass
Rape, published well after doubt was
cast on the highly publicized number. With apodictic
certainty, nevertheless, that "mass" rape-implying
tens of thousands of victims-is the only valid
interpretation, Stiglmayer angrily recalls the international
community's "conscious refusal to disclose any crimes
... [as] one way to avoid having to act." Similarly, she
views the repeated denial of "mass" rape by
representatives of the International Committee of the Red
Cross and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who
acknowledged only "isolated cases of rape" for some
time after Stiglmayer and other journalists had broken the
news on the Serbs' horrific atrocities, as tantamount to a
cover up. "Normally," she continues, "such a
story would end here. The journalists would write down the
explanations of the international organizations and pack up.
But they kept on writing." At long last, the
"pressure of publicity caused by press reports"
resulted in "a mysterious turnabout" in the
attitude toward the Bosnian "mass rape" question,
so that what previously had been a denial or minimization of
Serbian (war) crimes against women became a "worldwide
outrage" over them.21
The disrespect for numerical
evidence, as can be seen from the above statements, stems
from an effort on the part of journalists to give their
case-of Serbian genocidal rape-the widest possible exposure
as well as to mobilize the international community.22
Equally common too, when pleading the
Muslim cause, is a dismissive attitude toward
historical-political evidence. The argument of Serbs as
genocidal rapists of Muslim women, ostensibly buttressed by
enormous figures, leaves little room for Croatian, and
practically no room for Muslim rapists. By the same token, in
the Bosnian war, only or mainly Muslim women suffer, just as,
the year before, only or mainly Croatian women suffered,
since it is Serbian aggression that leads to the
Croatian-Serbian conflict in Croatia.23
Of course, the proponents of the "Serbs-
as-genocidal-rapists" argument may not be able to
overlook historical reality completely, for example, with
respect to the atrocities and "ethnic cleansing" in
the wake of a raging Muslim-Croat conflict, just as the
German edition of Mass Rape was
being prepared for publication in English.24
But they are able to attenuate this
historical reality, at least to such an extent that it still
fits the picture of the Serbs as perpetrators of systematic
genocidal rape.
This is done in a number of ways.
Of these, the more significant probably is to ignore or
downgrade the reality of a large number of Serbian rape
victims. To be sure, Stiglmayer admits to the occurrence of
rape on all sides. There is, however, not a single reference
to Serbian records by Stiglmayer herself nor the contributors
to her volume on Mass Rape,
just as Gutman in his collected dispatches fails to
acknowledge, let alone use, such sources. Yet, Serbian
records were as readily accessible25 as
the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim documents which underlie the
research of Stiglmayer and Gutman and many other writers
concerned with the subject of rape and "ethnic
cleansing" in Bosnia.26
The insistence, however, that Serbs alone bear the guilt,
together with the refusal to take into account the commission
of war crimes by the non-Serbian combatants, leads not only
to self-justificatory explanations for the savage behavior of
Croats and Muslims, but also, in effect, to the demonization
of the Serbs. Thus, when Croats are noted-albeit
reluctantly-for merciless acts of "ethnic
cleansing," they are said to be "aping" the
Serbs. Atrocities on the Muslim side, if acknowledged at all,
are interpreted not as a tool of government policy, but as
"spontaneous" and "sporadic" acts of war.27
Indeed, the "agony in the former Yugoslavia," if
one goes by the media in these years, does not encompass to
any significant degree Serbian victims of rape and
"ethnic cleansing."28
How could it, after all, if the image of the Serbs in pursuit
of planned genocide had become so firmly entrenched in the
public mind that all that mattered was to punish them and
bring them to justice?29
In this sense, one of the most
important issues emerging from the representation of Bosnian
rapes in the media, and the social-scientific literature
generally, is that of evidence. There can be no doubt
whatsoever that rape, whether committed in war or
domestically, constitutes a severe crime against humanity.
Central to this paper, however, is the dimension of rape that
has to do with its politicization. The fact of rape becomes a
political tool, I have tried to argue, at precisely the point
when certain views which are predicated on assumptions that
cannot be proven are instrumentalized to serve a political
purpose. In this case, the tens of thousands of unverified
rapes provide the justification for the view that the Serbs
systematically pursued a plan of "ethnic cleansing"
that was calculated to deliberately expel or kill the Bosnian
Muslims. In none of the literature on the Serbian mass rape,
however, is there any evidence for the existence of such a
plan, let alone a program of extermination. This means that
the notion of systematic policy is deduced from the unproven
fact that massive numbers of women were raped. Arguing the
point of a systematic policy back from the fact of rape, that
is, from huge quantities, has profound implications for both
the discourse on and the practical politics with respect to
Bosnia. If the numbers constitute the evidence for systematic
genocidal rape, they cannot be treated with disdain. Yet, in
the case of rape, as in various other "mass" claims
made in connection with the Bosnian war-for example, the
enormously high civilian casualties, mass slaughters, mass
graves-numbers have been dismissed all too lightly.30
My concluding remarks deal with
what I consider some of the more serious ramifications not
only for understanding, but also for dealing with the issue
of rape in war.
