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CHAPTER 3: THE USE OF RAPE AS A WAR STRATEGY IN BOSNIAN

3.4. THE EFFECT OF WARTIME RAPE IN PATRIARCHAL

3.4.1 The Effects of Wartime Rape on Individuals

In a society where the honor and virginity are considered as sacred, women who are the victims of rape are accepted as defiled and ruined. Married women are divorced since their husbands think their wives are polluted and unmarried young girls are not regarded as suitable for marriage since they are contaminated. Virginity is also one of the most special things that Muslim women give an incredible importance and enshrine so the loss of it means the rejection of married women by their husbands and discarding of unmarried women as unavailable for marriage.256 Since the protection of virginity until marriage is an obligation for Bosnian women who grew in a Muslim society with certain moral codes and values, rape creates a trauma because of the predictable consequences of rape which are rejection, ostracism and leading a life without marriage and children in a proper way.257 This is because most of these women who were exposed to rape believe their lives have been destroyed.258 Most particularly the women who get pregnant as a result of the rape, are forced to give birth to the enemy’s child and then are sent back to their community with the child are subjected to exclusion from

254 Bette S. Denich, “Sex and Power in the Balkans,” Women, Culture and Society 133, (1974): 62-63.

255 UNICEF, “Sexual violence as a weapon of war.” http://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/sexviol.htm.

256 Danise Aydelott, “Mass Rape during War: Prosecuting Bosnian Rapists under International Law.”

Emory University School of Law Review 7, (1993): 602.

257 Roy Gutman, “Forward”, in Mass rape: The war against women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed.

Alexandra Stiglmayer (U of Nebraska Press, 1994): x

258 Roy Gutman, “Rape by Order. Bosian Women Terrotized by Serbs”, New York Newsday, Sunday, (1992): 39.

the society. Therefore it paves the way for the perpetual destruction of the fabric of the community.259

The Serbs, who were aware of how important virginity and sense of honor are for Muslims, raped women in front of their families and in public in order to humiliate and to disintegrate the Bosniak society over these values. As Peltola stated, “Women are raped in front of their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers…This type of rape is employed strategically in an attempt to destroy a community’s cohesion and stability.”260 Both making the whole society witness of this torture and also sending women back to their families after the rape increased the moral degradation in the community. Moreover, it increased the impact and damage of rape on women who were excluded from the family and the society. These women who were the most unfortunate victims of war were seen as guilty and were ostracized by the society in spite of that they did not commit any offense. Therefore, this situation ensured that Serbs reached their goals more easily because as the women who are victim of the rape were excluded and condemned, the social structure based on the sense of unity and solidarity among the Bosniak people collapsed.261

Another stereotyped idea, which is dominant in patriarchal societies, is that women are beings in need of the protection of men. According to Hain, “The construction and enforcement of patriarchy allows the ridicule and denigration of femininity, that regards women as weaker and inferior to men and regards them as ‘property’ in need of protection.”262 From the conservative and traditional point of view underlying the patriarchal system, women are not regarded as an independent individual controlling their own bodies and on the other hand cultural codes, which have influence over the society, gives a special importance to sexual purity of women.263

Women, who are seen as in need of the care of their father and of husband by leading a life under the rule of their father until they get married and then of their husband are suppressed by the patriarchal structure. For women who are raised so as not to break the

259 I Came to Testify, quoted in Crider, 21.

260 Peltola, op.cit: 25.

261 Crider, op.cit: 22.

262 Hain, op.cit: 5.

263 Fezile Osum, “Wartime Rapes in International Criminal Courts Case Law and Cyprus Conflicts”, (Thesis, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2017): 4.

rules of men at home, the concept of honor, which is blessed by the family and society, has a particular importance over these women. Therefore, honor is important for both a woman who has to keep her virginity until marriage and has to live within the lines drew for her in order not to embarrass her husband after marriage and also for a man who is obliged to protect and look after the women under his control. The reason of it is that the honor of a woman means the honor of her husband, father and family. Any harm came to the honor of women means the harm that will come to the masculinity of men. In this context, women are considered as men’s property that does not have their own identity.264 Starting from this point of view it may be inferred that the damage on dignity of men is deemed more important rather than the physical and mental damage caused by rape on women. In this respect, providing that Bosnian case is not an exception, “the violation of women was considered less serious than the violation of honour and patriotism.”265 Therefore, rape painfully exemplifies how the patriarchal system and the inequality of men and women ingrained within this system are used as means for repression on women.266

In a society adopting such a patriarchal mentality, protecting their women against the enemy in the war is a way or rather a necessity to prove their masculinity and to realize the myth of heroic brave soldier. The concepts of ‘beautiful souls’ and ‘just warrior’ and the hierarchy between masculinity and femininity affect women mostly in wartime as well as in the peacetime. On the basis of this fact, women were raped in order to demoralize and feminize the Muslim men by applying psychological pressure on them in Bosnian war. Since one of the first reasons of the use of rape as a war tool is to collapse the morale of opposite side, the idea that men are not able to protect their women decreases their morale and motivation.267 Therefore, rape serves as an indicator of power and a way to establish to control and hegemony.268 Further, this show of force is applied not only to women but also to other men by men.269 In this case, rape itself is

264 Sarah Chong, “Rape as a Weapon of War”, Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), (2005).

265 Fritzsche, op.cit. (2011): 49.

266 Primorac, op.cit: 500.

267 Yuval- Davis, op.cit: 204.

268 Barbara Sichtermann, “Rape and Sexuality”, The Polity Reader in Gender Studies, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994): 278).

269 Renato Rosaldo, “Notes toward a Critique of Patriarchy from a Male Position”, Anthropological Quarterly, (1993): 81-82.

applied not only to women but also to men because the rape becomes a message between men.

Moreover, men run the risk of fighting and dying in order to protect their women from other men of the enemy groups. Therefore, rape is not just a crisis of ethnic identity but rather a crisis of masculinity occurred amongst themselves.270 In this connection, that not to protect their women while striving for imposing their authority and hegemony over the others by entering in a competition for power through the women’s bodies weakens them. Concordantly, the rape of women is believed by the men of defeated group as humiliation and demasculinization which are the severest consequences of their defeat.271 Men who accept the protection of honor of their women as the primary job of being a man suppose that they cannot protect their land for being deprived of protecting their women. Therefore, as Kepkay pointed out “warfare becomes a contest of masculinity where the penis is weaponized and males fight to emasculate opponents by invading the bodies of their nation’s women.”272

Bosnian Muslim men had to witness while their wives, daughters or relatives were raped or had to live together with their women who were sent back to them after they were raped in order to be wrecked psychologically. This situation led to ultimate humiliation and abasement by increasing the incapability of men. The underlying reason of it is that in Balkan’s patriarchal system, the inability of men to protect their women and to control sexual and reproductive abilities of women is an obvious sign of the weakness.273 Thus, the gendered structure negatively affected on men but not as much as women.