A survivor of the Bosnian war: “The truth must come out”

Halida Uzunović is one of the thousands of survivors of the aggression in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She wants the truth about the atrocities to be brought to light and the victims given an appropriate role in public discourse.

Content warning: This interview contains descriptions of physical, sexualised and psychological violence.

THE TRUTH MUST COME OUT

Marion Kraske: You told your difficult life story to Nejra Mekić Korkmaz, an author from Foča, who turned it into a novel. The book is titled Orijent – the name of the restaurant owned by your murdered brother Konjo. It relates the story of a family in Foča, a small town 70 kilometres southeast of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. You once said that the universe brought you together on the road to truth. What did you mean by that? 

Halida Uzunović: The book is the true story of my life in Foča, and it also gives an account of the suffering my family experienced during the Second World War. I met Nejra by chance while I was serving as president of the Foča War Victims Association, a post I held for four years. My last wish on this earth was to tell my story. And so it happened that Nejra wrote it all down. I didn’t want to leave this world and take the truth with me. This truth was hurting and destroying me so much that I could no longer bear it. I wanted to correct the mistakes done by my grandmothers, who experienced the same thing during the Second World War that I experienced in 1992 during the aggression in Foča. I wanted to get off this path of shame and silence. And I wanted to tell my story in a bright way. I wanted to stand up to the powerful lies that resonate more strongly than our truth. We came together on this path forward. Nejra came into my life as a gift to help me express what was hurting me.

Orijent is a novel based on the historical circumstances of the war. What was the most important thing you wanted to communicate to the readers?

The truth, this very truth: the stigmatisation, apprehensiveness, a kind of shame that most women don’t talk about. I can understand that. I, too, kept a “cowardly” silence for 29 years. This burden tore my body and mind to pieces. Then I said to myself: “Why should I keep quiet? Why should these criminals walk around Serbia, Montenegro, Foča with nothing to fear?” But it really took a lot of strength and courage to share all of this with the outside world.

The book Orijent gives an account of your family’s life in Foča. How did you live before the war, and what did you experience when April 1992 came around?

Like many Bosnians and Herzegovinians, we lived happily, contentedly and prosperously. I had a wonderful family, two older brothers, two older sisters, parents, a husband who loved me very much, and a 5-year-old son. We lacked nothing. I worked as a secretary to the head of the Foča municipality, my husband worked in the hospital. In March 1992 we celebrated our son’s 5th birthday and thought our happiness would never end. But then, in the spring of 1992, Foča very quickly (in less than a week) fell into the hands of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), which were supported by paramilitary groups from Montenegro and Serbia. We recognised them by the insignia on their uniforms, which read “White Eagles, Serbian Guard”, and by the Ekavian dialect they spoke. Foča is a small town where it’s easy to spot outsiders.

The declared aim of the policy of the then Serbian ruler Slobodan Milošević was to create a Greater Serbia. This resulted in the annexation of Bosnian territories. Before the war Foča was made up of about 50 percent Bosniaks (Muslim Bosnians), but from spring 1992 the non-Serbian population was terrorised. How did you experience these events?

The Serbian forces took over the town with lightning speed. It was hermetically sealed off and nobody could get in or out. We lived on the left bank of the Drina River, and there might have been a chance to escape if we had lived on the right bank – where we could have possibly broken through to Ustikolina and Goražde. But that was our fate.

We were trapped on the edge of the town, where my father had a house. We were all there together. One day a group of armed fighters, led by Gojko Janković, a war criminal, and consisting of local and “imported” soldiers from the region, arrived at the house...

“Čelebićki Četnici” (Chetniks from Čelibići) was written on his unit’s lorry. They locked us up in a house, separating the men from the women and children. It was absolutely horrible. The men were taken prisoner and driven away in lorries for an alleged interrogation. However, none of them survived. They were taken to the Foča penal institution (known as the KPD Foča), where they were killed. Among them were my two brothers and my husband, who was only 32 years old at the time. I haven’t found his remains yet, but I did find the remains of my two brothers. It was, to put it mildly, living hell.

What happened to the women?

They ordered us not to leave the house, supposedly to protect us. But that wasn’t true. You can imagine the hell that broke loose after these poor women were left alone and helpless without their loved ones. You can imagine what happened there. What can I say, it was just ghastly.

You have no information about your husband?