First, the claim of "mass
rape" in Bosnia opens the way for the ideologization of
the issue. The accusation that the Serbs committed "mass
rape" between April and November 1992 by pursuing a
previously planned program to ethnically purify Bosnia was
treated as gospel truth by the media. The consequences for
the image of the Serbs, as they were demonized into
latter-day Nazi stormtroopers and annihilators of Bosnian
Muslims, were devastating. Even when revised numbers, in the
wake of ongoing inquiries into the charge of "mass"
rape, finally did find their way into the press, along with
reports of rape by the other combatants, the reading public
paid little or no attention to such unexciting news.
Second, the ideological use of the
rape issue frequently informed government action on behalf of
the Bosnian Muslims and promoted a growing US involvement on
the side of the Croats and the Muslims.31
Third, the highly political
argument of Serbian motives to wage a war of conquest and
annihilation, buttressed by incorrect statistical evidence
and often dubious facts, engenders disastrous consequences
for the very victims it purports to champion, both in the
present and the future. Exaggerated or misrepresented facts
and facile analogies with the past not only give rise to
doubt, but are also likely to foster skepticism and cynicism.
If the veracity of the evidence for the view-and
indictment-of the Serbs as Nazi-style perpetrators of
genocide, is questionable, so too will the reality of the
victims' suffering be cast into doubt. What if it turns out
that, indeed, it was not 200,000-let alone 200,000
Muslims-who had been killed? Similarly, with respect to the
rapes, do we feel the same sympathy when the tortured, raped,
butchered, and exterminated victims turn out to number
"only" 800, or 330, or "even" less?32
How do we view the suffering of rape victims if a significant
proportion does turn out to be Serbian?33
Or do we believe, together with the
feminist Helke Sander, that even though all women-"no
matter what the nationality"-experienced fear and horror
in this war, it was worse for the non-Serbian side? For,
after all, it was the "Bosnian Serb army" which, in
an alleged "war of annihilation" "did the
attacking."34
By this logic, however, rape in war
derives its significance from war guilt-not always the
clearest of questions in a civil war. By this logic,
likewise, true instances of mass rape, such as occurred in
Germany in 1945, are implicitly trivialized. The step from
rape being identified with the "aggressor" to the
relativization of the issue of rape is small indeed. How
should one deal, for example, with the case of German women
who were being mass raped in the spring of 1945 by the
invading Soviet troops? According to the logic used by
Gutman, the atrocities against civilians which the Soviet
troops committed on their march westward would simply be an
"aping" of the Germans, just as the Croats were
"aping" the Serbs. Moreover, if one adheres to the
argument of Stiglmayer and others of her persuasion that
systematic "mass rape" is an instrument only of the
"aggressors"-thereby excluding Croatians and
Bosnian Muslims as perpetrators of "mass" rape-one
wonders how one is supposed to treat the allegation that
Soviet troops committed "mass rape" against German
women. For not only were the Russians not the
"aggressors" in 1945, but they also continued to
rape on a large scale long after they had exchanged their
role as invaders with that of occupiers.35
Thus, if seen from the perspective of
the Stiglmayer-Sander argument, the alleged Russian
"mass rape" turns out to have been little more than
propaganda after all.
To be believable or to arouse to
action, the tragedy of Bosnia's women, indeed of all
civilians suffering the ravages of inter-ethnic civil warfare
in former Yugoslavia, does not need to hinge on inflated
numbers and, conversely, on war guilt. On the contrary, the
combined ideologization and instrumentalization of rape in
this manner appears less than a helpful way in dealing with
the problem of rape, mass or otherwise, in war.
*This is the
longer version of a paper presented at the Fifth Annual
Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference "Conquering
Women," March 15-16, 1997, at the University of
California, Berkeley. For the many helpful suggestions in
researching and writing this article my thanks go to Danilo
Tomasevich, Gerald D. Feldman, and Dusan Batakovic.
NOTES:
1. Paralleling these investigative
activities, a number of women's groups, together with
national and international human rights and relief
organizations, such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), the International Commission of the Red Cross
(ICRC), or Amnesty International, became involved in the
practical effort of assisting the traumatized women victims
of Bosnia. Understandably, women in particular, appalled by
accounts of atrocities against tens of thousands of Bosnian
Muslim women, rallied their support to the victims of sexual
violence; they came to play, individually or as organized
groups, a major role not only in the inquiries and practical
medical, social, and psychological work, but also in press
and television, international conferences, and, generally, in
the arena of publicity. For women's active involvement on
behalf of rape victims, see especially Maja Korac,
"Understanding Ethnic-National Identity and Its Meaning:
Questions from Women's Experience," Women's Studies
International Forum, vol. 18, nos. 4-5 (Summer 1995).
