Rape during the Bosnian War

[11] The trial of VRS member Dragoljub Kunarac was the first time in any national or international jurisprudence that a person was convicted of using rape as a weapon of war.

Historians such as Niall Ferguson have assessed a key factor behind the high-level decision to use mass rape for ethnic cleansing as being misguided nationalism.

Bosniak houses and apartments were looted or razed to the ground, the civilian population were rounded up, some were physically abused or murdered during the process.

"[34] The team of European Community investigators, including Simone Veil and Anne Warburton, similarly concluded in their 1993 report that rape carried out by the Bosnian Serb forces was not a secondary effect of the conflict but part of a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing and was "perpetrated with the conscious intention of demoralizing and terrorizing communities, driving them from their home regions and demonstrating the power of the invading forces".

[35] Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch also concluded during the conflict that rape was being used as a weapon of war, with the primary purpose being to cause humiliation, degradation, and intimidation to ensure the survivors would leave and never return.

[44] Testimony from a Kalinovik camp survivor (where roughly 100 women had been detained and subjected to "multiple perpetrator rape") said that the rapists continually told their victims, "You are going to have our children.

[45] A Serbian national song Marš na Drinu was played over the loudspeaker signalling to the women that rapes and assaults were imminent.

[51] At the Uzamnica camp, one witness in the trial of Oliver Krsmanović, charged with crimes relating to the Višegrad massacres, claimed that the male detainees were at one time forced to rape women.

[43] At the joint Bosniak-Croat run Čelebići facility, Serb civilians were subjected to various forms of torture and sexual abuse, including rape.

[60] In Doboj, Bosnian Serb forces separated the females from the men and then facilitated the rape of some women by their own male family members.

[63][62] Many male victims were found to have been ostracised from their communities, often being stripped of their masculinity or accused of homosexuality due to the predominantly masculinist culture in Bosnia.

[66] Much attention has been paid to the need to understand the reality of what happened during the war, dispel myths, and for responsible leaders to be brought to justice and be encouraged to accept their guilt for the mass rapes and other atrocities.

From the 1960s until the beginning of the war, nearly twelve per cent of marriages were mixed (between members of different communities), and young citizens would often refer to themselves as Bosnians rather than identifying their ethnicity.

After the conflict it has been effectively mandatory to be identified as either Bosniak, Serb or Croat and this has been a problem for the children of rape victims as they come of age.

As Pierre Bayard puts it, "[i]n Bosnia the rapes not only accompanied the advance of the Serbian armies, they were also the result of a concerted policy of cultural eradication.

Against this background, it is obvious that rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina are taking place 'on a large scale' (UN and EC), that they are acquiring a systematic character, and that 'in by far the most instances Muslim (Bosniak) women are the victims of the Serbian forces' (Amnesty International).

[74] A Central Intelligence Agency report leaked in 1995 stated that Serb forces were responsible for 90 per cent of the atrocities committed during the conflict.

[80] Judges from the ICTY ruled during the trial of Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač and Milorad Krnojelac that rape had been used by the Bosnian Serb armed forces as an "instrument of terror".

[87] On 10 March 1997, in what is best known as the Čelebići case, Hazim Delić, Zejnil Delalić, Zdravko Mucić and Esad Landžo were put on trial.

[90] Delić was found guilty of using rape as torture, which was a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and that he had violated the laws and customs of war.

[95] The trial chamber gave Furundžija two sentences of 10 and 8 years to run concurrently having found him guilty under article three, in that he had violated "the laws or customs of war for torture and for outrages upon personal dignity, including rape.

"[96] In May 2009, Jadranko Prlić, who had been prime minister of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Croat wartime state of Herzeg-Bosnia, was convicted of murder, rape and expulsion of Bosniaks.

[111] During the trial, the defense produced ten witnesses who claimed that Nikačević had not taken part in any war crimes, and had at times risked his own safety to help others.

[112] He was found guilty on 19 February 2009 and sentenced to 8 years' imprisonment for the rapes of both women, and for aiding and abetting in the abduction and illegal detention of a Bosniak civilian, who was later killed at an undisclosed location.

[113] Milorad Krnojelac, Janko Janjić, Dragan Gagović and others were indicted in 1992 for human rights violations committed during the ethnic cleansing of Foča.

[114] Ante Kovač, who was a commander of the military police in the Croat Defence Council, was indicted on 25 March 2008 on war crimes carried out against Bosniaks in the municipality of Vitez in 1993.

[116] Veselin Vlahović, also known as "Batko" or the "Monster of Grbavica", was sentenced to 45 years' imprisonment in March 2013, having been found guilty on more than sixty counts, including the murder, rape and torture of Bosniak and Croat civilians during the Siege of Sarajevo.

[121][122] The Abandoned is a 2010 Bosnian film directed by Adis Bakrač and written by Zlatko Topčić, which is the story of a boy from an orphanage who tries to find out the truth about his origins, it being implied that he is the child of a rape.

The 1998 war film Savior is about an American mercenary escorting a Serb woman to a UN safe area after she has been raped and impregnated by a Bosniak soldier.

[127] Both of the documentaries A Boy from A War Movie (2004) and An Invisible Child's Trap (2015), directed by Šemsudin Gegić, discuss the lives of children conceived as a result of wartime rape.