Implausible Victims.
Sexual Abuse of Men within Detention Facilities in Bosnia,
1992-1995.
Anna Gopsill 10620230
Holocaust and Genocide Studies Masters Thesis Advisor: Dr Nanci Adler
Contents
Introduction 3-8
1. Introduction to Wars of Yugoslav Succession 4
2. Introduction to the ICTY 6
3. Methodology 7
4. Outline of Thesis 8
Chapter One: Contextualising Sexual Violence 9-23
1. Rape and Sexual Violence in Warfare 9
1.1. Sexual Violence in the Bosnian Context 10
2. Testimony and the Academic Debate 12
3. Defining Sexual Violence 15
4. Male Sexual Violence 17
5. The ICTY and Sexual Violence 22
Chapter Two: The Nature and Impact of Sexual Assault 24-44
1. Introduction 24
2. Concentration Camp and Detention Centre Structure 24
3. Types of Abuse 28
3.1. Sexual Abuse as Torture 30
3.2. Psycho-Sexual Torture 31
4. Mutilation of Genitals 33
4.1. Castration and Semi-Castration 34
4.2. Trauma to the Genitals 37
5. Rape and Forced Penetration 39
6. Prisoner-Prisoner Abuse 40
6.1. Biting of Genitals 41
6.2. Forced Fellatio 44
Chapter Three: The Question of Responsibility and Organisation 45-56
1. Introduction 45
2. Command Responsibility and Joint Criminal Enterprise 45
2.1. Command Responsibility 47
2.2. Joint Criminal Enterprise 48
3. The ICTY 49
3.1. Key ICTY Cases 50
4. Sexual Assault of Men: Systematic or Sporadic? 54
Conclusion 57-58
Introduction
On June 10, 2014, the largest gathering addressing sexual violence in conflict will begin in London. Spearheaded by the UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague and Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Global summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict aims to “create a sense of irreversible movement towards ending the use of rape and sexual violence in conflict”.1 Specifically, they aim to improve
investigation and documentation of sexual violence in conflict, provide greater support or survivors of sexual violence, ensure responses to sexual and gender based violence are fully integrated into all peace and security efforts and improve international strategic coordination.2
This conference is taking huge steps in facilitating discussion of wartime sexual violence on a global scale. The aims of enabling discussion and international cooperation are extremely important and vital in leading towards the prevention of sexual assault within war.
Hitherto, discussion of sexual assault in warfare has predominantly focused on the female experience and the rape of women in war. The war and subsequent genocide in Rwanda and the war and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the early 1990s brought discussion of rape and sexual assault within war to the forefront of international political discourse and rape began to be recognised as a definite humanitarian concern. Discussion largely focused on the rape of women and, until recently, the rape and sexual abuse of men within conflict comprised a side note in a book and was a marginalised subject. In recent years, the sexual assault of men during war and in detention situations has become more prominently discussed in international media and political discourse. This was a much needed development but there is still a long way to go to ensure that the sexual assault of men is not ignored or forgotten. The aim of this thesis is to address the sexual assault and sexual torture of men within a very particular context; within detention centres and prison camps in Bosnia during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. Analysis of the conflict has hitherto focused, understandably, on large scale atrocities and therefore, the sexual assault of men has been largely overlooked. This thesis addresses the sexual assault of men in war independently from the sexual abuse of women.
1. Introduction to the Wars of Yugoslav Succession
1 UK Government: Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/sexual-violence-in-conflict/about [accessed 26-05-2014]
In 1992, war erupted in Bosnia. The country of Yugoslavia was breaking apart due to simmering nationalist tendencies that had been in existence under the surface of the republic and the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the war directly linked to the continued failure of the Yugoslav ideal that had been theorised in the nineteenth century.3
The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created in December 1918 when the map of the southern Balkan region was redrawn after World War One. The Kingdom was renamed Yugoslavia, which literally translates to South Slavs, in 1929 following a royal coup lead by King Alexander. The new Yugoslavia, under King Alexander, did not survive for long and was taken over by Tito and his Partisans during the Second World War. The country was ruled by Tito under a Communist regime specifically designed to prevent competing nationalisms from developing and threatening the fragile state. Yugoslavia was kept in a state of relative peace through a complicated system of decentralised government allowing an element of autonomy within each nation but still controlling the overall state from a centralised government.4
This system worked until Tito’s death in 1980 upon which ethnic tensions that had been suppressed for years began to come to the fore. Issues of nationalism and minority rights began to be questioned and simmering tensions began to spill into conflict towards the end of the 1980s.5 The conflict was fuelled by feelings of ethnic superiority and competing national
histories and identities as well as economic differentiations between the autonomous states. On June 25, 1991 Slovenia declared independence from the fracturing union for economic and nationalist reasons, Croatia followed suit only hours later.6 This resulted in a 10 day war
in Slovenia as Serbia attempted to retain the union, however, there were few Serbs within Slovenia and its succession from Yugoslavia was not viewed as a direct threat to the country so the war was not sustained. The Croatian case, however, was very different. Croatia shared a long land border with Serbia and their populations were far more intermingled, because of this, the war lasted for six months.7 The fighting was particularly brutal and widespread,
images of World War II atrocities were evoked by both sides in the conflict and history was manipulated to ensure governmental and national legitimacy.8 After the six months of war, in
3 Norman M Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (London: Harvard University Press, 2001), 139.
4 Mark Mazower, The Balkans (London: Pheonix, 2001), 141. 5 Ibid.
6 Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 155. 7 Ibid, 156.
early 1992, Croatia was finally able to secede from Yugoslavia, establishing an independent state. The union now existed between Serbia and Bosnia.
In Bosnia, two rival parties emerged: the Bosnian Serbs led by Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian Muslims under Alija Izetbegovic who was President of Bosnia. Tudjman, the Croat leader and Milosevic, the Serb leader both upheld that they had territorial rights to the region of Bosnia due to population distribution and historical land rights. Therefore, they agreed to partition Bosnia between them leaving the Bosnian Serbs only a small territory around Sarajevo.9 By the end of 1992, the Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing had begun to take hold
in Bosnia and 2 million Bosnians, the majority of whom were Muslims, had fled their homes under threat from both Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats.10 At this stage in the conflict, the
violence was focused on detention and imprisonment of the Bosnian Muslims into makeshift detention centres and prison camps. These camps were in existence throughout the war and were sites of widespread abuse against men and women. The abuse often formed part of a regime of torture and included acts of sexual assault against men.