2. Judy Mann, "Rape and War
Crimes," Washington Post, 13 January 1993,
refers to Katherine MacKinnon, "widely regarded as the
foremost American legal theorist in developing laws against
pornography and rape," who put the total number of women
and girls raped by the Serbs "at more than 50,000, and
another 100,000 killed."
3. By far the best analysis of the history,
sociology, and politics of rape is the pioneering work by
Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will. Men, Women and Rape
(New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1975).
4. In other words, the huge numbers of
civilian casualties, as reported by the media, attested to
the intention of the Serbs to kill off (genocide) and drive
out (ethnic cleansing) a whole population group; had the
numbers of killed been smaller or small, the claim that they
represented "genocide," together with a
preconceived plan to perpetrate it, would have lacked
credibility. In this way, the significance of numbers stands
in direct relation to the assertion that "genocide"
was committed: they have to be enormously high, lest the
assertion for which they are said to provide the evidence
fails to carry conviction.
5. The dispatches are to be found in
Newsday of, respectively, 19 July, 2 August, 3
August, 5 August, and 26 August 1992.
6. See Roy Gutman, A Witness to
Genocide (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993),
xxxi.
7. Gutman, ibid., titles cited: 60, 36, 64,
68, 74, 144, 164. See also Gutman, "Mass Rape: Muslims
Recall Serb Attacks," Newsday, 23 August, 1992.
8. The "images," reproduced in
the article "'Ethnic Cleansing'. Bosnia's Cry for
Help," Newsweek, 17 August, 1992, p. 16, refer
to the photographic documentation of Serbian detention camps
by the British ITN television team. First televised on August
7, 1992, the ITN pictures were seen instantly the world over.
The sensational headlines, in large letters and thick print,
associated concentration camps with Nazi extermination camps,
leaving little doubt in the mind of the reader as to the fate
of Bosnian Muslims in the grip of genocide and holocaust:
"War camp hell stuns the world. Belsen 1992" (Daily
Star). "Shame of camp Omarska" (Guardian);
"The proof. Behind the barbed wire, the brutal truth
about the suffering in Bosnia" (Daily Mail).
The French press-Le Nouvel Observateur, Humanité, Paris
Match, Figaro, etc.-followed suit, disclosing to the
public "La terreur prémédité" or the
"crimes contre l'humanité des nationalistes
Serbes."
Shortly after the "death-camp"
news in August 1992, the pictures of the Bosnian Muslim rape
victims (taken by the photographer on Gutman's team on his
second visit to Bosnia) appeared in the western press as the
photographic documentation of the Serbian-run "rape
camps." Of the dozens of cover stories prompted by
Gutman's pictures, see, for example, "A Pattern of Rape.
War Crimes in Bosnia," Newsweek, 4 January, 1993, pp.
32-37.
For the publicity which the disclosures of
British ITN and Gutman's team received in the western media,
see also The Media Happened to be There, eds. &
authors Zoran Petrovic-Pirocanac, V. Hadzivukovic, et al.,
Belgrade: Jugoistok, 1994, pp. 36-43, 54-57, 60-61.
9. Probably the best critique of Clinton's
policy decisions on Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially as they
emerged under the strong impression which media reports and
images out of Bosnia made, is Elisabeth Drew, On the Edge.
The Clinton Presidency, (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1994), 138-163, (also 271-284), quote 147. Christopher's view
of a more active role on behalf of Bosnia, both in terms of
American "humanitarian interests" and
"strategic concerns," signalled the trend toward
ever greater strictures of the Bosnian Serbs.
10. In the forefront of media coverage on
alleged Serbian "mass" crimes were the New York
Times, The Washington Post, and the Christian Science
Monitor, although it would have been well-nigh impossible to
find any media in the US (and Western Europe) in 1992-1993
which did not advocate the view of Serbian war guilt in
vehement terms. From early on, moreover, it became usual to
equate "mass rape" and holocaust. When, for
example, MacKinnon was asked in an interview whether the
horrifying stories told by witnesses of the rapes in Bosnia
were "at one with the worst atrocities that came out of
the Nazi concentration camps," she answered without
hesitation "'[a]bsolutely, ... [a]bsolutely yes.'"
Mann, "Rape and War Crimes," Washington Post.
MacKinnon has been widely quoted since that time. See also,
Grace Halsell, "Women's Bodies a Battlefield in War for
'Greater Serbia', Washington Report On Middle East
Affairs, vol. XI, no. 9, April/May 1993.
A useful collection of articles by French,
British, American, and Italian correspondents who are
critical of the media's biased reporting and the frequently
sensational publicity given these reports on the Yugoslav
conflict, see Zivota Ivanovic, ed., Media Warfare. The
Serbs in Focus (Belgrade: Tanjug, 1995).
11. For a sharp critique of Stiglmayer's
impact on the media in the fall of 1992, see Martin
Lettmayer, "Da wurde einfach geglaubt, ohne
nachzufragen," in Serbien muß sterbien, ed. Klaus
Bittermann (Berlin: Edition TIAMAT, 1994), 37-49, quote 41.