No, there has still been no trace of him, up until the present day – despite inquiring about him at the Missing Persons Institute (Institut za nestale osobe BiH) several times. The Drina probably washed him away. Thousands of Bosniaks were killed, and the easiest way to do this was to carry them in blankets to the Charles Bridge. The search for the more than 600 people missing in Foča is still ongoing; a third of those missing are women. Most of them are lying at the bottom of the Drina. The river will never dry up, and an exhumation of this magnitude can never be carried out. The Drina is the largest Bosniak grave in the Balkans.

Survivors of war crimes have repeatedly reported how important it is for them to find family members who have been killed.

Yes, that’s true. It makes me sad, very sad. My son and grandson want their father and grandfather to have a proper burial. I want his remains to be found and buried with dignity. My husband didn’t deserve to end up like this. Wars take place, armies fight each another. I thought they would kill each other on the battlefield. But what our neighbours, the Serbs, did was not a war. It was an ethnic cleansing, a genocide of the Bosniaks, the complete destruction of a people, because the Drina was the centuries-old, imaginary border of “Greater Serbia”.

One hears the term “ethnic cleansing” quite a lot. Does that sound like a euphemism to you?

Take me as an example. It wasn’t enough that they killed my two brothers and my husband, all of whom were younger than 35. It wasn’t enough for them to destroy everything, set it on fire, raze all 17 mosques in Foča to the ground. On top of that, the women were imprisoned, tortured, sold as slaves and raped. And all this with one goal: to erase all traces of the existence of Bosniaks in these areas. If you do something like that to a woman, she will be unable to live as before and will be unable to raise a child and go through life as a normal person. I don’t think there is a term that adequately describes such atrocities against a people, but especially those perpetrated against women.

Where do you find the strength to make all this public and to face the challenges of coming to terms with the past?

There is a higher power that has given me the strength to remain normal, smart, brave and dignified, and to stay the woman I am, one who courageously stands up to enemies and malicious people. I have demonstrated that I harbour no hate. As president of the Foča War Victims Association, I met with the Women in Black (Žene u crnom) and Staša Zajović...

We’ve been inseparable ever since then. They have given me a lot of strength, support and courage. We meet regularly to discuss issues of common concern. We also testified at the Women’s Court, which they organised in 2023. (Note: The Women’s Court, which was held for the first time in 2015 in Sarajevo, is a symbolic place where women can testify to the crimes and violence committed against them.) I proved that I am a human being, that I am different from the criminals who are not ashamed to walk around freely in Foča, Belgrade or wherever they are.

What does it mean to you that the Women in Black is based and work in Belgrade of all places?

I wish there was such a strong institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), with all due respect to all the institutions that do good work here. If there was something like Women in Black in BiH, more women would be emboldened to write and speak about the crimes committed against them and their families, thus enabling them to live healthier and easier lives than before. Stigmatisation, fear and shame is still pervasive in BiH. In order to tell such a difficult story, which can drive a woman mad, she needs someone who will meet her with all their heart and show her empathy and respect. Women in Black does all of this. That is especially true of Staša Zajović, who is brilliant at this. She knows when to speak, when a trip into nature might do us good and when to stop talking about these difficult subjects. These women deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for what they’re doing for the survivors of sexualised violence in the Balkans.

During the Bosnian war, rape was systematically used as a weapon of war. It was not a matter of individual acts; instead, these crimes were directed against the Muslim population, and the intentions behind them were resolutely genocidal. How do you address this issue today?

Getting shot in war is the most painless way to go. The bullet kills you, you’re gone and that’s it. What they did to us during the Bosnian war is so unimaginable, so inhuman, so abominable and brutal that it’s terrifying. To rape a girl in front of her mother or a mother in front of her daughter – that is hell. These acts of violence against women and girls in Foča were classified as war crimes. Any civilised person would view these atrocities with disgust and abhorrence.

Foča is now located in Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb-dominated part of Bosnia and Herzegovina whose political leadership still denies the war crimes. What is your current experience with these political structures?

Because of everything that had happened to me, I later decided to inquire with the authorities about what my parents and my grandmother had experienced during the Second World War. I learned that in 1942 the Chetniks from Čelibići had killed my paternal grandmother on her doorstep, and that my uncle Halim disappeared and was never found. But the worst thing was that while I was being interviewed for the book Orijent, I tried to find my grandfather’s and uncle’s death certificates and discovered that both of them don’t even exist in Foča. They had been erased from the birth certificates as if they had never lived. All this is the final phase of perpetrating genocide on a people: the erasure and denial of the deeds.