Serb paramilitary groups openly committed violence against Bosnian Muslims in an effort to remove them from their homes and threat of physical violence and sexual assault accompanied actual violence and sexual assault. The largest massacre of the Bosnian war occurred in Srebrenica in July 1995, Srebrenica was declared a UN “safe area” in the conflict and therefore housed thousands of Bosnian Muslim civilians. On July 11, 1995 Srebrenica fell to the Serb army who swept in and evacuated an estimated 23, 000 women and children from the region to a Bosnian government controlled area over a period of approximately 30 hours.11 The men were kept within Srebrenica and initial reports of massacres emerged
around July 16 when the first surviving Muslim men and boys began to reach the Bosnian Muslim territories. In just five days, it is estimated that more than 7, 000 Muslim men and boys were killed. This was the biggest massacre of the war and was ruled an act of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Massacres accompanied torture, sexual assault and forcibly removing people from their homes. The Bosnian war continued until November 1995 when the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or the Dayton Agreement, was signed. The agreement contained a territorial settlement between the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic, a new
9 Noel Malcolm, Bosnia : A Short History (London: Pan MacMillan, 2002), 268-269. 10 Ibid, 160.
11 BBC “Timeline: Siege of Srebrenica” BBC News. May 17, 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18101028
constitution, instruments for the protection of human rights, economic reconstruction, the implementation of an international peacekeeping force lead by NATO and the return of refugees to their homes.12 The Dayton Agreement, although ending the Bosnian war through
a territorial split and increased international regulations, it did not completely stop the violence and tensions within the Balkan region.
It is important to note that human rights abuses and massacres were not just perpetrated by the Serb army and paramilitary groups. This was a multifaceted conflict in which there was no innocent national group. However, in his book Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in
Twentieth Century Europe, Norman M Naimark, Professor of Eastern European Studies at
Stanford, notes that although the Croats and Muslims committed war crimes, the Serb army and government were the most ruthless and genocidal during the wars.13
2. Introduction to the ICTY
On May 25, 1993, while the wars of Yugoslav succession were continuing in the Balkan region, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) released their mandate. The ICTY was the first truly international justice system since the Nuremberg trials of WWII and was established as an ad-hoc criminal tribunal by the UN Security Council to investigate and verify reports of war crimes and genocidal activity originating from Bosnia and Croatia. The initial trial carried out by the ICTY, however, did not open until four years after the statute was released. On May 7, 1997 the trial of Duško Tadić opened and addressed crimes against humanity perpetrated at the Čelebići prison camp in Bosnia. Much of the early work of the tribunal was the initial investigation of war crimes and verification of reports of human rights abuses. One of the primary challenges facing the tribunal was to ensure that everyone associated with the work of the tribunal understood the same historical narrative with regard to the Balkan region. Therefore, the tribunal produced a 69 page report outlining, in national and ethnic neutral terms, the history and politics of the region. 14 Neutrality was
essential to the doctrine of the ICTY and was emphasised in the statute, it was recognised that the wars in the former Yugoslavia inspired ethnic hatred and debate and therefore it was essential that the ICTY recognised the multifaceted nature of the conflict and charged crimes fairly without succumbing to convoluted debates about nationality and identity.15 The ICTY
12 Malcolm, Bosnia : A Short History, 268-269. 13 Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 170.
14 Richard Wilson, “Judging History: The Historical Record of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” Human Rights Quarterly 27, no.3 (2004): 926.
embraced a completion strategy and since 2003, has been working closely with national courts within the Balkans to ensure that cases can be transferred to national courts, rather than relying on international jurisprudence. This is an important step to take and has enabled the progression of transition and justice within the region.16 The ICTY indicted and charged a
total of 161 people of war crimes and crimes against humanity in varying degrees and addressed both high and low level perpetrators.
3. Methodology
The research of the thesis will focus, in large part, on the court transcripts and documents of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The focus will be on witness, survivor and defendant testimony incorporated into the court transcripts and other documentation from the ICTY. The cases focused on in this thesis directly address acts of sexual abuse and sexual torture perpetrated against men within detention centres. Although witness and survivor evidence regarding the sexual abuse of men is sparse, at least compared to other acts of violence within the conflict, there is information alluding to or directly addressing sexual assault and torture. The cases were chosen based on extensive allegations of sexual abuse originating from witness and survivor testimony of former detainees. The camps and detention centres were run by different ethnic and national groups and this is reflected through the case selection. The main camps addressed are the Serb-run Trnpolje and Omarska and the Croat-Bosnian organised Čelebići. However, other camps will also be addressed in order to obtain a more holistic picture of methods and motivation of sexual abuse and torture. The Duško Tadić case proved to be the most used case within this thesis as it directly addresses the sexual assault of men and assesses the role of command responsibility within a detention centre.
The question of the numbers of men abused within detention centres within the former Yugoslavia will not be addressed. Instead, the typology of the abuse and responsibility for sexual assault and torture will be examined and the question of responsibility for the perpetration of sexual violence will be broached.
4. Outline of Thesis
This thesis will discuss the nature and typology of sexual abuse against men and will focus on the use of sexual assault as an act of torture within detention centres and prison camps during the Bosnian war of 1992 to 1995. The overall aim of the thesis is to discuss how and why sexual assault against men was perpetrated within detention camps in Bosnia.
Initially, within the introduction, a brief history of the wars of Yugoslav succession will be outlined in order to contextualise the conflict and the use of detention facilities and sexual assault during the war. Within chapter one, the concept of wartime mass rape and sexual assault will be introduced with specific focus on the Bosnian conflict. Through chapter two, the nature of detention centres and prison camps will be addressed, abuse against men within these centres will be discussed and will question how widespread the perpetration of male sexual assault was dealing with whether it was a localised or widespread phenomenon. This will evoke questions of how widespread the abuse was and will lead to questions of who was responsible for the perpetration of sexual assault and torture. The question of ultimate responsibility for the perpetration of sexual assault against men is a fundamental question in the debate of sexual assault and will be addressed in the third chapter.
1. Rape and Sexual Violence in Warfare
Sex and war are intrinsically linked: within each war, sexual violence and rape are dominant features and evidence of systematic rape and sexual torture within war has been prevalent throughout history. While sexual violence is perpetrated against both women and men in domestic and wartime situations, during war, rape and sexual abuse is more widespread. The reasons for this increased prevalence are highly complex. One of the main reasons identified by Dara Kay Cohen is that war increases the opportunity for rape as social norms and morality break down therefore rape and sexual assault become increasingly widespread.17
Another important reason for the increased prevalence of rape in warfare is a perceived impunity for actions as little has been done by the international criminal justice system to indict and convict perpetrators of sexual assault. 18
Rape and sexual assault is so prevalent in warfare as it represents the ultimate command of the enemy. The fundamental aim of wartime rape and domestic rape is domination of the victim; within war this sense of authority is expanded to represent domination, not just of one victim, but of the whole victim group.19 Studies show that rape affects every aspect of society
through the dehumanisation, emasculation and subjugation of the enemy. Thus, rape proves to be an effective way to prove dominance and power over the enemy.20 Sexual assault affects
the entire society and often renders reconciliation impossible as it permanently divides the ethnic groups. This is particularly relevant during wars of ethnic cleansing and genocide, where the intent of the perpetrator is to eradicate the victim group from the region.