Stiglmayer's findings were published in 1993 in
Massenvergewaltigung-Krieg gegen die Frauen, which she edited
and brought out in English translation in 1994. See Alexandra
Stiglmayer, ed., Mass Rape. The War against Women in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Foreword by Roy Gutman (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1994. See also, Stiglmayer,
"The Rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina," Mass Rape,
82-169.
12. On the problems regarding the
appropriate forms of memorializing the demise of the Third
Reich and the end of Nazism, for example, the extraordinarily
insightful article by Robert G. Moeller, "War Stories:
The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of
Germany," The American Historical Review, vol.
101, no. 4 (October 1996), 1008-1048. Atina Grossmann
presents her extensive historical research on the Russian
rapes of German women at the end of World War Two in the
fascinating and astute analysis "Unfortunate Germany:
Rape, Motherhood, and Survival 1945-1950," Working
Papers, University of California Center for German and
European Studies, Working Paper 5.28, September
1996. An equally discerning and stimulating historical
examination of the Russian rapes in 1945, which continued on
even into the period of the peacetime Soviet Military
Administration, can be found in Norman M. Naimark, The
Russians in Germany. A History of the Soviet Zone of
Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), 69-140.
13. A host of articles and editorials in
the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1991-1993
document the pro-Croatian stance of Johann Georg
Reißmüller. The term "Völkergefängnis",
describing the alleged communist repression by an allegedly
Serb-dominated Yugoslav state, was used in its most
sensational context on the cover page of the Spiegel, 8 July
1991.
For a perceptive analysis of the German
media's anti-Serbian, pro-Croatian/pro-Slovenian bias,
especially in the early days of Yugoslavia's imminent
breakup, and the implications of biased reporting for both
the image of the Serbs and the journalistic profession as a
whole, see Mira Beham, Kriegstrommeln. Medien, Krieg und
Politik (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1996),
especially 206-239, reference to Reißmüller, 211.
Similarly, in her essay "Die Medien als
Brandstifter," in Serbien muß sterbien,
118-143, Beham traces the German media's overwhelming
partisan support-on both the political right and left-for the
Croatian (and Slovenian) struggle for independence. While
rooting for the Croatian "victims," the media
completely ignored the consequences which the deliberate
break-up of the multinational Yugoslav state, together with
the recognition of Croatia, would have not only for the Serb
minority in Croatia, but also for the status of multi-ethnic
Bosnia-Herzegovina in its dependency on the integrity of the
Yugoslav federation.
An especially astute analysis of the
foreign-policy implications of Chancellor Kohl's and Foreign
Minister Genscher's decision to recognize Croatia is the
article by Beverly Crawford, "Explaining Defection from
International Cooperation. Germany's Unilateral Recognition
of Croatia," World Politics, vol. 48, no. 4
(July 1996), 482-521.
14. I thank Mirjana Samardzija of the North
American Analysis Group, San Francisco, for pointing out that
the EC and UN issued several strong resolutions condemning
Serbian acts of sexual violence before the inquiries began.
None of these resolutions was in fact substantiated by
documented evidence. Thus, EC representatives at the European
Council held at Edinburgh on December 11 and 12 stated that
they were "[a]ppalled by the systematic detention and
rape of Muslim women, ... [and] acts of unspeakable
brutality, which form the deliberate strategy to terrorise
the Muslim community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in order to
achieve the purpose of ethnic cleansing," and resolved
that "[t]hose responsible for these crimes against
humanity will be held personally accountable and brought to
justice." (Quoted from the "Declaration on the
Treatment of Muslim Women in the Former Yugoslavia,"
Conclusions of the Presidency, Edinburgh Summit, December 12,
1992). In the days following, UN Security Council
representatives of Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and
Northern Ireland, also censured the Serbian military for
crimes against Muslim women. (See, for example, Declaration
on former Yugoslavia, UN Security Council, Distr.
General, S/24960, 14 December 1992, Annex I and II).
Similarly, a UN press release of December 18 pointed to
shocking reports of "massive, organized and systematic
detention and rape of women, particularly Muslim women"
and of "acts of unspeakable brutality," demanding
that "all detention camps, particularly, camps for women
should be closed immediately." (Quoted from United
Nations, Press Release, SC/5521, Security Council, 3150th
Meeting, 18 December 1992.)
