They happened on a large scale in other cities when NATO intervened to lessen temporarily the Serb siege of Sarajevo. It is ironic that, in the aftermath of genocidal rape, a woman s voice becomes at once her greatest and most destructive weapon. If she speaks, she summons the outside world s attention to the atrocities being committed within the nation. At the same time, however, she experiences tremendous guilt, knowing that her voice may bring destruction to her family, as well as thousands of other innocent women. In a society where a woman s sexual purity is highly valued, such a marking could be devastating to her reputation.
Muslim society is patriarchal.
A woman s honor is important, and the men are jealous. The consequences of revealing one s rape were often too grave. Most women chose to endure in silence rather than to risk the unknown. In this way, crimes against women went unrecorded in the registry of human atrocity. Human rights have traditionally not been women s rights.