Rape and other forms of sexual assault harm not only the body of the victim. The more significant harm is the feeling of total loss of control over the most intimate and personal decisions and bodily functions. This loss of control infringes on the victim's human dignity and is what makes rape and sexual assault such an effective means of "ethnic cleansing".21
Rape provides an effective way to control and dominate others; wartime rape and sexual violence intensely traumatises the victim psychologically, manipulating both their individual
17 Dara Kay Cohen, “Explaining Wartime Rape During Civil War: Cross-National Evidence (1980-2009),”
American Political Science Review 107, no. 3 (August 2013):462.
18 Cohen “Explaining Wartime Rape,” 462.
19 Claudia Card “Rape as a Weapon of War” Women and Violence 11, no. 4 (Autumn 1996):6 20 Ibid, 8.
21 United Nations Security Council, Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report,’ Volume V, Annexes IX-XIII United Nations
and gender identity. It is the sexual expression of aggression rather than the aggressive expression of sexuality.22 Military environments promote and encourage a sense of dominant
power and masculine identity, creating hyper-masculine environments. Dehumanisation of both the self and the victim is an important psychological process within the perpetration of rape. In order to abuse a victim, the perpetrator needs to remove themselves from the act they are committing and ignore questions of morality. The process of dehumanisation and personal separation from actions are an ongoing psychological process within warfare, particularly as moral boundaries are inhibited.
The act of sex is often corrupted within war, becoming an act of brutality and exploitation that represents the ultimate oppression and humiliation for the victim group. The hyper-masculine environment of war encourages rape and victorious soldiers may be ‘rewarded’ with the opportunity to rape the females of the victims.23 Not only the individual, but the
psyche of the entire nation is affected by mass rape and the image of perpetrator power is reinforced through the complete control of the identity over the individual victim and the victim group. Through the calculated targeting of certain groups and a systematic approach to sexual slavery and assault, rape can be manipulated and used as a weapon of war.
1.1 Sexual Violence in the Bosnian Context
During the war in Bosnia, the Serb army implemented a policy of systematic and genocidal rape perpetrated against the Muslim population. Genocidal rape is defined by Beverly Allen24
in Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, as “a military policy of rape for the purpose of genocide”.25 The Muslim women and girls were targeted on
the basis of their ethnicity and the main perpetrators were the Serbs who attacked the Bosnian Muslims in a highly systematic and organised assault against the female gender.26 This is not
to say, however, that Bosnian Muslims were the only victims and that Bosnian Serbs were the only perpetrators. Rather, the war in the former Yugoslavia was a multi-faceted conflict in which abuses were committed by each ethnic group.
22 Sandesh Sivakumaran, “Male/Male Rape and the Taint of Homosexuality,” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol.27, 4 (November 2005):1300.
23 Robin May Schott, “War Rape, Natality and Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research, 13 (May 2011):1-2, 6.
24 Beverly Allen is a professor at Syracuse University, she acted as consultant to the ICTY after writing her investigative book into rape warfare in the Balkans.
25 Beverly Allen. Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 62.
26 Todd A Salzman, “Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleansing: Religious, Cultural and Ethical Responses to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia,” Human Rights Quarterly 2, no.2 (May 1998):349.
Throughout the war in Bosnia, public forms of rape and sexual intimidation were coupled with secret camps and torture centres. The UN Sexual Violence Investigation team documented five dominant patterns of rape used within Bosnia against the Bosnian Muslims by the Serb army.27 Firstly, they identified that the patterns of rape and sexual abuse indicated
a systematic and highly organised Serb policy. They acknowledged that rape and sexual violence occurred not only during conflict but also prior to fighting, during periods of intimidation, and were enacted to terrorise the local population. The second pattern identified was the use of rape and sexual violence to intimidate the victims during a period of fighting. Both the first and second pattern documented would be perpetrated in public with the intent of intimidating and terrorising the victim group and ultimately ethnically cleansing the region.
Thirdly, sexual violence and rape was widespread in refugee camps and detention centres and usually incorporated gang rapes, rape in front of other detainees, removing women to be raped elsewhere and forcing the inmates to commit sexual acts on each other. The two remaining patterns were perpetrated in relative secrecy. There were incidences of sexual violence and forced prostitution in ‘bordello’ camps which were used as a form of prostitution for soldiers. Finally, sexual violence was perpetrated in rape camps and houses, buildings appropriated for use by the Serb army for detaining and raping women until they became pregnant. Here, rape was used with a dual intention; both as a form of torture and also as a method of forced impregnation.28 Women were repeatedly raped for a period of time
until they became pregnant at which point they were detained until an abortion was no longer possible. Rape camps were initiated in Foča, South East Bosnia from April 1992 onwards, right at the start of the war in Bosnia. Women were detained in various houses, apartments and motels within the region and a regime of gang rape and sexual torture began.29 The intent
of this prolonged sexual abuse was to impregnate the women with ‘Chetnik children’30 but
also to emphasise the total domination of the Bosnian Serbs over the Bosnian Muslim population. The total number of women sexually assaulted and raped in the Bosnian War
27 Salzman ,“Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleansing,” 358. 28 Allen, Rape Warfare.
29 Teresa Iacobelli, ‘‘The Sum of Such Actions’: Investigating Mass Rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina through a Case Study of Foca,” in Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century, ed. Dagmar Herzog (London: Palgrave, 2009), 262.
remains unknown, however, the number of Bosnian Muslim women raped by the Serbs in Bosnia is usually estimated to be between 20 000 and 50 000 women.31
There are about 162 detention sites in the former Yugoslavia where people were detained and sexually assaulted:
(a) 88 of those are reportedly run by Serbs; (b) 35 are run by unknown forces;
(c) 17 are allegedly run by Croats;
(d) 14 are allegedly run by Muslim and Croat forces together; (e) 8 are reportedly run by Muslims. 32
Thus far, much academic focus has been given to abuses committed by the Serbs against Croats, Muslims and Kosovar Albanians, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia was a multifaceted one with atrocities and sexual assault committed by all sides within the conflict. The academic and journalistic examinations of rape within the wars in Bosnia have focused on the use of the process of genocidal rape perpetrated by the Serbs, mainly against the female Muslim population within Bosnia. However, as explained in section four, in the discussion of sexual abuse of men, the field is clouded as each side within the conflict perpetrated sexual violence against men in detention and the process was not restricted to one group.
