That Someone Guilty Be Punished - International Center for ...

Women [who were captured by Serb soldiers] were kept in various houses, apartments,
gymnasiums or schools. Even prior to their being brought to those detention centres,
some witnesses who testified before the Trial Chamber said that they had been physically
abused or raped by the soldiers who had captured them. Thus, FWS-50, FWS-48,
FWS-75 and FWS-87 stated that they were raped at Buk Bijela, a settlement south of
Foča where they had been taken after their capture. FWS-75 was taken away from the
group by a man of 40–50 years who proceeded to rape her. She was subsequently raped
in this very same room by approximately 10 other men. She fainted after the tenth
man. 118
This was just the beginning of a months-long period of continuous gang rapes during
what was legally judged to be the crime against humanity of enslavement and rape, essentially
constituting what would now be regarded as sexual slavery had this crime been within the
jurisdiction of the ICTY. The trial judgment provides a glimpse of what FWS-75 and other
captives endured throughout this period in its account of a two-week period that was hardly
unique: After spending a week in the apartment of one of the defendants in the Kunarac case,
Radomir Kovač, FWS-75 and another captive, twelve-year old A.B., were taken to another apartment
where “[t]he two girls stayed … for about 15 days, during which they were constantly
raped by at least ten or fifteen Serb soldiers.” 119 Serb soldiers then took the girls to another
apartment, where they stayed “for about 7-10 days, during which time they continued to be
raped.” 120 Radomir Kovač ultimately sold 12-year-old A.B. and FWS-87 to two Montenegrin
soldiers for 500 Deutschmarks each. 121
On December 25, 1992, Kovač handed FWS-75 over to another soldier “in the almost
certain knowledge that [she] would be raped again.” 122 By then, there were virtually no Bosniaks
left in Foča, 51 percent of whose residents were Bosniaks in 1991. 123
32 VICTIMS’ JUSTICE
* * *
Bosnia and Herzegovina is filled with individuals who survived harrowing crimes—and with
the graves of those who did not. 124 No measure of justice can restore what victims have lost
forever, and many of the survivors we interviewed are acutely aware of this. For most survivors,
moreover, specific crimes that forever changed their lives are part of a broader canvas of enduring
trauma, of deeply felt injustices that cannot be redeemed by criminal prosecutions—the
haunting remembrance that it took years before the international community took action to
end their suffering; the post-conflict division of their country under terms that Bosniak victims
see as the rewarding and ratification of ethnic cleansing; the daily injustice of exile from
homes in which generations of their families lived.
But if trials cannot heal victims’ wounds, many “desperately need justice.” 125 Asta Zimbo,
who worked with survivors’ groups on behalf of the International Center for Missing Persons,