Assault by Bosnian Croat, Bosnian Government, and Muslim Forces
Human Rights Watch conducted separate interviews with Serbian women who were raped by Croatian forces in the municipalities of Bosanski Brod and Odžak, when the area was under Bosnian Croat and, to a lesser extent, Muslim control.24
Two of the victims had been detained after Muslim and Croatian forces assumed control of their village of Novi Grad. Following a twenty-one-day battle, Serbian forces relinquished their weapons and negotiations began. Both witnesses claim that although the Serbs had been promised safe passage to the predominantly Serbian village of Miloševac, they were detained in the high school in Odžak. According to each of the two women, the men were held in the school gym and the children and some men were released and settled in Odžak, in the homes of Muslims who appeared to have been family friends of the Serbian captives. About two weeks later, the women and children were told that they could return to their homes in Novi Grad. Several Serbian women were then taken from Novi Grad and raped in the village of Posavska Mahala and in the Bulek settlement, near Bosanski Brod.
Human Rights Watch interviewed two women who were raped on two separate occasions by Croatian forces in the village of Posavska Mahala.25The men responsible for both instances of rape appear not to have been members of the Bosnian Croatian forces (HVO) but of a paramilitary group identified as the "Fiery Horses" (Vatreni Konji). The women reported the rapes to the authorities in the town of Novi Grad, but the offenders were not prosecuted.
Gordana, a forty-three-year-old housewife, was raped by Croatian soldiers in the village of Posavska Mahala. According to Gordana:26
The first few days [in Novi Grad] were not bad. [However,] for reasons of safety, several families lived together in one Serbian house. The violence started on June 20. One day, they took three of us women from the house in which I was living, and four women were taken from another house. They dragged us out of our beds, barefoot, at about 1:00 a.m. There were five of them, men in green uniforms without any insignia.
We were taken to a Croatian village, Posavska Mahala, where we were met by another thirty of their soldiers. I know that they were soldiers because I saw their green uniforms in the bright moonlight. One of them grabbed my arm and insisted that I tell him that I loved only him and no one else in the world. As he was dragging me around, he said that he was from Županja [Croatia]. He brought me to an abandoned barn, and we both had to jump in through the window. He then ordered me to undress. I had 4,000 German marks tied around my waist, and he took this away from me.
He raped me, ordered me to get dressed again and handed me back to the others. Another man took me to the house where the other two women were being raped. I told him I had AIDS, so instead of raping me, he forced me to perform fellatio. I was forced to do the same to another soldier. All of this happened on a bed, in one of the rooms in the house where [two other women,] M. and D., were being raped. They were in the other rooms.
L.L. is a thirty-seven-year-old Serbian woman originally from Potičanski Lipik, near Odžak.27 She, too, says that she was raped by Croatian soldiers in the village of Posavska Mahala.
L.L. claims that her village was first shelled from the Croatian side of the Sava River on April 18 or 19, 1992. The attack continued for approximately three weeks. On May 8, L.L., her sister, a neighbor and their four children fled to the village of Hasić, where they were taken in by a Muslim man, I.D. According to L.L., Croatian military police officers told the displaced Serbs in Hasić to return to their homes in Potičanski Lipik, where the Serbian women were sexually abused by Croatian forces. According to L.L.:
The Croatian military police came [to the village of Hasić]. They said we had to go back home. They wore green army uniforms and white belts. They said they would burn the Muslim houses if they kept the Serbs with them. When we got home, we had to work in the fields. The Croatian soldiers—my neighbors—started mistreating women in their homes.
In the early morning hours of June 5, 1992, soldiers broke into the house of D.N., where L.L. had taken refuge with a group of women and children. L.L. was taken to another house and told to call out the names of three women staying there. According to L.L.:
There were fifteen of them. They called themselves the Fiery Horses. They took me to a house that belongs to M.B. They hit me and told me to call out of the house three women who were staying there: M.D., M.N., and S.S.
All four of us were put in the back of a car and taken to their headquarters in Posavaska Mahala, where they took us to two separate houses and started to mistreat us. I know that seven of them raped me two times each. I counted seven and then I fainted.
I was in a large room of the house that belonged to J.B. They ripped off my clothes and started raping me. They didn't spare my mouth or my anus. When this man Marijan came [toward me], I asked him, "What are you doing to us?" He [cursed me]. He threatened to kill my sons if I told anyone about the rape.
L.L. identified several of her rapists by name. They were Marijan Brnić, Jozo Barukčić, Jozo's father, Martin Barukčić, another Martin Barukčić, Ilija Jurić, and Ilija Glavaš. According to L.L.:
The fifteen men were going from one woman to another. They kept me there until 5:30 that morning. They made me leave the house naked. Marijan kicked me from behind and told me to walk home through the fields. I said I couldn't, and he cursed me and said, "You survived fifteen of us and you can't walk home?"
L.L. reported the rapes to the Croatian police in Novi Grad. The police took her to a doctor in Odžak and arrested the rapists. According to L.L., Croats28 accused the police of defending "Četniks"29 and attacked the police station. The rapists were later released.
Rape has been described as part of the "spoils of war." However, in Bosnia-Hercegovina, this abuse has been used as a weapon of war against thecivilian population. In Bosnia, all parties to the conflict have raped civilian women of the "enemy" ethnic group, but the use of rape by Bosnian Serb forces' has been particularly widespread and designed to further the policy of ethnic-cleansing. By attacking and terrorizing individual women, Serb soldiers and paramilitary forces send the message to the entire community that no one is or will be safe from violence. As a result, entire families and villages have fled.
24 The two victims were introduced to Human Rights Watch representatives by the Serbian government's Commission for War Crimes and Genocide. They were interviewed in January 1993 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Although the women had testified on numerous occasions on behalf of the Serbian government, Human Rights Watch found their testimonies credible.
25 Interview, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, January 1993. The witnesses were identified by the Yugoslav State Commission on War Crimes and Genocide.
26 Interview, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, January 1993.
27 Ibid.. Prior to speaking with us, she talked to numerous journalist and others.
28 The witness did not specify if the Croats were members of the armed forces, the police or civilians.
29 During the Second World War, Serbian forces loyal to the Serbian king fought against the Croatian fascists known as Ustaša, Tito's communist Partisans, and at times with and against the Nazis. The main objective of the Četniks was the restoration of the Serbian monarchy and the creation of a Greater Serbia. Feared for their brutality, the Četniks committed atrocities against non-Serbs and Serbs opposed to their policies in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Serbia. Croats and Muslims both in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina commonly refer to Serbian military and paramilitary forces engaged in the current wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina as "Četniks." The Yugoslav army and some Serbian paramilitary groups vehemently reject the label "Četniks," claiming they are merely defenders of their people and their land and that they are not extremists. Others, such as paramilitary units loyal to the ultra-right wing former leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Šešelj, commonly refer to themselves as Četniks.
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