2. Testimony and the Academic Debate
Current academic and popular discourse and attention on the sexual assault of men and boys during warfare lags behind that of the sexual assault of women and girls. Although academic and cultural analysis of sexual abuse in the former Yugoslavia has been thorough, it has mainly focused on the experiences of women with particular attention on rape camps and mass rape perpetrated against women. Most focus on men has examined the policies of genocidal killing and war deaths rather than sexual assault, as one of the major Serb policies during the war was that of gendered genocide. Men were targeted to be killed and were often separated from the women of the region and massacred. This left the women vulnerable and they were often raped or sexually abused.33 Although the dominant narrative of sexual
violence in war regarded victims of sexual abuse and the male victims of massacre, many
31 Ruth Seifert, “War and Rape: A Preliminary Analysis,” in Mass Rape: The War Against Women in
Bosnia-Herzegovina ,Ed. Alexandra Stiglmayer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 58
32 United Nations Security Council, Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report,’ Volume V, Annexes IX-XIII United Nations
Security Council, May 2, 1994: 7. 33 Allen, Rape Warfare.
men were also subjected to sexual violence. The sexual abuse of women has been widely acknowledged and recognised by aid agencies, governments and NGOs working within the region, however, the sexual assault of men has been largely overlooked due to lack of resources, knowledge and witnesses. An Amnesty International report on rape perpetrated during the wars in Bosnia states “the organization believes…that research focusing on male survivors would be of significant value”.34 Despite this, the current focus of Amnesty
International is on female victims of sexual abuse and they do not have the resources to expand their efforts to incidences of male sexual violence.
One of the few NGOs that directly address the sexual abuse of men in its reports is the World Health Organisation (WHO). In 2000, the WHO released a guide for sexual health programme managers working in the field. The intention of the guide, entitled Reproductive
Health During Conflict and Displacement: A Guide for Programme Managers35 aimed to
address technical issues related to reproductive health including, but not limited to, pregnancy and childbirth; protection of civilians from sexual abuse; incidences of HIV/AIDS and family planning. Within the document, the WHO discussed incidences of sexual violence against men:
While some legal and social networks, however rudimentary, may exist for women and girls who have been sexually attacked, there is rarely anything comparable for male victims. In some countries, the legally defined crime of rape may only apply to women. Like women, men may experience profound humiliation, and they may also experience a sense of confusion about their sexuality. In addition, in societies where men are discouraged from talking about their emotions, they may find it even more difficult than women to acknowledge what has happened to them. For these reasons, it is suspected that the reported cases of sexual violence against males are a fraction of the true number of cases.36
The WHO recognised the differences between the male and female experience of rape, specifically with regard to the aftermath of sexual abuse. The report was one of the primary NGO reports to address sexual abuse against men with the explicit instruction to treat it as equal to sexual abuse against women and girls. The document is also a practical one, directly addressing how the sexual abuse of men should be treated by medical and support staff. The
34 Amnesty International, Old Crimes Same Suffering: No Justice for Survivors of Wartime Rape in North-East
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Amnesty International, March 2012.
35 World Health Organisation, Reproductive Health During Conflict and Displacement: A Guide for
Programme Managers, World Health Organisation, 2000.
document does not focus on a particular region; instead, it broadens the discussion to be applicable to a number of different case studies. Following on from the 2002 WHO document, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in partnership with the Refugee Law Project (RLP) released a document entitled Working With Men and Boy Survivor of
Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Forced Displacement.37 This was another practical
document that outlined the problem faced by international humanitarian organisations with regard to male sexual assault in warfare. They recognise that there is a problem that needs to be addressed and provide practical solutions to this. The recognition that the experiences of males and females with regard to sexual assault are entirely different is explicit throughout the document, this is an important distinction and initiates the concept of male victimhood. The lack of research in the area is largely due to the lack of witness and survivor testimony that relates to sexual abuse against men in the global context. The lack of testimony speaks volumes to the stigma attached to incidences of sexual violence against men. Men are often reluctant to speak of their abuse to charities, NGOs, international agencies or even their own families. In a report written by the Medical Centre for Human Rights entitled “Characteristics of Sexual Abuse of Men During the War in the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina” (1995) the reasons for the distinct lack of testimony are addressed:
Men’s culture has taught them that they are all-powerful, dominate, and they are in control. Most of the men we worked with said they did not grow up with the possibility of being sexually abused. That is why they did not tell anyone they were sexually abused, which means they are submitted to high-level isolation, from the persons they are close with and from different organisations that could help them38
Masculine culture teaches men that they are dominant. Therefore, if they are victim of abuse, they are considered to be weak.39 Men often question their masculinity and identity in the
aftermath of sexual assault and can begin to question whether they exuded any stereotypically homosexual trait that may have attracted the perpetrator, the perpetrator may also partially intend to cast images of homosexuality onto the victim through the assault.40 This can lead to
a crisis of identity for the victim and is compounded when authorities insinuate that the
37 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Working with Men and Boy Survivors of Sexual and
Gender-Based Violence in Forced Displacement, UNHCR, 2012.
38 Medical Centre for Human Rights, Zagreb Characteristics of Sexual Abuse of Men During the War in the
Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995 cited in Eric Stener Carlson “The Hidden Prevalence of
Male Sexual Assault During War: Observations on Blunt Trauma to the Male Genitals” British Journal of
Criminology 46 (2006) : 22.
39 ICTY New Media, “Sexual Violence and the Triumph of Justice,” YouTube video, 40:55, posted by “ICTY New Media” December 7, 2012. Accessed February 5, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ4EM6iiq0k
victim must be homosexual in order for the assault to happen.41 The silence of the victims
regarding male sexual abuse grants a level of impunity to the perpetrator as it proves difficult to verify reports of sexual abuse or to know when sexual abuse has been perpetrated.
Another underlying problem in research is the notion of a woman as a victim and the man as the perpetrator. Sociological and cultural interpretations of sexual assault dictate that men are the aggressors and women the victims. Thus men in such a setting are rendered unable to be a victim of sexual assault or rape. In her highly influential work, Susan Brownmiller asserts that rape is “nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear”.42 Through Brownmiller’s analysis, the implausibility of
men as victims of rape and sexual abuse is emphasised. A collective denial regarding the sexual victimisation of men exists in both national and international law, media and politics,43
and academics and politicians are unwilling to shift social parameters to address the concept of a man being a victim to a typically ‘female’ crime. For a long time, rape, mass rape and sexual violence were considered a by-product of war and were not addressed in international law and politics.44 Feminist groups and women’s groups have been at the forefront of
promoting the need to address rape in international discourse since the mid-1970s. Thus, rape has become an issue largely associated with female concerns.45 Although their work has been
of monumental importance in raising awareness of rape within war, it has arguably alienated the male victims of rape as sexual assault and rape is often considered a crime only perpetrated by men, against women.