15. The investigation of the EC Delegation,
under the leadership of Dame Anne Warburton, was conducted in
two phases, the first from December 18-24, 1992 and the
second from January 19-26, 1993. With respect to the
gathering of data, the EC report stated that "[t]he
inherent difficulties involved in compiling statistics on
rape and other sexual abuse have been hugely accentuated in
the current chaotic conditions. Given these limitations, the
mission nevertheless concluded that the "rape of Muslim
women has been ... perpetrated on a wide scale and in such a
ways as to be part of a clearly recognisable pattern,
sufficient to form an important element of war
strategy." Indeed, the EC mission concluded, rape was
"part of a pattern of abuse, usually perpetrated with
the conscious intention of demoralising and terrorising
communities, driving them from their home regions and
demonstrating the power of the invading forces." From
this perspective, rape could "not be seen as incidental
to the main purposes of the aggression but as serving a
strategic purpose itself." Quoted from the Reports
of the EC Investigating Mission into the Treatment of Muslim
Women in the Former Yugoslavia, Phase I: 18-24 December
1992, Phase II: January 19-26, 1993.
16. For the series of objections voiced at
a hearing on the findings of the EC commission, see
"Public Hearing on the Rape of Women in Former
Yugoslavia," Committee on Women's Rights. Parlament
Europeen: Cahiers. Schriftenreihe. Specials, Nr. 11,
Brussels, 17 & 18 February 1993. For a summary of the
main points of this critique see "Rapes in Yugoslavia.
Separating Fact from Fictin," North American Analysis
Group, San Francisco, MS, n.d., 5-6. The most frequently
voiced criticisms of the EC commission's assessment was that
there was little or no direct contact with the victims, that
the EC report ignored the victimization of non-Muslim women,
that it failed to stress the fact that abuses were
perpetrated against women of all ethnic groups, and that the
data gathered by the EC mission would not stand up in a court
of law.
In her excellent article, "Bosnia:
Questions about Rape," New York Review of Books
(25 March 1993), 1-6, the Helsinki Watch relief worker, Jeri
Laber, also mentions that the EC "report did not give
the basis for the figure [of 20,000-N.v.R.F.] or any
sources."
17. Special Rapporteur (Tadeusz
Mazowiecki), "Report of the Team of Experts on their
Mission to Investigate Allegations of Rape in the Territory
of the Former Yugoslavia from 12 to 23 January 1992, I/CN.
4/1992750, 10 February 1993, 64-75. Investigating the Bosnian
rapes under the broader category of human rights, this team
of experts concluded, like the preceding EC missions, that
rape in Bosnia was widespread and was committed on all sides,
though the largest number of rape victims were to be found
among Bosnian Muslims. But as to the rape camps,
"[a]ttempts ... to locate specific places where women
were allegedly detained and raped have proved unsuccessful to
date," since the commission lacked precise information
and some of the "alleged rape camps were found to be
empty." Ibid., 64.
More importantly, in an attempt to gain as
wide a variety of documentary evidence as possible, the
commission held "interviews with physicians" and
reviewed "medical records" from (6) major
hospitals. On the basis of these evaluations, as well as a
number of testimonies, Mazowiecky's "team of experts was
able to identify 119 pregnancies resulting from rape during
1992," Ibid., 64.
18. In an "analysis of statistical
data and medical records," Mazowiecky's investigative
commission concluded that "[r]ape is among the most
under-reported crimes in peacetime throughout the world.
Because of the stigma attached to rape, shame and secrecy
often silence the victims. According to many physicians and
psychologists whom the team of experts met in the former
Yugoslavia, even in peacetime women rarely disclosed that
they had been raped, whether Croatian, Muslim or Serbian ....
Rape continues to be under-reported during wartime. Women who
are raped by soldiers see it as useless to press charges or
demand justice. ... Soldiers who have license to rape because
of their military association is a form of institutionalized
violence that leaves victims with little recourse."
Ibid., 66. On the "under-reporting" of rape, see
also Slavenka Drakulic, "Women Hide behind a Wall of
Silence", The Nation, (1 March 1993), 267-272.
The hazards in collecting evidence, for
both fact-finding missions and victims themselves, are summed
up well by Laber: "Our mission to collect credible
testimony of rape was complicated by the presence, especially
in Zagreb, of local and international women's and human
rights groups, as well as journalists and television
crews-all looking for rape victims to interview. Some victims
have refused to be interviewed, feeling that they will be
exploited yet again, this time by foreigners and the press.
The plucky few who have been willing to talk have been
interviewed over and over again, and some of them, aware of
what the press is seeking, have been embroidering the facts
for maximum effect." Laber, "Bosnia," New
York Review, 4.
19. Stiglmayer, "The War in the Former
Yugoslavia, in Mass Rape, 17, 24.
20. One of the strongest criticism had come
from Simone Veil, the prominent French politician who
participated in the first EC mission at the end of 1992. See
"Public Hearing on the Rape of Women," Cahiers,
4-5. For the statement of the British official who had acted
as a coordinator of the Dame Warburton's mission, see New
York Times, 20 October 1993.
