Abstract
Rape has always accompanied war. In the twentieth century alone there have been numerous examples occurring in countries as diverse as China, Germany, India and Rwanda.1 Believing it to be a natural consequence of conflict, military historians have tended to ignore that rape is also a weapon of war. This belief has prevented historians from looking seriously at the act of rape, both its meanings and its consequences. As it became clear in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, rape is more than a by-product of war: the act itself provides a vital function in the destruction and disgrace of an enemy. However, what has not been as clear in the Balkans is the exact nature of the rapes which did occur there. Were the rapes perpetrated against Bosnian Muslims and Croats the result of an intentional and systemic policy ordered by Bosnian Serbian command, or were they random acts by soldiers, militias and a few sadistic leaders at the local level? This paper will attempt to answer this question through a case study of the Bosnian city of Foca, an area which first became synonymous with mass rape in 1992. By focusing on this singular example I will attempt both to contextualize mass rape and to answer some broader questions regarding its use in the former Yugoslavia. I will seek to determine why mass rape happened and how it came to be seen as a legitimate weapon of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
In 1937–1938, Japanese troops raped approximately 50,000 women in Nanking, China. Historians argue that the rapes do not appear to have been ordered and may have been motivated by the desire to show domination. In this regard the rapes were largely unsuccessful, as coupled with the murder of 300,000 Chinese, the rapes contributed to increased rebellion, rather than submission. J. S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (New York, 2001), pp. 366–368.
In 1945, 2 million German women were raped by Red Army soldiers advancing into Berlin. Historians agree that revenge was the motivation for these rapes, and while not explicitly ordered, the rapes appear to have been officially sanctioned. L. Morrow, ‘Unspeakable’, Time (22 February 1993)
and S. Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York, 1975), pp. 66–67. In 1947–1948, an estimated 75,000 women were raped during the India/Pakistan partition. Women were abducted and raped by men of differing religions. Rapes occurred by all sides, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. In response many women were martyred, either by killing themselves or being killed by men of their own religious background.
U. Butalia, ‘A Question of Silence: Partition, Women and the State’, Gender and Catastrophe, ed. R. Lentin (New York, 1997), pp. 91–99. Finally, in 1994, an untold number of rapes occurred in the Rwandan genocide. Both Tutsi and sympathetic Hutu women were the victims of Hutu violence. This was a clear case of genocidal rape, perpetrated along tribal lines. It is estimated that 800,000 persons died over the course of 100 days in the Rwandan genocide. ‘Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and Its Aftermath’, Human Rights Watch (September 1996) http://hrw.org/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm (8 April 2004).
B. Harden, ‘In Bosnia, “It is Very Ugly, Very Sad What is Happening”’, The Washington Post (13 April 1992), A16.
N. Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ (College Station, TX, 1995), p. 5. Census statistics also confirmed in The Washington Post.
P. Maass, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (New York, 1996), p. 27.
T. Butler, ‘The Ends of History: Balkan Culture and Catastrophe’, The Washington Post (30 August 1992), C3.
T. Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, 2nd edn (New Haven, 2000), p. xi.
Popularized during the Second World War, broadly speaking, Ustasha referred to Croatian nationalists, while Chetnik was a term applied to Serbian guerilla fighters. In the most recent conflict the terms were used largely as derogatory labels, although some Serbian paramilitary troops referred to themselves as Chetniks. Information derived from A. Callmard, Investigating Women’s Rights Violations in Armed Conflict (Canada, 2001).
Criteria and definition of genocidal rape derived from, B. Allen, Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (Minneapolis, 1996), p. ii.
Ibid., p. 4. Also see F. Hartmann’s ‘Bosnia’, in Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, ed., R. Gutman and D. Rieff (New York, 1999) for a discussion of this topic and K. Doubt’s article ‘On the Latent Function of Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia’ which discusses why the policy of ethnic cleansing was far more brutal in Bosnia than in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, found at http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/WitnessDoubtLatent.html.
N. Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (Washington Square: New York, 1994), p. 188. Judah, The Serbs, p. 121.
P. Maass, ‘Refugees Give Accounts of Random Serb Terror’, The Washington Post (5 August 1992), A27. Maass’s 1996 book, Love Thy Neighbor reveals a very different outlook on the war and its systemic atrocities.
J. Pomfret, ‘Atrocities Leave Thirst for Vengeance in the Balkans’, The Washington Post (18 December 1995), A17. Further testimony from perpetrators can be found in A. Stiglmayer’s ‘The Rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina’, pp. 147–161.
E. Vulliamy, Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia’s War (New York, 1994), p. 201.
K. D. Askin, War Crimes against Women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals (The Hague, 1997), p. 265.
T. Salzman, ‘Rape Camps, Forced Impregnation, and Ethnic Cleansing: Religious, Cultural and Ethical Responses to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia’, War’s Dirty Secret: Rape, Prostitution and Other Crimes against Women, ed. A. L. Barstow (Cleveland, 2000), pp. 72–73.
N. M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 169–170.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2009 Teresa Iacobelli
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Iacobelli, T. (2009). The ‘Sum of Such Actions’: Investigating Mass Rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina through a Case Study of Foca. In: Herzog, D. (eds) Brutality and Desire. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234291_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234291_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36006-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-23429-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)