3. Defining Sexual Violence
To date, there is no internationally accepted and widely recognised definition of sexual violence within humanitarian law. Instead, sexual violence and assault are defined on a case-by-case basis and by separate ad-hoc tribunals. The lack of coherent and widely accepted definition of sexual violence in international law is extremely problematic, and proves to be a stumbling block for international tribunals and war crimes trials. Rape and sexual assault tends to fall either into the category of ‘crimes against humanity’ or a war crime rather than being defined in its own right.
41 Sivakumaran “Male/Male Rape and the Taint of Homosexuality,” 1290.
42 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will : Men, Women and Rape, (New York: Fawcett Columbine,1975). 43 Øystein Gullvåg Holter, “A Theory of Gendercide” in Gendercide and Genocide Ed. Adam Jones (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004) ,74.
44 Ruth Seifert “War and Rape.”
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the case of the Prosecutor vs. Jean-Paul Akayesu, 1998 laid a precedent for future war crimes tribunals as it was the first case to directly address mass and systematic rape. During the trial process, it was crucial to define the crime Akayesu was indicted for as the trial was addressing an issue unprecedented in international law. For the purposes of the trial, rape and sexual violence were defined as:
Physical invasion of a sexual nature, committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive. Sexual violence which includes rape, is considered to be any act of a sexual nature which is committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive. This act must be committed:
(a) as part of a widespread or systematic attack; (b) on a civilian population;
(c) on certain catalogued discriminatory grounds, namely: national, political, racial or religious grounds46
The definition above, although useful, is also restrictive as it addresses rape and sexual violence on a mass and systematic scale and fails to account for the use of rape against civilians on a small scale or by individual perpetrators. The definition was considered only relevant to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and has not been accepted or acknowledged on an international scale.
Earlier, the United Nations Commission of Experts’ Final Report (also known as the Bassiouni Report) of 1992, which will be further discussed in the section below, acknowledged that rape constitutes a crime under international humanitarian law but also that rape and sexual assault do not have a coherent definition in international humanitarian law. The Final Report of the UN Commission of Experts defines sexual violence as:
…a crime of violence of a sexual nature against the person. This characteristic of sexual violence also applies to other forms of sexual assault against women, men and children when the activities are performed under coercion or threat of force and include sexual mutilation47
Further to the definition above, rape has subsequently been defined on a case-by-case basis. Rape is outlined by the Final Report of the UN Commission of Experts as “non-consensual sexual penetration” and the report states that sexual assault encompasses rape, sexual
46 Jennifer L Green, “Uncovering Collective Rape: A Comparative Study of Political Sexual Violence,”
International Journal of Sociology 34,1 (Spring 2004) ,100.
47 United Nations Security Council, Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report,’ United Nations Security Council, May 2,
violence and sexual mutilation. 48 Whilst useful, this is a very broad outline of the definition
of rape and sexual abuse. However, in the absence of a more precise and cogent definition it was adopted as the working definition for the UN Commission of Experts. Currently, most of the discussion of the sexual abuse of men within conflict in humanitarian law relies on gender-neutral documents that address torture and civil and political rights, such as the UN Convention on Torture or the Geneva Conventions.49
In their Final Report, the UN Commission of Experts also acknowledged incidences of sexual violence perpetrated against men and by doing so, was the first international commission to publicly acknowledge the systematic use of sexual violence against men in the Balkan context:
Violent crimes of a homosexual nature are not explicitly mentioned in international humanitarian law, but protection against rape and other sexual assaults is also applicable to men on the basis of equality and non-discrimination50
While, although the recognition of male sexual violence was an important development within the report, it is yet to be adopted in practice on a large or international scale.
4. Male Sexual Violence 4.1 Typology of Abuse
During the conflict in Bosnia, sexual assault perpetrated against men was predominantly committed in detention centres, concentration camps and prisons. In these situations, men are rendered particularly vulnerable to attack. The inmates were already demoralised and degraded and the perpetration of sexual violence served to further emasculate and humiliate the victim.
Anal and penetrative rape is often considered to be the main form of sexual violence against men. The emphasis on the importance and prevalence of penetrative rape in literature is a legacy of the abuse committed against females as penetrative rape is a commonly reported abuse against women. Although anal rape of men is committed and is prevalent in certain regions, it was not the most commonly perpetrated sexual assault against men in the Balkan
48 United Nations Security Council, Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report’ Volume V, Annexes IX-XIII United Nations
Security Council, May 2, 1994, 7.
49 Lara Stemple “Male Rape and Human Rights,”637.
50 United Nations Security Council, Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report,’ United Nations Security Council, May 2,
region. During the war in Bosnia, sexual violence against men was largely of two forms: genital torture and trauma and male-male rape (penetration with the penis or other objects).Castration, or partial castration, was identified by the Medical Centre for Human Rights as a common theme running through reports of male sexual violence.51 The
International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) instituted, as part of their investigations into the war, a Sexual Assault Investigation team. The responsibility of this team was to examine and verify reports of sexual assault from the region. The team found that “men were castrated and otherwise sexually mutilated, forced to rape other men, forced to perform fellatio and other sex acts on guards and one another”.52 This proved to be a
landmark statement as, prior to this, much of the focus had been on the sexual abuse of females.
In 1992, initial reports of sexual violence and of tactics of ethnic cleansing began to trickle out of Bosnia. As a result, the United Nations requested the establishment of a commission of experts to examine and analyse the information gathered in order to assess any violations of international humanitarian law. The commission began its research in October 1992 and the final report was submitted to the UN Security Council on the 27th May 1994. The commission
conducted interviews as well as investigated reports. The report concluded that violations of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions had been occurring in the former Yugoslavia, and gave particular attention to the systematic perpetration of ethnic cleansing, rape and sexual violence. The report was a landmark report as it acknowledged that men, as well as women, were victims of systematic sexual assault. The commission recognised that abuses suffered by men and women were different, but were still of a sexual nature:
Men are also subject to sexual assault. They are forced to rape women and to perform sex acts on guards or each other. They have also been subjected to castration, circumcision or other sexual mutilation.53
This report aligns with the report by the Sexual Assault Investigation team, both acknowledge that sexual mutilation and genital assault of men were common and widespread. However, this type of assault in particular is underreported as sexual violence.54 Beating to the genitals
often does not leave any physical markers and may prove difficult to diagnose. Medical
