Bosnian rape victims may be forced to return to scene by government

"Every day we were raped," says Jasmina of the rule of Radovan Karadzic. She was 19 years old when war broke out.

In April 1992, the Serb soldiers took over her city of Bijeljina and began to kill, torture and terrorize the Muslims there in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing.

"The men from my family were beaten up the first day. ... My mother just disappeared. I never found out what happened." Jasmina said.

"Then they started torturing me. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was totally naked and covered in blood, and my sister-in-law was also naked and covered in blood. ... I knew I had been raped, and my sister-in-law, too." In a corner, she saw her mother-in-law, holding her children and crying.

"That same day we were locked in our house. That was the worst, the worst period of my whole life. That's when it started.

"Every day we were raped. Not only in the house -- they would also take us to the front line for the soldiers to torture us. Then again in the house, in front of the children.

"I was in such a bad condition that sometimes I couldn't even recognize my own children. Even though I was in a very bad physical condition they had no mercy at all. They raped me every day. They took me to the soldiers and back to that house.

"The only conversation we had was when I was begging them to kill me. That's when they laughed. Their response was 'we don't need you dead.'

"It lasted for a year. Every day. ... Not all the women survived."

Tens of thousands of women were raped in Bosnia and the other parts of the former Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1994 during the rule of Radovan Karadzic, according to estimates by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Jasmina was finally rescued by a family friend who bought her as a prostitute with the secret intention of setting her free.

She now lives in a modest apartment in a tower block in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

She does not own the apartment, and all property must be returned to rightful owners under the terms of an annex to the U.S.-brokered peace agreement that ended the war.

The Office of the High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, an international body set up to oversee the implementation of the peace agreements, says almost all property rights have been restored. But it is impossible to say how many people have gone home and how many have sold their houses, leaving cities and towns like Bijeljina "ethnically cleansed," as the warmongers had planned.

A law enacted in September 2006 does include a section that says homes should be provided for victims of sexual torture during the war. It is not clear who should implement the act, and there is no agency making sure the law is enforced, according to the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees.

Meanwhile, authorities say Jasmina should return to her mother-in-law's rebuilt house in Bijeljina. But she says she will never go back to the place where she lost 39 members of her family and where her abuse began.

It is a fear shared by other women, according to Alisa Muratcaus, the president of the Association of Concentration Camp Survivors, a group that offers classes and other support to Jasmina and 1,200 other women across the capital, including 150 victims of mass rape.

"Many of our members must deal with the realities of return. Not all members are able psychologically to return to regions in which they suffered such extreme abuses," she said.

"No one raped women has returned to their pre-war houses, since it is immoral and inhuman to request their return while the war criminals who tortured them are still free and live in these regions."

With Radovan Karadzic now on trial, can any charge or punishment ever be enough to somehow make up for the atrocities committed on thousands of women, at his orders? How does anyone begin to rebuild their lives after such a horror?