'SCARS' The poignant testimonies of women victims of war

“I can't deal with this pain alone because I was a witness of it all. Furthermore, my parents were left humiliated dead. Because of all that injustice and pain, I have decided to write this and send it to someone who really cares about human tragedies and destinies. I didn't ask anyone for decorations or anyone's pity”.

This is how Š.Č, from the vicinity of Nevesinje, begins her story (name known to the editorial office), who was arrested in 1992 together with her family members and taken to one of the war camps in BiH, which was under the control of the Serbian side in the previous war.

She spent almost four years in war camps, and after the signing of the Dayton Agreement, she was released, after which she found out that she was the only survivor from her whole family.

After her release, she initiated lawsuits and court proceedings to exercise her rights, and sought justice for the murdered family members, however, as she says, it is still not possible to get justice.

"I was just looking for some justice for my parents. No amount of money in the world can compensate my family and everything I've been through. Since I could not find justice in court, I decided to put my story on paper. I am writing this with the hope that dear God will help me again, that it will fall into the right hands. If I manage to do that, it will be enough for me to know that maybe someone will read this someday", she says while reading a letter (diary) in front of journalists about the circumstances of imprisonment and stay in the war camps.

In the aforementioned letter, she states that she was a victim of wartime torture and was beaten several times.

"They started taking them out one by one. After my brother, they took me out. Since it was night, I could only see their shadows. They took me to a room, they started throwing me away from each other cursing and insulting me. Then they were throwing me to the floor. I just cried and begged them to leave me alone and that I didn't do anything wrong to anyone. I felt so miserable, powerless and desperate as if I had fallen among wild beasts that have no mercy for their victims. They just laughed and threw me from one to the other as if I were a soccer ball and not a living being," notes Š.Č, who was 22 years old at the time.

She mentions that she would never wish the pain and fate she had to anyone, because she lost everything she had in her life, and above all her family, and that her youth and girlish dreams passed away in the war camp.

"When people ask me which detail from the war is the most difficult for me, I don't know what to answer. Every detail of my life is very difficult. Having death thoughts, and you have just begun to live your life. The thought of your life turning upside down in one moment. You become powerless in your pain," Š.Č. adds.

According to research by the Center for Democracy and Transitional Justice, there were more than 950 war camps and prisoner facilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the last war (in the period of 1992-1995).

According to the estimates of various international organizations, more than 200,000 people who survived wartime torture passed through those camps, and it is stated that a large number of prisoners, as many as 25,000, were victims of sexual abuse in the war camps.

Women who are victims of wartime torture continue to face great trauma, and only a few are willing to share their story publicly.

During the research on women victims of war, the research teams of the Gerila.info and Hercegovina.info portals contacted a large number of Associations that gather this population, as well as some of the individual victims, however, they refused to discuss this topic.

"When the war ended, it was somehow easier to talk about it because the circumstances were different. People were full of enthusiasm to return, to restore their houses and to somehow start to normalize their lives, but then, as time passed, those things started to change drastically and it started to be much more difficult to talk about it," says Emsuda Mujagić from Kozarac, president of the “THROUGH HEART TO PEACE” (“SRCEM DO MIRA”) Women's Association.

Through its activities, the association "Through Heart to Peace" from Kozarac gathered a large number of women from that region who went through the horrors of the war camps.

"All and one went through. There are maybe two or three women that didn't happen to be there, and all of them went mostly through the Trnopolje, Omarska, Keraterm camps," adds Mujagić, who says that in the public is the institutional ignoring of the victims, and the systematic suppression of facts about the past war, and that political representatives are repeatedly generating a crisis as was seen in the early 90s of the last century.

Deep political division has led to the fact that there is still no precise and official data on the number of victims or war crimes from the past war, as psychologists state, noting that in such an atmosphere, society did not even deal with the issue of victims and PTSD, as a consequence of war camp imprisonment.

"We don't have data that has been verified and accepted within the whole society, for example, about the number of dead, not to mention wounded, victimized, raped. This shows how much the system is oriented towards the state, entities, politicians, and how important the victims actually are," says psychologist Srđan Puhalo.

As he said, constant political tensions have contributed to the fact that there is no desire among ethnic groups in BiH to face the past, and therefore, we do not want and cannot understand what not only our victims went through, but others as well.

"I even think that the victims understand each other the best and that there is the least amount of hatred and strong words," adds Puhalo.

A large number of victims of war torture have still not managed to regulate their rights, and in the Republic of Srpska, the deadline for reporting lasted five years. The experiences of other countries warn that victims must be given more time to be encouraged, especially when it comes to former camp prisoners, but also victims of sexual violence., it was stated recently during the promotion of the Analysis of the Law on Protection of Victims of War Torture.

"People should be given the opportunity to be able to report the terrible things that happened to them tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and in 10 years and get reparation and social recognition. Sometimes recognition that you were a victim is a kind of satisfaction, and for those who do not realize those monetary rights, but only have the status of having suffered, being a victim, is sometimes a satisfaction," says journalist and researcher Radenko Udovičić, who is also one of the authors of the aforementioned Analysis.

Only a small number of people received the status of victims of war torture under the aforementioned law.

We received an information that 301 victims have achieved status by the law. 211 of those are women and 90 are men. 202 victims have registered rights based on which payments are being made. That’s 157 women and 45 men. We could not get the information from the Ministry on how many applications were submitted in total, so that we could count how many were rejected, says Gorica Ivić, executive director of the “Associated Women” ("Udružene žene") Foundation from Banja Luka.

Besides, according to international practice, which has been pointed out several times by UN bodies and reporters, the five-year limit should not be in the law, it is also stated in the aforementioned analysis.