51 Sivakumaran, “Male/Male Rape and the Taint of Homosexuality.”
52 Medical Centre for Human Rights, Zagreb Characteristics of Sexual Abuse of Men During the War in the
Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995 cited in Eric Stener Carlson “The Hidden Prevalence of
Male Sexual Assault During War: Observations on Blunt Trauma to the Male Genitals” British Journal of
Criminology 46 (2006) , 19
53 United Nations Security Council, Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
teams and staff in refugee centres are often unprepared to address attacks of sexual violence against men. In a comprehensive examination of sexual abuse perpetrated against men in the former Yugoslavia focusing on Croatia, Mladan Lancar, Naven Henigsberg and Pero Hrabac interviewed a total of 60 men who had been abused in detention centres during the war.55
They recognise that their examination was not exhaustive as they interviewed only men who volunteered to talk about their abuses and were willing to come forward to speak. They also recognise the number of men they interviewed does not tell the full story of sexual abuse. However, their results are still illuminating and demonstrate that even among the sixty people they interviewed, a wide range of sexual assaults were committed. Their results are outlined in their table below:
Table One: “Types of Sexual and Physical Mistreatment Experienced by the Interviewed
Persons”56
Type of Torture or Abuse Number Percentage
First Group: Physical Torture of Genitals
Severe Beating of Testes or Genitals 41 68.3
Semi-castration 7 11.6
Second Group: Forced Sexual Actions
Placing of Objects in a Person’s Rectum by Force 15 25.0
Performing Fellatio 13 21.6
Rape 2 3.3
Other 3 5.0
Third Group: Psychosexual Torture
Threats Aimed at Losing the Person’s Fertility 34 56.6
Threats of Direct Castration 19 31.6
Other Sexual Threats 13 21.6
Fourth Group: Physical Torture
Severe Hurting and Beating 59 98.3
Stabbing Wounds 15 25.0
Knife Wounds 7 11.6
Cigarette Burns on Skin 4 6.6
The report identifies five general categories of sexual abuse against men. The categories are rape, castration and semi-castration, hurting of the testes with blunt objects, a variety of devious sexual actions (this includes forcing victims to have sex with each other, forced
54 Eric Stener Carlson ,“The Hidden Prevalence of Male Sexual Assault During War: Observations on Blunt Trauma to the Male Genitals,” British Journal of Criminology 46 (2006), 20.
55 Mladen Lancar, Neven Heningsberg and Pero Hrabac, “Mental Health Consequences in Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse During the War in Croatia and Bosnia,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence (July 2009). 56 Ibid, 6.
fellatio, forced masturbation and forced nudity) and various injury combinations (including a combination of above or other “elaborate” torture methods). Sadistic acts of torture such as electrocution and biting of testicles were common during the war in Bosnia.
Blunt instrument trauma to the male genitalia was common, and will be detailed in chapter two, particularly in detention centres where it was predominantly used as a method of torture. Both castration and trauma not only feminise and humiliate the victims but also reinforce the perpetrator-victim hierarchy.
The sexual assault of men was not necessarily an individualised process and could instead be targeted at a small group of people. Prisoners were often forced to watch sexual acts being committed on another prisoner or were forced to perform sexual acts, such as fellatio, on other prisoners.57 The impacts of these abuses were magnified when forced incest was
introduced. Incest is a further taboo and when combined with the stigma and societal ostracisation of male-male rape and sexual abuse, the psychological impacts are profound. A common theme through the war within Bosnia was to force sons, brothers, fathers, uncles to commit incestuous sexual acts on each other. Incest is an especially infrequently topic of discussion in the domestic and international sphere and forced incest compounds the feelings of insubordination and humiliation for the victim.
4.2 Aims of Sexual Abuse Against Men
The adviser on Gender Crimes for the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, Patricia Sellers stated:
Not infrequently, men are sexually assaulted because what a better way to demoralise the brigade that charged the hill than to capture those men and then have them publicly commit fellatio on each other, it is a weapon because it goes to the very psyche of the person, it goes to a physical sense of the person, it goes to a social sense of a person, it is a very adequate manner in which the person somehow feels they’ve experienced a death and yet are condemned to continue to live58
This statement succinctly summarises the central reasoning of why sexual assault against men occurs. Rape and sexual abuse physically and psychologically damages individuals. It destroys the community, disrupts the familial structure and demoralises the enemy. During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, castration and genital trauma and mutilation were common
57 Lancar, Heningsberg and Hrabac “Mental Health Consequences in Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse” 58 ICTY New Media “Sexual Violence and the Triumph of Justice” YouTube video, 40:55, posted by “ICTY New Media” December 7, 2012. Accessed February 5, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ4EM6iiq0k
forms of sexual abuse, especially perpetrated against men. The policy of castration compounds the feminisation and emasculation of the victim through the complete or partial removal of the genitalia and the symbol of masculinity. The aim of sexual violence against men is not necessarily to kill, although this is often a by-product of the abuse.59
One report to document the psychological devastation of male sexual abuse was Within the report “Mental Health Consequence in Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse During the War in Croatia and Bosnia”60 authored by Mladen Lancar, Neven Heningsberg and Pero Hrabac. In
the report, they assert that the symptoms of rape-trauma syndrome, which include phobias, anxiety, depression, irritability and changes in behaviour, are more evident and pronounced in male victims than in female victims both due to the intense shame and humiliation the men experience and also the lack of victim support available. It was also discovered that 100 percent of the men interviewed were experiencing disruption in sleep, night terrors or insomnia as a direct result of the abuse.61 Many male victims expressed feelings of
hopelessness and depression. As with female victims of sexual abuse and rape, male victims are often alienated and ostracised from their communities and families. In a patriarchal society that emphasises the need to be masculine and a warrior, the alienation a man feels in the aftermath of sexual assault is further compounded. Sexual dysfunction may also be an effect of sexual abuse. Although this prolonged psychological effect is not necessarily the explicit intention of the actions, it is a direct result of the abuse.