When I asked for the death certificate of my husband who was murdered in 1992, I received a death certificate from East Sarajevo (a city in Republika Srpska), which states that my husband died of natural causes in 1991. These crimes, in which the Bosniaks in these areas are first killed and then derided like this, will apparently never end. It was not a war, it was the complete annihilation of a people. Raping a woman, humiliating her in front of her child, enslaving her, selling her as a sex slave: all done with the intention of ending her life, of ensuring she doesn’t return to her birthplace, that’s ethnic cleansing – that’s what it’s all about. It kills and destroys me. 

I ordered myself to stop holding my tongue!

What kind of help do you receive today?

I ordered myself to stop holding my tongue! Just because my grandmother and mother had to keep quiet, doesn’t mean I have to. I have help, I have the support of psychologists, of the Women in Black and NGOs, and of all normal people, not to mention the women who don’t want all this to be forgotten. 

I don’t want to tarnish a whole nation, all my school friends were Serbian: Slavica, Zorica...

My father lost his mother and other family members during the Second World War, but he didn’t talk about it. Yet if he had spoken, I might have been spared from falling into the hands of criminals. What matters to me today is that we don’t hate, that we don’t stir up hatred, but simply say what happened. Everything I’ve said is anyway not enough compared to the scale of the crimes. That doesn’t mean that all Serbs are like that, there are good people among them. In the beginning no one was allowed to help us in Foča, otherwise they would have been killed, too. 

For example, Dragan Gagović, a work colleague of mine, was friendly toward me when I was looking for my husband. He almost felt ashamed when he took me to visit the largest men’s concentration camp (KPD), where my husband was detained and later cruelly murdered. That was the last time my son and I saw him. (Note: In 1999 Dragan Gagović was shot dead by French SFOR soldiers. He was the first co-defendant charged with rape on the so-called Foča indictment before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [ICTY]).

Women and girls were imprisoned, raped and enslaved for months in Foča and the surrounding area. The ICTY in the Hague recognised these acts as war crimes for the first time in history. How important is to you that some of the perpetrators were convicted of these atrocities?

Nothing can ease my pain and suffering, but of course it is satisfying and it means a lot when the verdict is announced and the perpetrators are branded as war criminals. I don’t know and I don’t care how ashamed and embarrassed they are of what they did, but it means something to every victim that the perpetrators end up exactly where they deserve to be – on the war criminals list. 

Despite the verdicts of the Hague Tribunal, the political leadership in Serbia and many of the perpetrators continue to deny the crimes. As a survivor, what do you do to counter this?

They are so entrenched in their lies and misdeeds that it is simply incomprehensible. How can one not recognise that genocide and war crimes occurred? Look at the situation in Serbia and the region. We won’t make any progress until the facts are clearly established, the perpetrators confess to their crimes, and the truth comes out. The truth must come out. We can see the consequences of these systematic denials: The region is in chaos. Without the truth there can be no healthy progress, no reconciliation.

Do these lies compel you to correct the untruths?

Marko Kovač, a former commander and fugitive accused of crimes against humanity and the destruction of the Aladža Mosque in Foča, wrote a book that’s absolutely appalling to read. It’s about how Serbian soldiers were raped by women, Muslim women. These lies are so outrageous that a normal person can’t even comprehend them. This book says everything about the mental state of these Serbian war criminals. With their denials they insult the honour and intellect of all survivors.

Is there any compensation or reparation for the crimes? What criteria are used to determine who is eligible? And how easy is it to receive such support?

The Federation of BiH (Bosniak-Croat part of the country) officially recognises the status of “civilian victim of war”. In order to obtain this status, people who have suffered sexual violence must provide an official certificate issued by the Association of Women Victims of War as well as the necessary medical documentation.

The status entitles you to receive monthly support. As far as I know, only very few women have obtained this status so far. But the true number of victims is much higher. This includes not only women, but also men, some of whom have suffered even greater trauma and are even more stigmatised in society than women. These crimes are never recognised as such and are hardly ever talked about. But in order to prevent such crimes from happening again, they need to be talked about much more often. A lot of time and attention as well as adequate treatment are required for survivors to muster the courage to overcome the stigma and silence, but these are all lacking in our long-suffering country. 

