[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 28, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E247-E248]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL RULING ON RAPE

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 28, 2001

  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to hear about the 
International Criminal Tribunal's conviction of the three Bosnian Serbs 
for rape, torture, and sexual enslavement of Muslim women during the 
Bosnian war. I submit into the Record the following Washington Post 
article that appeared on February 23, 2001, which details the outcome 
of

[[Page E248]]

the verdict. Perhaps most significantly, the judges ruled that mass 
rape is a crime against humanity, the most serious category of 
international crimes after genocide.
  This is a landmark moment in the struggle for women's rights and in 
addressing issues of violence against women. For the first time, in the 
international justice system, sex crimes against women are being 
specifically identified and punished. In the past, UN war crimes 
tribunals ignored mass rape and sexual enslavement and considered these 
crimes to be a natural occurrence in war. Crimes against women like 
forced prostitution and rape that took place during WWII were never 
even prosecuted in the international tribunals that followed the war.
  Violence against women is unacceptable. We, in the United States, 
need to recognize the importance of this decision, take it to heart, 
and make ending violence against women a priority here at home and 
abroad.
  I want to recognize Presiding Judge Florence Mumba for her excellent 
work in pushing this trial to a just conclusion. It is a milestone 
decision for women all over the world.
  I applaud this decision and hope that we, in Congress, will follow 
this global legal model and use all of our means and resolve to bring 
justice and security to the women of our nation and the world.

               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 23, 2001]

                        Watershed Ruling on Rape


             Serbs Found Guilty of `Crime Against Humanity'

                            (By Peter Finn)

       Berlin, Feb. 22.--Three Bosnian Serbs were found guilty 
     today by a U.N. war crimes tribunal of the rape, torture and 
     enslavement of Muslim women during the Bosnian war. It was 
     the first time an international court ruled that rape is a 
     ``crime against humanity''
       The three men were sentenced to between 12 and 28 yeas in 
     prison for sex crimes committed near the town of Foca, 
     southeast of Sarajevo, in 1992 and 1993, at the height of 
     Bosnia's ethnic conflict. Human rights groups have estimated 
     that tens of thousands of women, mostly Moslems, were raped 
     during the war.
       The judges found the three men's crimes to be part of a 
     pattern of violent sexual abuse and intimidation condoned by 
     the wartime Bosnian Serb leadership. ``What the evidence 
     shows is that the rapes were used by members of the Bosnian 
     Serb armed forces as an instrument of terror,'' said 
     Presiding Judge Florence Mumba as she sentenced the men at 
     the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 
     at the Hague.
       Today's decision was also significant for breaking old 
     patterns by which international courts considered rape during 
     war to be some lesser offense, if an offense at all. The 
     decision ``opens a whole new category'' of war crime, said 
     Eugene R. Fidell, of the National Institute of Military 
     Justice, a nonprofit organization in Washington.
       During World War II, the Japanese and German armies 
     systematically enslaved thousands of women to serve as 
     prostitutes for their soldiers. Dutch authorities tried 
     Japanese officers who enslaved Dutch nationals, but the 
     international war crimes tribunals that the allies created 
     after the war did not treat the womens enslavement as a war 
     crime, or crime of any kind.
       Likewise, international courts have generally not treated 
     as war crimes rape and other sexual violence that soldiers in 
     combat zones commit of their own volition, assuming the 
     soldiers were prosecuted at all.
       In today's decision, Dragoljub Kunarac, 40, was sentenced 
     to 28 years on 11 counts, including rape, torture and 
     enslavement as crimes against humanity. Radomir Kovac, 39, 
     was sentenced to 20 years on four counts. And Zoran Vukovic, 
     45, was sentenced to 12 years after the court dismissed most 
     of the charges against him but convicted him on four counts.
       The crimes occurred as Bosnia, formerly a republic of 
     Yugoslavia, was the scene of war between its three main 
     ethnic groups, Serbs, Muslims and Croats.
       After Foca, a largely Muslim town, was overrun by Bosnian 
     Serb forces, its mosques were burned and its civilian 
     population rounded up and imprisoned in separate camps for 
     males and females.
       Sixteen rape victims and other witnesses testified at the 
     eight-month trial that Serb paramilitary forces entered the 
     women's detention centers and selected women and girls as 
     young as 12 for nightly gang rapes and sexual torture. Many 
     of the women were left with permanent gynecological and 
     physchological damage.
       In an impassioned and scathing judgment today, Mumba said, 
     ``Muslim women and girls, mothers and daughters together 
     [were] were robbed of the last vestiges of human dignity.''
       ``Women and girls [were] treated like chattels, pieces of 
     property at the arbitrary disposal of the Serb occupation 
     forces.''
       Lawyers for the convicted men had argued that the women 
     were willing sexual partners.
       As Kunarac stood before the three-judge panel, Mumba said, 
     ``You abused and ravaged Muslim women because of their 
     ethnicity, and from among their number, you picked whomsoever 
     you fancied on a given occasion.'' Kunarac briefly bowed his 
     head as his sentence of 28 years was read.
       ``I remember he was very forceful. He wanted to hurt me,'' 
     one witness testified about Kunarac during the trial. ``But 
     he could never hurt me as much as my soul was hurting me.''
       Sentencing Kovac, the court said that it was particularly 
     appalled at his treatment of a 12-year-old-girl, who was 
     identified only as A.B. None of the 16 victims who testified, 
     or other victims, was identified, so as to shield them from 
     further trauma.
       A.B., the court said, was ``a helpless little child for 
     whom you showed absolutely no compassion whatsoever, but whom 
     you abused sexually in the same way as the other girls. You 
     finally sold her like an object in the knowledge that this 
     would almost certainly mean further sexual assaults by other 
     men.''
       The court noted that eight years later, A.B. has never been 
     heard from.
       Sentencing Vukovic to 12 years, the judges found that he 
     raped a 15-year-old girl after threatening her mother with 
     death if she did not tell him where her daughter was hiding. 
     Mumba recalled case after case, summarizing the catalog of 
     horror before she issued the prison terms.
       In one instance, she noted, Kunarac ``personally raped 
     Witness FWS-183 and aided and abetter her rape by the two 
     other soldiers by encouraging the other men while they were 
     raping her. You further mocked the victim by telling the 
     other soldiers to wait for their turn while you were raping 
     her, by laughing at her while she was raped by the other 
     soldiers, and finally by saying that she would carry Serb 
     babies and that she would not know the father.''
       Noting that the three soldiers were not the masterminds of 
     the war--Bosnia Serb leaders have been indicted but remain 
     fugitives--the court said that ``lawless opportunists should 
     expect no mercy [from the court], no matter how low their 
     position in the chain of command may be.''
       Foca now lies in the Serb zone of Bosnia and was renamed 
     Srbinje after the war. There are few Muslims in the town 
     today.
       Dirk Ryneveld, the lead prosecutor in the case, welcomed 
     the verdicts and commended ``the bravery of the victims who 
     came forward to tell their stories.''

     

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