5. The ICTY and Sexual Violence
The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda were the first international tribunals to address mass sexual violence as a war crime and crime against humanity. The wars of Yugoslav succession have been described as “a sexual war”62 by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, with sexual assault
being recognised as an integral aspect of the war and the accompanying ethnic cleansing. The ICTY indicted a total of 161 people for crimes during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, of these, 78 were indicted for sexual crimes against women and 25 were convicted of sexual crimes (including but not limited to: rape, sexual torture, sexual slavery and sexual abuse of
59
60 Lancar, Heningsberg and Hrabac “Mental Health Consequences in Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse” 61 Ibid p.4
62 ICTY New Media “Sexual Violence and the Triumph of Justice” YouTube video, 40:55, posted by “ICTY New Media” December 7, 2012. Accessed February 5, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ4EM6iiq0k
men).63 In 2000, Dragljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovać and Zoran Vukovic were the first to be
indicted and charged by the ICTY purely for acts of sexual violence. Their crimes were committed in the town of Polje, Bosnia in the early years of the war, where women and children were detained and enslaved, raped and assaulted. Many were kept as sexual slaves in ‘rape camps’ before being sold into sexual slavery. This case also represents the first time that sexual enslavement was recognised as a crime against humanity in international criminal law.64
The ICTR and ICTY were the first international tribunals to use gender neutral language in their discourse and to implement a genderless mandate. This laid a precedent for future criminal trials and tribunals as the crimes were not framed in the context of men as perpetrators and women as victims. The use of gender-neutral language enabled the discussion of men as potential victims of sexual violence and meant that people could be charged for sexual abuse perpetrated against men or women. Because of this, the sexual nature of the abuse of men was subsequently now recognised in its own right rather than as an act of torture.
5.1 A Landmark Trial: Duško Tadić
The trial of Duško Tadić, which began in February 1995, was a landmark case in the process of the ICTY, but also in the context of international history and jurisprudence. Tadić was the former president of the local Bosnian Serb Democrat Party in Kozarac, north western Bosnia and Herzegovina. His trial was the first conducted by the ICTY.65 The Tadić trial was the first
European war crimes tribunal to directly address sexual abuse as a war crime. In May 1997, Duško Tadić was found guilty of the violations of the rules and customs of war and inhumane acts for his roles in the organisation and running of the notorious rape camps. The trial of Tadić not only addressed crimes against women, but also incorporated acts of sexual torture against men committed at Omarska detention centre in Prijedor, north western Bosnia and Herzegovina. These acts involved the murder of insurgents and civilians, forced starvation
63 Ibid
64 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia “The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Duško Tadić” Case No. IT-94-1-I, Indictment 1995
65 International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia Landmark Cases http://www.icty.org/sid/10314 [accessed February 11, 2014]
and beating of prisoners, and, for the first time, acts of sexual assault perpetrated against men. The sexual violence perpetrated against men was included in the indictment.66 This was a
landmark decision, and is telling of the serious nature with which the ICTY addressed the sexual abuse of men. In previous trials and tribunals, male sexual violence was often ignored, or treated as a side-note within the context of sexual assault against females. Here, the sexual abuse of men is a key point of the trial and represents a shift in international legal policy and recognition of the sexual abuse of men within situations of armed conflict.
6. Conclusion
This chapter has surveyed the use of sexual violence within warfare and specifically within Bosnia. Sexual violence perpetrated against women is a widespread, and widely recognised, weapon of war. However, academic and social analysis of the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of men lags behind that of women. Rape and sexual abuse shift the parameters of society and manipulate the sexual and gender identity of the individual. Rape emasculates and affects every aspect of society; this is one of the key intentions of the perpetration of rape in war. The wars in the former Yugoslavia were extremely divisive and ran along ethnic-nationalist lines, and rape proved to be an extremely useful and successful tool of war.
Chapter Two: The Nature and Impact of Sexual Assault Against Men Within Detention Centres
1. Introduction
During the wars of Yugoslav succession sexual abuse perpetrated against men was common in prison camps and detention centres run by Muslims, Serbs and Croats.67 This chapter will
not aim to address the number of victims affected by sexual assault but rather examine the types of sexual assault used within the camps. The focus will be on the court transcripts and other documents from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in order to assess the dominant types of abuse committed in detention situations and the reasons behind this abuse.
66 Ibid
To begin with, this chapter will briefly address the concentration camp structure during the war in Bosnia before progressing to types of sexual abuse perpetrated against men within these camps and the reasons for the perpetration of the abuse.
2. The Concentration Camp and Detention Centre Structure within Bosnia
The use of concentration camps and detention centres was widespread throughout the former Yugoslavia and were employed by Serbs, Muslims and Croats during the war. Camps and detention centres were particularly prevalent at the beginning of the war when aims of the war were explicitly detention and containment in order to promote ethnic cleansing.68 The
number of detention centres within the former Yugoslavia exponentially increased from the beginnings of armed warfare in Slovenia in 1991, onwards and the camp system developed in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the outbreak of war in April 1992.69 During the initial stages of
the war, the international community was unaware of the extent and prominence of camps and detention centres but reports of their use were leaked to international media and humanitarian organisations. In early August 1992, the British media outlet, Independent Television News (ITN) represented by Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, along with reporter Ed Vulliamy from the Guardian newspaper were granted access to the Omarska camp by the Serb authorities who guided them and dictated what they were able to see. The aim of this opened access was to prove that the Serb army were not committing war crimes. However, the images shown in the media shocked the world and prompting a discussion, in the international media, of a ‘new Auschwitz’. The photographs ultimately acted as a catalyst to UN investigations of war crimes in Bosnia.70 In response to these accusations, Serb
authorities vehemently denied that the camp was a detention centre, insisting that the internees were there voluntarily and were refugees rather than being forcibly detained.71
The UN Commission of Experts were dispatched to Bosnia in 1992 to address stories of mass sexual assault and the use of detention centres and concentration camps within Bosnia. Their final report, which was ultimately released in 1994, addressed allegations of detention centres
68 Naimark Fires of Hatred
69 United Nations Security Council Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report’ United Nations Security Council, May 2,
1994
70 David Campbell, “Atrocity, Memory, Photography: Imaging the Concentration Camps of Bosnia – the Case of ITN versus Living Marxism,” Journal of Human Rights 1, 1 (March 2002) , 1.
in the context of mass human rights violations within Bosnia. The report was released very early in the conflict in the region, as such, it only addresses the first two years of the conflict however, the Final Report of the UN Commission of Experts remains a vital resource in tracking the development of the camps. For their data, the authors of the Final Report of the UN Commission of Experts relied on witness testimony and reports emerging from Bosnia and Croatia. In an unprecedented move, the report identified a number of camps and the commission were able to assess which party was operating the camps:
Of the 715 camps [identified by the report]: 237 were operated by Bosnian Serbs and the former Republic of Yugoslavia; 89 were operated by the Government and army of Bosnia and Herzegovina; 77 were operated by Bosnian Croats, the Government of Croatia, the Croatian Army and Croatian Defence Council; 4 were operated jointly by the Bosnian Government and Bosnian Croats; and 308 camps for which it is not known with certainty under whose effective control they were under72
These figures provide evidence that each side in the conflict were operating a large number of prison camps and detention centres. The number of camps identified in the report was, naturally, not consistent throughout the war as the camp structure was temporary in nature and few of the camps and detention centres were built for purpose or were permanent structures. Instead, the majority of buildings used as detention centres were schools, aeroplane hangars and warehouses that were appropriated for use by the armies.73 Therefore,
it is difficult to definitively assess how many concentration camps and detention centres were in operation during the timespan of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. What is clear, however, is that the purpose of the camps was to detain a targeted ethnic group to assist with the processes of ethnic cleansing. An explicit aim of the detention centres was also to detain men of fighting age in order to halt the spread of war, armed opposition and rebel groups. However, these camps and detention centres were also sites of torture and repression and not just detention and detainment.
