Institute for Genocide Research: Rape in BiH was a deliberate form of genocide

The International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict will be marked for the first time on June 19. On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in War, researchers gathered in the International Expert Team of the Institute for Genocide Research Canada are calling for an urgent resolution of the status of victims of sexual violence in BiH during the aggression and genocide.

- Humanity lost its meaning after the mass crime of rape during the aggression against BiH and the genocide against its citizens. According to UN estimates, between 20,000 and 50,000 women, girls, and children, as well as an unknown number of men, were raped in BiH between 1992 and 1995. Rape and sexual violence were used as a form of aggression and genocide that destroyed human dignity - it was announced.

The UN Declaration aims to eliminate sexual violence in conflicts. It elevates rape in war to the level of war crimes, similar to genocide and terrorism. The Declaration was signed by representatives of more than a hundred countries, and the occasion was the crimes of rape during the aggression against BiH and the genocide against its citizens.

- The Declaration prohibits the amnesty of sexual violence within peace agreements and allows for the arrest of those suspected of such violence anywhere in the world. Rape in BiH was an integral part of the war strategy. Therefore, it was one of the ways to implement aggression and genocide, a means of psychological pressure through which military and political aggressive genocidal goals were realized - clearing territories of members of other ethnic groups. Rapes were planned, systematic, organized, and politically motivated.

Without punishment for the perpetrators of rape, there is no human, civilizational, or humane balance, no execution of justice, the foundation of truth, peace, and tolerance is undermined and collapses. Good dies. Beauty perishes. By reconciling with the crime of rape, by forgetting the crime of rape, we become evil accomplices in the continuation of injustice, perpetrators of a new crime.

The perpetrators of sexual violence were not driven by carnal desire but, above all, by the realization that they were humiliating men and women, weakening their spirit of resistance, and bringing them to their knees. The act of rape, which fundamentally violates human dignity, best reveals the anatomy of the morality of the protagonists of aggression and genocide who incorporated such joint criminal enterprises into their joint conquering, aggressive, genocidal strategy, a strategy that forced men and women to leave their country through crime, a strategy that forcibly took away human dignity.

It was not an incident, a coincidence, but, on the contrary, something that was carried out systematically, planned, with premeditation - it is further stated.

Warning the public about the insufficient support provided to victims of this violence in BiH, they call on all friends of truth and justice in the world to raise their voices against the perpetrators of the terrible crime of rape, to give their voice to the just struggle of the victims of rape.

- Because the continuous humiliation of rape victims is equivalent to a crime, equivalent to invoking new crimes, an attack on truth and justice, an attack on peace, and human dignity. Therefore, we call on the competent authorities to immediately take measures to protect and support victims and survivors of sexual violence in the aggression and genocide in BiH by improving their health, economic, and psychosocial status. We remind that BiH, according to international law, is obliged to provide reparations to victims of wartime sexual violence.

We demand immediate action to bring perpetrators of sexual violence to justice, as this is a fundamental prerequisite for preventing human rights violations. The dehumanization of victims of sexual crime in BiH, traumatized and isolated children as a consequence of this act, and insufficient protection of witnesses in court proceedings are evidence of the anti-civilizational attitude of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state towards these victims. The priority task for all of us is to provide support to rape survivors, embodied in creating a social situation in which these victims will occupy a dignified and active position in the family, society, and the state - it was announced from the Institute for Genocide Research Canada on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in War.