another season

The estimated 50,000 rapes that occurred during the conflict in Bosnia have resulted in just 12 convictions in national courts. The process has been painfully slow. Women describe being treated in the courtroom as just another exhibit from which evidence can be extracted,saying “It is better to be a criminal than a victim in this system”. Most women who endured unspeakable brutality now endure the indignity of seeing their former assailant in the street, the bank, or supermarket,flaunting their impunity. I met with women who, 15 years after the peace agreement, still shake, sigh and weep; one described how the soldiers led her to the entrance of a rape camp, which she remembers as “the door to hell