A UN tribunal has established "sexual enslavement" as a crime against humanity, convicting three Bosnian Serbs who took part in nightly gang-rapes and torture of Muslim women and girls at so-called "rape camps" during the Bosnian war.
The ruling on Thursday marked a milestone for the recognition of women's special vulnerability during war and the need for legal sanctions to prevent them from becoming spoils of battle.
"What the evidence shows," the judgment said, "is that the rapes were used by members of the Bosnian Serb armed forces as an instrument of terror -- an instrument they were given free rein to apply whenever and against whomsoever they wished."
The sexual enslavement issue was of special importance to Bosnia, where tens of thousands of women were raped during the civil war and taunted that they would give birth to babies of their rapists' ethnicity. Some were imprisoned until pregnancy to achieve that goal.
Most of the victims were Muslims and Croats, who had been raped by Serbs bent on reshaping the ethnic landscape of the former Yugoslavia. Many opted for abortions -- some late in pregnancy that left them infertile -- sometimes through crude procedures at home.
The tribunal found Dragoljub Kunarac and Radomir Kovac guilty of sexually assaulting victims as young as 12, forcing them to perform domestic chores and selling them into further bondage. They received 28- and 20-year sentences, respectively. A third defendant, Zoran Vukovic, was convicted of raping and torturing a 15-year-old girl -- who was about the same age as his own daughter -- but was acquitted of most other charges. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Judge Florence Mumba said Kunarac was involved in a "nightmarish scheme of sexual exploitation" that was "especially repugnant."
"You abused and ravaged Muslim women because of their ethnicity, and from among their number you picked whomsoever you fancied," the judge told Kunarac.
During the 1992-1995 war, the defendants selected their victims from detention centers in the Bosnian city of Foca and kept them as sex slaves, threatening to kill them if they refused to comply.
In testimony, victims said Kovac delighted in making Muslim women dance naked on tables while he sat on the sofa, pointing a gun at them. His rape of a 12-year-old girl was cited by Mumba as "the most striking example of your morally depraved and corrupt character."
The girl was "a helpless little child for whom you showed absolutely no compassion whatsoever," the judge said. The girl's mother testified that she was never heard from again after Kovac sold her into sexual bondage.
Some witnesses sobbed and others shrieked with rage as they recalled being assaulted by up to 10 soldiers at a time in classrooms of the high school where they were detained, or in soldiers' private apartments -- so-called "rape camps."
Some women said their injuries from the rapes left them infertile.
"I remember he was very forceful. He wanted to hurt me," one witness said, referring to Kunarac. "But he could never hurt me as much as my soul was hurting me."
In all, the defendants were convicted of 19 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including rape, torture, enslavement and outrages upon personal dignity.
Although there have been several rape convictions at both the Yugoslav tribunal and another UN court on the Rwandan genocide, the Foca case was the first international war crimes trial to focus on sexual crimes.
And despite the well-documented rape of Asian "comfort women" by Japanese soldiers during World War II, no one had been convicted before for wartime sexual enslavement, scholars say.
Thursday's judgment will help set legal precedent by outlining the criteria necessary to bring future sexual enslavement cases: women were detained under conditions in which they had to do everything they were ordered to do; they were reserved for specific men who repeatedly raped them and were given to other soldiers for sexual favors; and they denied any control over their lives.
The judgment was delivered before a packed courtroom at the tribunal, established in 1993 to punish perpetrators of atrocities in the 3 1-2-year Bosnian war.
After the verdict, the defendants filed somberly out of the chamber. Minutes earlier they had beamed with confidence as they shook hands with their counsel, kissing the hand of a female attorney.
Lead prosecutor Dirk Ryneveld praised "the bravery" of the 16 women who testified -- mothers, daughters and granddaughters.
The judges said the evidence didn't suggest the assaults were part of a military strategy. But they should be seen, the ruling said, in the context of a systematic attack on a civilian population -- in other words, a crime against humanity.
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