21. See Stiglmayer, "The War in the
Former Yugoslavia," in Mass Rape, 25, 26. Aside
from Stiglmayer and Gutman, who wrote the Preface to Mass
Rape, many writers are convinced that the high numbers
of Muslims killed attest to the systematic Serbian
"genocide" of the Bosnian Muslim population. A few
of the more prominent authors, often also activists for the
Bosnian Muslim cause, who put forth the thesis of a Serbian
holocaust are: David Rieff, Slaughterhouse. Bosnia and
the Failure of the West (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1995; Thomas Cushman and S. G. Mestrovic,
"Introduction," in This Time We Knew. Western
Responses to Genocide in Bosnia, ed. Thomas Cushman and
S. G. Mestrovic (New York: New York University Press, 1996),
1-38; Philip J. Cohen, "The Complicity of Serbian
Intellectuals in Genocide in the 1990s," in This
Time We Knew, 39-64; Mark Thompson, "The Final
Solution of Bosnia-Herzegovina," in Why Bosnia, eds.
Rabia Ali and L. Lifschutz, 165-185; Ed Vulliamy, Seasons
in Hell. Understanding Bosnia's War (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1994); Beverly Allen, Rape Warfare. The
Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996)
22. For Gutman, Stiglmayer's major
achievement lay in her ability to document "the
systematic rape of Bosnian women of Muslim or Croat origin by
Serb forces" as a "central element in the
genocide." Even though such documentation is largely
"anecdotal"-as precise numbers are impossible-the
hundreds of stories of Serb brutality in their aggregate
nevertheless "suggest a regime of terror, regimentation,
and a pattern of criminality that easily recalls the Third
Reich." See, Gutman, "Foreword," in Mass
Rape, ix, xii. The comment by Drakulic, albeit in a
different context, also highlights the extent to which
data-even if it was questionable- was considered legitimate,
especially if serving a political-in this case the
Muslim-cause, In Drakulic's words, "even if rapes were
used for political propaganda, this could be justified
because of the Serbian policy of exiling and destroying the
Muslim population. If an entire ethnic group is
systematically destroyed to the point of genocide, it is
legitimate to "use" accounts of rape (or anything
else for that matter) as a means of getting attention and
influencing public opinion." Drakulic, "Women Hide
Behind a Wall of Silence," ibid., 272.
23. For the view that in the
Serbian-Croatian war in June 1991 only Croats (asserting
their constitutional right to independence) were victims
(because of Serbian aggression), see Stiglmayer, in Mass
Rape, 16; Allen, Rape Warfare, 54-55; Cohen, "The
Complicity of Serbian Intellectuals," in This Time
We Knew, 42-45; Slaven Letica, "The 'West Side
Story' of the Collapse of Yugoslavia and the Wars in
Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina," ibid.,
180-181.
The argument for the propensity of the
Serbs for genocidal rape is set forth in a highly sensational
manner by the feminist-activist Catherine A. MacKinnon,
"Turning Rape into Pornography: Postmodern
Genocide," in Mass Rape, 73-81. Serbs allegedly
video-taped rapes as "'they [were] happening',"
then "switched ethnic labels," forcing victims
(Croatian women) to confess that it was Croatian men who had
raped them. MacKinnon's thesis was-justifiably-attacked from
several sides for misrepresentation of facts or lack of
evidence altogether. A trenchant, as well as moving, critique
is by Vesna Kesic, "A Response to Catharine MacKinnon's
Article 'Turning Rape Into Pornography: Postmodern
Genocide'," Hastings Women's Law Journal, vol.
5, no. 2 (Summer 1994), 267-280. Another explanation for the
absence of rape among Muslims points to certain factors in
Muslim culture which are seen as constraining on the practice
of rape. Since, in one such explanation, "male supremacy
is completely assured" in Muslim societies, they
generally have a "lower incidence of rape." See
Ruth Seifert, "War and Rape: A Preliminary
Analysis," in Mass Rape," 56. A more
impressionistic interpretation of such "cultural
models" is rendered by Azra Zahlihic-Kaurin, The Muslim
Women, ibid., 170-173. This describes the hearkening
of Muslims, especially Muslim women, to venerable traditions
(which had been suppressed by Communism), but the process of
returning to pristine values (symbolized in the story of
"Emina," the young girl who saves her honor by
dying at the hands of Chetnik would-be-rapists) is rudely
interrupted by war, rapes, and sexual abuses. The reference
is obviously to the current Bosnian war.
24. As one reporter in the field pointed
out, in an opinion rarely heard in the first two years of the
Bosnian war, Serbs "didn't hold monopoly rights on evil.
There were massacres also by Croats and even by Muslims, and
villages burned by both." This certainly was the case in
mutual "ethnic-cleansing" actions during the
Muslim-Croat conflict in 1993, when Croats
"cleansed" Muslims as much as they were cleansed by
Croats. For many insightful observations in this respect, see
the account by the war-reporter Martin Bell, In Harm's
Way. Reflections of a War-Zone Thug, rev. ed. (London:
Penguin Books, 1996), quote 114. No side is spared,
similarly, in the balanced account of the Yugoslav war by the
reporter and close observer of events in the Balkans, Misha
Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia. The Third Balkan War,
3d. rev. ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1996).
