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 Nearly a quarter of a century after the devastating war in which
about 100,000 Bosnians died, the stories of the children
conceived through wartime rape remain mostly unspoken because of
the stigma attached to rape victims and because children were
not told of their origins.
Between 25,000 and 50,000 women and girls are believed to have
been raped by enemy soldiers during the Bosnian war, according
to research by some non-government organizations. Nobody knows
for sure how many children were born as a result.
"I thought my mother hated me because I was the most horrible
experience in her life," Jusic's voice states, during a
performance of the play "In the Name of the Father", a joint
Austrian-Bosnian production.
Some rapes were also committed by foreign soldiers serving in
Bosnia with United Nations peacekeeping forces.
Rape was declared a "tool of warfare" by the United Nations war
crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Jusic's mother was raped in 1993 by an enemy soldier in a small
town in central Bosnia and sent by her parents to a shelter for
victims of wartime sexual violence to give birth. There Jusic
was registered as a child born of rape.
Muslim Bosniak Jusic does not want to reveal the ethnic
background of her father. "There are no bad peoples, just bad
individuals," she told Reuters.
Today she chairs an association "Forgotten Children of War" set
up specifically to help children born of rape.
"We are trying to show that rape is a trauma for everyone and
cannot be looked at through an ethnic lens," she said.
Children born of rape, most of whom were left in orphanages
where their origin was concealed from them, have become known in
Bosnia as 'invisible children'.
In the play, the voices of the invisible children are heard from
loudspeakers, as dancers express their feelings of fear, forced
silence, shame, guilt and turmoil. One story tells of a child
whose father was a U.N. peacekeeper.
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"They need to break the silence and take a place at the table in
society," said Darrel Toulon, the play's director.
"We are using beauty to transcend the ugliness of the situation."
ART SOOTHES TRAUMA
Jusic, 26, discovered the truth of her origins at the age of 15. She
kept the secret to herself for nine months before admitting it to
her family and friends. Years of psycho-therapy followed.
Her life changed in 2015 when she joined the "Forgotten Children of
War" association, which helped her confront her trauma, search for
others born of rape and find the way to speak to the public through
various art forms.
"There was a need to know that I was not alone," she told Reuters in
an interview. "But the stigmatisation of raped women in our society
makes it difficult to reach these children, because mothers are most
often not ready to go public about their trauma."
Jusic and her mother told their story publicly for the first time
last year. Since then, their story has inspired a documentary film,
an exhibition of photo portraits of children and mothers, and the
theatre play.
Jusic said art has helped the association she now chairs to
establish direct contact with the public.
Slowly the plight of rape victims is also starting to be addressed.
Earlier this year, the U.N. ordered Bosnia to compensate a Bosnian
Muslim woman raped by a Bosnian Serb soldier during the war and to
set up a nationwide war crimes reparation scheme.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic: Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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