Do you think the government is doing enough for the survivors and victims?

I think much, much more should be done. The best compensation would be continuous, adequate and professional psychological help for all those who experienced some form of abuse during the war. When I hear from survivors in European and Scandinavian countries, I am struck by how privileged they are, by the wide range of services that are available to them: spa therapy, psychological support, workshops... We are a long way from providing such services. There should be an institution dedicated solely to this issue and to which survivors can turn directly at any time. That would make everything much easier. How many women have left this world and died with this huge wound, without even being able to talk about it? They sat alone with their pain within their four walls. I’ve known some of them.

Have the institutions of Republika Srpska that were identified in the Hague Tribunal’s judgments as responsible for the crimes provided assistance to the survivors?

I don’t know. Republika Srpska was created through our blood and suffering. Take, for example, my husband’s death certificate, which I mentioned earlier. What does the RS produce in this respect – apart from lies, deceptions and crimes?

In the case of Simatović and Stanišić, who both worked for the Serbian intelligence apparatus, the ICTY ruled that they were jointly responsible for the acts of ethnic cleansing and other crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. This means that the state of Serbia also shares in the responsibility. There are still debates about the Second World War: Poland is demanding further compensation from Germany. Are there legal avenues for obtaining compensation from Serbia?

You can’t compare Germany with Bosnia or Serbia. Bosnia and Herzegovina has never made any such demands on Serbia. Unfortunately, we have no one who really represents us. The rulings of the Hague War Crimes Tribunal were not enforced in time to do us any good.

In the case of my relative, who had fled to Montenegro with her family, all three of her brothers were sent back to KPD Foča and killed. Montenegro later apologised for this and paid compensation for the deportation. Of course, it’s easier if a country acknowledges its mistakes and makes amends. It pains us that we have no political representatives in Bosnia who would support us in such an endeavour. We have enough women capable of doing this. 

The organisation Forgotten Children of War (which advocates for the human rights of children born of wartime rape), led by its president Ajna Jusić, has been trying for years to improve the legal situation of rape victims. Since 2006, BiH has had a law that creates a new category for civilian victims of war, which means they now have a right to receive support. Yet many victims complain that the law is being inadequately implemented. What exactly is missing?

Hats off to Ajna Jusić for her courage and commitment, and for the path she has taken. I am proud of the Bosnian youth who are working to come to terms with this war. No matter how much is done, it is too little compared to the crimes committed against women. We know what a woman’s role is in society, in the family, at home and in our state. In our country, old people say that a woman is the three pillars of a house. If a woman is healthy, then society and family are healthy. Bosnia is lacking in many things, such as a strong institution for survivors. In addition, not only should women get involved, but men should also take up the issue. Above all, however, the majority of women should stand up for the needs of war victims. 

It’s simply impossible to carry this trauma around with you all the time and stay healthy.

In BiH, it is estimated that 20,000 to 50,000 women and girls were raped during the war. Yet today they are marginalised and their stories are barely visible in the political discourse. How can this be changed? What about in schools, at universities and in the media? What needs to be taught in schools and higher education institutions so that the survivors and victims receive the attention they deserve? 

First of all, the concepts of culture of remembrance and coping with the past should be introduced at schools and universities, and more workshops should explore these concepts. Much needs to be improved in this regard. The taboos imposed upon us must finally be brought out into the open. It’s much easier and less painful to avoid them by keeping silent and running away from them.

I speak from experience when I say that if I hadn’t dealt with all this, I don’t think I would be alive today. Keeping quiet about my trauma had almost destroyed both my mind and body – now I am a different me. Talking it all out has healed me, partially. The healing will never be complete, but it’s as if a great weight that was holding me down has been lifted. With this truth I’m getting closer to healing. Some of my closest friends and relatives don’t feel this way. They are still silent and living with so much pain. I think that hiding these serious crimes makes them sick. It’s simply impossible to carry this trauma around with you all the time and stay healthy. I’m not just saying this as a survivor, research has confirmed this too.

This enormous number of crimes also means that there are thousands of perpetrators still walking free in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in the neighbouring countries of Croatia and Serbia. Some of them have also moved to the EU. How should a society deal with these issues? What do you want from BiH politicians? 

