From: draskovi@usc.edu (Zoran Draskovic)
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human
Subject: Rape of Serb women
Date: 24 Jan 1993 16:41:04 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu

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APn  01/16 1104  Yugoslavia-RAPE VICTIM
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By JULIJANA MOJSILOVIC
 The Associated Press Writer
   BRCKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- When Zeljka Rajcic's Muslim neighbors came
to take her from her home last April, they said she would be safer with them
than with her Serb parents.
   Instead, she says, she was subjected to a monthlong hell of repeated rape and
abuse.
   "They all were my neighbors ... Ramiz, Meho, Sulejman, Farid," recalled the
skinny, brown-haired 18-year-old.
   "They kept me under guard in a house. I was beaten and raped every day," she
said. "Sometimes Croatian soldiers came. But most of the time my rapists were my
friends from the time before the war.
   "They said they were doing that to me because my father is a Serb fighter.
`We want him instead of you!' they shouted."
   International human rights groups blame Serb fighters for most of what they
have called systematic rape in Bosnia's nearly 10-month-old civil war. Bosnia's
government claims that 50,000 Muslim women have been sexually assaulted, and
that many were impregnated and kept prisoner until it was too late for abortion.
   But Serb accounts like those of Ms. Rajcic indicate that all factions in the
brutal war have been involved to some extent in atrocities.
   The Serbian Information Center in Belgrade has collected numerous personal
accounts of Serb women who say they have been raped by Muslims, often former
neighbors.
   Serbian lobby groups have been encouraging journalists to hear the Serb side
of the story. Reporters found Ms. Rajcic after being directed to Bijelina, about
30 miles to the southeast, but finding no rape victims willing to be
interviewed.
   It was a Muslim who finally helped Ms. Rajcic escape.
   "Farid's brother took me to his place," she said. "He persuaded Farid that I
needed a rest for a night. After Farid checked on me for the last time that
night, his brother and I escaped."
   She believes she would have been killed had she not managed to return to her
hometown of Brcko in northern Bosnia last June.
   "I saw another two Serb girls from Brcko, Tanja and her sister," she said.
"They were brought to the same house where I was, but shortly after that they
were taken away. I later heard they were killed."
   Her voice broke as she spoke of the abortion she said she had in a hospital
in Novi Sad, capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.
   "I didn't want that child, but even if I wanted it I couldn't have had it,"
she said, shutting her eyes and wringing her hands. "They drugged me with some
strong tablets ... and I feared the child might have been born with defects."
   Doctors in Belgrade who have treated Serbian rape victims said they
authorized abortions even if the pregnancies were past the legal maximum of 10
weeks.
   They said that those who had to give birth often did not even want to see
their children, and that many of the women would suffer long-term or incurable
psychological damage.
   In a traditionally male-dominated Balkan culture, the rape of a woman is
considered the worst possible insult to family honor.
   Some historians contend one reason many Christians in Bosnia converted to
Islam when the region was under Turkish rule was to save their women from rape
by Muslims.
   But for Ms. Rajcic, history is of little importance. She fears her future.
   "I don't trust anybody anymore," she said in a subdued voice. "I can't forget
my nightmare and I don't have any hope for my future life."