25. The first official documentation of
personal testimonies by Serbian women who had been sexually
abused and tortured by Croatian and Muslim soldiers was
submitted to the United Nations already on December 18, 1992
by the Chargé d'affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of
Yugoslavia to the United Nations. See UN General Assembly
Security Council, "Human Rights Questions: Human Rights
Situations and Reports of Special Rapporteurs and
Representatives," Document A/47/813, S/24991, 18
December 1992. These "Depositions of Serbian
Women," coming just as the first EC mission was
launched, represented the only Bosnian rape documentation of
an international agency at that time. The report was not
released, however, until more than two weeks later, January
5, 1992, when the results of the first EC mission also had
been completed. See "Separating Fact," 3.
Personal testimonies of Serbian women on
Muslim and Croatian atrocities have been available since
1993. See "Documentation on the Violation of Human
Rights, Ethnic Cleansing and Violence by Croatian and Moslem
Armed Formations Against the Serb population in
Bosnia-Herzegovina," and "Rape and Sexual Abuse of
Serb Women, Men and Children in Areas Controlled by Croatian
and Moslem Formations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia,
1991-1993," Council of Information Center, Belgrade.
At a meeting in Geneva in the fall of 1992,
the three warring parties indicated the numbers and
distribution of detention camps that had been set by each
ethnic group, respectively, for civilian refugees fleeing war
zones or forcible driven out. See Kovacevic, Slobodanka and
Putnik Dajic, Chronology of the Yugoslav Crisis (Belgrade:
Institute for European Studies), esp. 112, 152. According to
the International Committee of the Red Cross, there were 25
detention centers in Bosnia-Herzegovina containing a total of
2,692 civilians. Of these, 1,203 detainees were held by
Bosnian Serbs in 8 camps, 1,061 by Muslim forces in 12 camps,
and 428 by Croats in 5 camps."
For the location of camps where a
considerable number of Serbs were being abused and tortured
since the beginning of the Bosnian war, see "Map of
Settlements and Camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina in which
Systematic Rape and Sexual Harassment of Ethnic Serb Women,
Men and Children was Performed, Council of Information
Center, Belgrade, 1993.
26. Stiglmayer and Gutman base their
accounts on personal interviews with victims, on eyewitness
stories, and on the official sources provided by the Bosnian
and Croatian government, such as the Croatian Ministry of
Health, Zagreb, the Prijedor Homeland Club, and the Sarajevo
State Commission for Investigation of War Crimes.
27. Gutman, "Foreword," Mass
Rape, xi; Cohen, "The Complicity of Serbian
Intellectuals," in This Time We Knew, 53;
Allen, Rape Warfare, 250-251, n. 2. Here Allen cites
extensively from a report by the Chairman of the UN appointed
Commission of Experts (October 1992), Cherif Bassiouni:
"Bosnian Government camps are reported to have been the
site of cases of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
These allegations include killing and torture of Croatian and
Serbian prisoners. The number of reports and allegations are,
however, limited. The Commission has not been able to detect
any particular policy of wrongdoing." With respect to
the Bosnian-Croat and Croatian Defence Council camps (mostly
in the Krajina and eastern and western Slavonia), where Serbs
and Bosnian Muslims were subjected to "killing, torture
and rape," the Commission could likewise not
"detect any particular pattern or policy in operating
these camps." Quoted from, United Nations General
Assembly, "Final Report of the Commission of Experts
Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780
(1992)," Chair, Commission of Experts, Cherif Bassiouni.
General Document S/1994/674, May 27, 1994.
28. The quote refers to the title of the
exhibit "Faces of Sorrow: Agony in the Former
Yugoslavia," which opened at the United States Holocaust
Museum in September 1994. Despite many protests against the
use of the "Holocaust as a political forum," the
Chairman of the US Holocaust Memorial Council, Miles Lerman,
justified the decision of the Museum in words that clearly
pointed to the Serbs as perpetrators and the Croats and
Muslims as victims in this war: "In view of the
contemporary events in the former Yugoslavia-the murder of
women and children, and the renewed acts of 'ethnic
cleansing'-morality demands of us that we not remain
complacent. Silence is lethal." Needless to say, the
exhibit did not show many Serbian "faces of
sorrow." See the brochures accompanying the exhibit
which provide historical background and explain the aim of
the exhibit; also Alfred Lipson, "Anger at the Holocaust
Museum Exhibit," Midstream, (December 1994).
29. The international criminal court,
mandated by the United Nations Security Council (under
considerable pressure by the United States), emerged in
response to the ongoing atrocities in the former Yugoslavia,
especially the media's "death-camp" and
"rape-camp" stories in the summer of 1992. Set up
in The Hague in May 1993, this International Criminal
Tribunal was to prosecute persons who had seriously violated
humanitarian law, but until 1995 the court had indicted Serbs
only. For some of the legal and practical problems,
especially in connection with the court's legitimacy and
effectiveness as an international tribunal, see Alfred P.
