“Karaman’s house” was a rape camp set up near Foča, a town in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was not the only rape house set up by mostly Serbs in the Bosnian war ravaging the country from 1992 to 1995: sexual violence was used as a war weapon. The victims were predominantly Bosnian Muslim women. How many of them have to live on with the trauma of wartime rape is still not clear. Reports range from 20,000 to 60,000 survivors of sexual violence.
Nečujni Krik (Silent Scream), a 2014 documentary directed by Mirna Buljugić, Erna Mačkić and Dragana Erjavec, addresses the issue of wartime rape during the Bosnian war, and the diverse difficulties of the survivors in an understated, nuanced way. The major feat of the movie is that men who were raped during the war also speak out about their experiences, in spite of considerable ongoing stigmas.
Still from Nečujni Krik/ Silent Scream, via BIRN BalkansThe documentary points out how shame keeps the victims from talking about their trauma. According to Teufika Ibrahimefendić, a psychotherapist interviewed in Silent Scream, “the survivors are more afraid of the reaction of others rather than being afraid of what they have survived”. The core of this trepidation is due to the incident in itself; nobody really feels at ease when talking about a survived rape. But the silence is reinforced by aspects of Bosnian society, which is a predominantly traditional one with a male power monopoly. One of the misogynistic traits resulting from this mentality is that – in the words of psychotherapist Dijana Đurić in Nečujni krik – “women are almost considered equal to the criminal. They are made to feel guilty.”