Of the 715 camps identified by the Final Report of the UN Commission of Experts, it was acknowledged that approximately 162 of these were locations in which people were detained and sexually assaulted.74 Sexual assault and torture was not used in every camp, however, it
72 United Nations Security Council Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report’ United Nations Security Council, May 2,
1994 p.51
73 United Nations Security Council Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report’ United Nations Security Council, May 2,
1994
74 United Nations Security Council Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
was a widespread and devastating consequence of the camps and was used against both men and women.
Table One: Details of Detention Centres75 Name of
Detention Facility
Dates in Operation
Location Who Organised
Them
Omarska May-August 1992 Prijedor, Northern Bosnia and
Herzegovina
Bosnian Serbs
Keraterm May-August 1992 Prijedor, Northern Bosnia and
Bosnian Serbs
1994 p.51
75 Author’s table compiled from: United Nations Security Council Final Report of the Commission of Experts
Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report’ United Nations
Herzegovina Trnpolje May-December 1992 Prijedor, Northern Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Serbs
Luka May-July 1992 Brčko, Northern
Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Serbs Manjaca Summer 1991-December 1992 Banjaca Luka, Northern Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Serbs
KP Dom Foca April-mid 1993 Foča, South Eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Serbs Bosanski Šamac Territorial Defence Building An ad-hoc building, only in operation for a short time but used to detain and abuse Muslims Šamac, North Eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Serbs Celebici May-December 1992 Konjic, Northern Herzegovina Bosnian Muslims and Croats
Detjl Mainly
April-September 1993 but active until September 1994
Southern Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatian Defence Forces
3. Types of Sexual Abuse Committed in Prison Camps and Detention Centres
The investigation detailed in the first chapter of this thesis, carried out by Mladen Lancar, Neven Henigsberg and Pero Hrabas, entitled “Mental Health Consequences in Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse in Croatia and Bosnia”, questioned sixty men about sexual abuse, including questions of where they were sexually abused and the type and duration of sexual abuse they experienced. Of the 60 victims they questioned, 47 had been abused in a prison camp or detention centre and from these, 43 people had been imprisoned for over two months yet,
abuse against them was usually committed in the first two months of detention. In 46 of the cases addressed, the sexual abuse had been perpetrated in front of witnesses.76
The prevalence of sexual abuse in detention centres is undeniable. Every indictment released by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia that addresses perpetrators in a detention situation speaks of inhumane treatment within a detention centre:
the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during their confinement in camps and detention facilities, and during their interrogations at these locations, police stations and military barracks, where detainees were continuously subjected to, or forced to witness, inhumane acts including murder, sexual violence, torture, beatings and robbery77
An investigation into prison rape and torture carried out by the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims in 2005 identified that the consequences of sexual torture in detention and prison rape are ultimately the same. Although the majority of research has been completed on prison rape, studies can be applied to sexual torture of men in detention centres. The report by the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture victims, entitled Politically
Motivated Torture and its Survivors focuses on torture and the aftermath of torture, they
state:
The studies of victims of prison rape have shown that the prisoners experience feelings of powerlessness, loss of control, and vulnerability in relation to the aggressor. The victim feels that his gender identity has been destroyed and experiences confusion in his sexual orientation. Most of them also present symptoms of severe PTSD, major depressive disorder or suicidality78
Although sexual assault was not necessarily an aim or behind the imprisonment of men, it was often a product of their torture. Many men were subjected to extreme acts of sexual abuse as a method of torture with the aim of emasculating and humiliating them. The men imprisoned were often considered to be a “threat” to the population and a risk of becoming enemy fighters. This partially imagined threat allowed for the detention and torture of civilians.
76 Lancar, Henigsberg and Hrabar ,“Mental Health Consequences in Men Exposed to Sexual Abuse,” 6. 77 Case Number IT-00-39-I, The Prosecutor of the Tribunal Against Momcilo Krajisnik, original indictment
http://www.icty.org/x/cases/krajisnik/ind/en/kra-1ai000321e.pdf
78 Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT), Politically Motivated Torture and its
The Final Report of the UN Commission of Experts addressed the growing problem, and increased national and international awareness, of sexual assault and torture perpetrated against men within detention centres and prison camps, it was acknowledged that:
The sexual assault of men in [detention] camps is generally public, and the men are not usually removed from the camp. In these camps, other forms of humanitarian law violations, such as torture, occur simultaneously. In camps with only male populations and in camps with mixed populations, men are also subjected to sexual assault.79
In this circumstance, the term ‘public’ means within the confines of the prison, men were often abused in front of other detainees as a form of intimidation and threat to the prisoners. The public nature of the abuse was a process that was also employed against women with the aim of humiliating and threatening both the victims and the witnesses. However, abuse against men and women was perpetrated in slightly different ways. As mentioned above, the abuse of men usually happened while the men were in detention, and men were not usually removed from the camp to be abused. The reasons for this are unclear but it is clear that some women were abused in a more public and open arena, for example, in their own towns and villages with the aim of intimidating the enemy. The abuse of men, however, was perpetrated in a much more secretive manner, in only detention centres and prisons.80 The report also
recognises that the sexual torture and abuse of men was often perpetrated alongside another form of abuse, rather than as an individualised act. This is unlike the sexual assault of women which was often perpetrated as an assault with the aim of impregnation of the victim. However, the sexual assault of both men and women was used to intimidate the
The types of sexual abuse perpetrated against men in the detention centres in the former Yugoslavia may be split into four broad categories; psycho-sexual torture, mutilation of genitals, forced penetration and prisoner-prisoner abuse. This chapter will address each of these categories in turn.
3.1. Sexual Abuse as Torture
Torture is defined by the 1984 Convention Against Torture as an act that: (1) causes severe mental or physical suffering; (2) is committed for the purposes of obtaining information, punishment, intimidation or coercion; and (3) is inflicted or instigated by or with the consent
79 United Nations Security Council Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)or ‘The Bassiouni Report’ Volume V, Annexes IX-XIII United Nations
Security Council, May 2, 1994 p.11