Rubin, "An International Criminal Tribunal for Former
Yugoslavia?" Pace International Law Review,
vol. VI, no. 1 (Winter 1994), 7-17; Ruth Wedgwood, "War
Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia: Comments on the
International War Crimes Tribunal, Virginia Journal of
International Law, vol 34, no. 2 (Winter 1994), 267-275.
In a Memorandum on the International Criminal Tribunal of the
Former Yugoslavia of January 8, 1996 (privately distributed),
the former well-known news correspondent and author Nora
Beloff questions the "lopsided proceedings" of the
Tribunal by incriminating primarily Serbs for atrocities in
which all sides have engaged, and for violating principles of
justice by charging Bosnian Serbian leaders with
"genocide" before the pertinent evidence had been
collected.
30. One of the earliest voices warning
against exaggerating numbers of rapes was that of Jeri Laber.
In her view, "[g]overnments, journalists, and
organizations that have used numbers arbitrarily in
discussing cases of rape may be doing a great disservice to
the victims. It would be unfortunate if the irresponsible use
of figures led to a backlash, raising doubts about the
credibility of many of the claims that have been made."
"Bosnian Questions," New York Review, 4.
The first critically analyze the highly
inflated numbers of civilian and military casualties in the
war was George Kenney, "The Bosnia Calculation: How Many
Have Died?," New York Times Magazine, vol. 42
(23 April 1995), 2 pages. Kenney's findings of 25,000 to
60,000 civilian and military deaths in the Bosnian war-as
opposed to the claim of 250,000-has not only been attacked by
those claiming Serbian "genocide," but also,
apparently, largely ignored. The continuing numbers game,
based solely on allegations by the Muslim side without any
corroboration, has led to totally contradictory claims with
respect to the victimization of Muslims. The dangers of such
numbers games, leading to a seemingly endless regurgitation
of horror stories that pull on the reader's emotional
strings, are reiterated by Kenney in his "Steering Clear
of Balkan Shoals," The Nation (January 8/15,
1996), 21-24.
31. This involvement culminated in American
support, primarily through technical know-how and military
training, of Croatian armed forces. With this kind of
assistance, the Croatian military was able to launch the
completely successful offensive in August 1995 against the
Krajina Serbs. "Operation Storm" forced well over
150,000 Serbs out of their age-old homelands in what has been
called by one author "the largest single exodus in
Europe since the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans."
Croatia, for all intents and purposes, had become ethnically
pure. The US government's tacit approval of this biggest
"ethnic-cleansing" operation to date in the former
Yugoslavia represented a 180-degree reversal of its previous
strictures against the practice of forcibly expelling ethnic
minorities. See Glenny, Fall of Yugoslavia, 282-286;
quote 284.
32. Aryeh Neier, "Watching
Rights," The Nation, (March 1, 1993), 259,
makes a powerful plea against citing inflated numbers without
citing supporting evidence.
33. The media response to the Croatian
"Operation Storm" in August 1995 gave a hint of how
the American government and public viewed the victimization
of Serbs in general. An endless stream of Serbian refugees,
driven out of their homes by the Croats, made their
weeks-long trek across country under the taunts, jeers, and
stones of bystanders and even bombs by the Croatian military.
Yet the news coverage of this event in the United States was
sparse. Furthermore, the American government downplayed this
tragedy, which was in full sight of the whole world, by
insisting that through the Croatian offensive a "Window
of Opportunity" (for peace) had been created; the press
often saw a certain justice in the fact that the Croatian
Serbs, formerly "occupying" the Krajina, now
themselves experienced the ravages of "ethnic
cleansing."
In view of a consistently and largely
anti-Serbian media, it comes as no surprise perhaps that
crimes of rape in Bosnia are still, even after four years,
associated primarily with Serbs. The media has not covered
Croatian, let alone Muslim, rapes in remotely the same way as
those attributed to Serbs. Moreover, all materials - films,
publicized stories, interviews-on the Bosnian rape issue
relate to Croatian and Muslim victims, thus completely
bypassing Serbian victimization. For the most recent efforts
to arouse public sympathy on behalf of Croatian and Muslim
rape victims, see Gayle Kirshenbaum, "Rape Prosecuted as
War Weapon," Ms, January/February 1997. The article
describes the ordeal of Jadranka Cigelj and Nusreta Sivac,
two rape victims from Bosnia and Croatia who travel through
the States showing the film documentary "Calling the
Ghosts." The are widely seen "as representatives of
the many women who have told their stories."
Also the review "Taking Two Bosnian
Women's Case to the World," The New York Times,
(23 February 1997), reminds the reader, in the words of David
Rieff and others, of the administration's "unwillingness
to stop the genocide early on and its apparent hesitancy now
to help bring war criminals to justice." It is
understood that the "genocide" and "war
criminals" referred to here are "Serbian."
34. Helke Sander, "Prologue," in
Mass Rape, xxi.
35. Naimark, Russians in Germany,
106-109.
