Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Toward the end of Calling the Ghosts, a documentary film about the war in Bosnia, there is a scene in which the two central characters are looking through a rack of postcards. Jadranka Cigelj and Nusreta Sivac, Bosnian Muslim women who survived the Serbian concentration camp of Omarska, had come to the Netherlands to testify about their experiences before the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The voiceover is Cigelj, reading the card they sent to their former Serbian colleagues in their former hometown, the ethnically cleansed city of Prijedor: “Greetings from The Hague. Hope to see you here soon.” Those two short sentences speak volumes about modern ethnic hatred, genocidal violence, and torture, as well as the survivor spirit and demands for justice.When the women were incarcerated and repeatedly raped by Serbian soldiers, the possibility of legal retribution was virtually unthinkable. The illegality of Omarska was obvious, as evidenced by the precautions taken by the commanders of the camp prior to a visit by foreign journalists to obscure the harms being perpetrated there. But they had little reason to imagine, let alone fear, that they could be held accountable. At that time, there was no institutional mechanism to enforce the international laws being violated in Omarska. But the fact that there were laws “in the books” inspired the women, when they were released, ... log in or subscribe to read full text