No normal and conscientious country would allow the concealment and glorification of war crimes, as is sometimes done in Serbia. That says a lot about their policies and intentions. I call on the politicians in this country to be courageous, just like us survivors. Not to run away from the truth, but to live with it and accept it so that they can lead a healthy life. Ours is a sick society. Even when there is peace, the system kills people, as we saw recently during the floods. Political leaders and war profiteers who cut down forests and change the course of rivers can kill us even in peacetime.

Do you see a strategic partner with whom you can pursue reconciliation?

Let’s make people like Ajna and Staša presidents, with them at the helm our countries would prosper. I don’t think much of the nationalist parties, they have driven us to despair. They’re made up of ignorant people who only care about their careers and ignore the people’s needs. I’m afraid to go out in Sarajevo. I wish a country existed where there was peace and love, where I could live the rest of my life freely and peacefully. I wish peace and prosperity for the whole world.

People in the West often say the war has been over for a long time. In your book, you make it clear – especially for the women and the war victims – that it’s not over yet. As in the 1990s, the international community is focusing on placating the nationalists in the region, especially the Serbian leadership. In addition, economic agreements are being negotiated. How can the women’s perspective, the perspective of survivors of sexualised violence, be made more visible to international actors? What specifically would you like to see?

I wish that something would be done for the war victims, especially for the women. But that’s not happening. When I was president of the Foča War Victims Association, we started an initiative for the Partizan Sports Hall, where many of the atrocities took place. We wanted to place a memorial plaque at the site of the crimes. The authorities suggested turning the plateau in front of the hall into a peace park, which would not harm anyone or stop anyone from going on with their lives. In the end, we didn’t achieve anything – neither the local UN office that we had contacted, nor us as an association. The authorities in Foča even shut their offices; every request we made was ignored. No one can do anything against these nationalist rulers in Foča, who are still sitting on their thrones. Even the United Nations, the most powerful international institution operating here, can’t order them to do anything. Either they can’t or don’t want to do it. Probably both.

Reconciliation sometimes requires pressure from outside, which was also the case in dealing with Nazi Germany after the Second World War. Back then, the Allies pursued the goals of denazification and denationalisation. They ensured that the education system was decentralised and democratic media were established. Today, however, there is a lack of pressure on the parties in the Bosnian war, on Serbia and Croatia. (Note: Both countries wanted to divide up Bosnia between each other). And now, almost 30 years after the end of the war, politicians like Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić are once again calling for a Greater Serbia. This is a continuation of the imperialist policy that led to the very crimes of which you are a survivor. What is your message to the international community to prevent new aggression – such as that committed against Bosnia in the '90s?

I don’t think anything can be done at the moment. At least not as long as Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić sits securely on his throne, feeling powerful because of support from two major world powers, China and Russia. At the moment, no one in the region wants to abandon their nationalist agendas. Serbia’s official policy, which is based on denying court-established facts, is the engine of radicalisation in Serbia and across the region. The denial of the genocide poses a real danger that the genocide could be repeated in the future. 

We need someone who will end the power of the nationalists.

This year, Ajna Jusić from the organisation Forgotten Children of War received the International Women of Courage Award from the U.S. government.[1] You also have shown considerable courage in pursuing your book project. Have you ever thought about going into politics yourself and pushing for change and reconciliation in that capacity?

I’m really sad that I live in such a nationalistic system where everything is backwards. I don’t see any progress towards a better future. Of course, I think that women like Ajna, as well as other young people who are so smart and educated, can push for change. Women are especially capable of changing the world. I myself am tired, I have never recovered from the past. The primitivism here disgusts me, this ethnic division disgusts me. The Republika Srpska entity behaves like a state and prevents all progress. We need someone here who will fundamentally change everything in order to end the power of the primitives, nationalists and uneducated people. The nationalists at the helm in Bosnia and Herzegovina right now should finally leave and give people a break from nationalism, poverty and misery. Bosnia is divided, and I fear that we haven’t seen the end of this, that there will be more to come. I’m afraid of the future. I have a grandchild – the young don’t deserve this. Bosnia is full of wonderful, hard-working and educated people, who deserve neither such leadership nor such a system.

The interview was conducted in October 2024 by Marion Kraske, a political scientist, analyst and author.

Translation and editorial assistance: Amela Sejmenović

The audio version was generated artificially.