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Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
How my summer at The Hague shaped a lifetime
In Summer 2006, when I was practising as a junior lawyer, I was accepted for an internship at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). I took leave from my job as a public law lawyer and left for The Hague with lofty ambitions of pursuing a career in international law. Though I knew the work of the ICTY was important, in truth, I knew very little about the war in Yugoslavia. The siege of Sarajevo, the longest siege in modern military history, had peppered the news throughout my years in high school, but the facts of this many-sided conflict were resistant to a straightforward description. The ICTY was an ad-hoc tribunal established by a resolution of the Security Council in 1993, intended to prosecute those who had held senior positions in the government and military for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was the first properly international tribunal of its kind and relied on the principle of international law that certain crimes are so fundamental to our shared humanity that they are binding, whether or not a nation-state has agreed to them. Some said the ICTY heralded a new era in international law and order, in which atrocities would never go unpunished. Others were more circumspect, given the international community's stunning inaction throughout the war. In the mid-2000s, Slobodan Milošević was being tried for his role as a politician for participating in war crimes in an effort to realise his plan for Greater Serbia (which effectively meant using force to connect Serbia with Serbian-held territories in Bosnia and Croatia). A former lawyer, Milošević had, in a colourful fashion, represented himself during these proceedings, consistently denying his guilt and refusing to recognise the ICTY's jurisdiction. But after I had accepted my internship and before I arrived, Milošević died suddenly of a heart attack whilst detained at the tribunal. His unexpected death meant he was never actually convicted of the crimes for which he was indicted. When I arrived at the tribunal two months later, the mood there was distinctly sombre; questions were being asked about what meaningful legacy the tribunal could have in the absence of a final judgment against this man who many regarded as the war's symbolic figurehead. July marks the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. In 2001, in the first conviction of its kind since the Nuremberg trials, the tribunal found in the case against Radislav Krstić, a military commander, that a genocide had unequivocally occurred. This finding was particularly significant since Srebrenica had been designated a UN 'safe area' and placed under the protection of UN troops. Their mandate was to protect the roughly 60,000 Bosnian Muslims who resided there, many of whom had been internally displaced from other areas of Bosnia. In reality, the UN troops were so effective in demilitarising the area in the lead up to July 1995 that Bosnian Muslims were largely unable to defend themselves when Serb troops advanced and UN troops, ill-equipped to defend the town, watched on. Over less than a week, more than 8000 Bosnian Muslim men between the ages of 16 and 65 were systematically murdered by Serb-controlled forces. To evade the killings, a column of approximately 10,000 Bosnian Muslims escaped into the woods near Srebrenica and survivors refer to these men – husbands, brothers, sons – as those who never returned 'out of the woods'. In some of the most harrowing testimony given at the tribunal, witnesses described Serb soldiers disguising themselves in UN uniforms to lure them out. Later, to conceal the crimes, mass grave sites were moved by excavators to secondary and even tertiary locations. Despite being the location for the adjudication of many of the world's highest-level conflicts, The Hague is a sedate, even serene city. In summer, the weather was temperate. On weekends, I went to the beach and waded out into an ocean that barely mustered a swell. The tulips at that time of year bloom in colours that are vivid and intense. Each day, I cycled along the flat streets, past the distinctive orange-brick houses and the canals to work at the tribunal. I arrived at the aptly named Churchillplein, where the flags of many countries were strung on flagpoles in a colourful row like prayer flags. Although until that point my specialisation and expertise had been in public law, something else quickly drew my attention. At every opportunity, I went to watch the tribunal in session and found myself torn between two conflicting feelings: on the one hand, the defendants appeared so incredibly ordinary, yet had been accused of unimaginable crimes; on the other hand, there was something utterly transfixing about the testimony of witnesses who gave evidence against people who, up to that point, they had lived alongside. Many women, for example, spoke of the last moments of seeing their teenage sons alive before they were transported from the UN base on buses. Despite the enormity of their losses, these witnesses, ordinary people in most cases, found the words to speak compellingly, hauntingly, about experiences that were nothing less than catastrophic. Loading Though debate continues about the tribunal's legacy, particularly because of widespread genocide denial, one of its very valuable achievements was providing a forum for survivors to speak about their experiences. In allowing more than 4000 witnesses to give evidence, the narrative of the war was shifted in a crucial way: the story of the war was told by survivors instead of by the leaders who perpetrated and encouraged mass violence. In retrospect, I think what I recognised in the testimony of witnesses was language operating at its most powerful. In these testimonies, these witnesses were not defeated by the horrific events they had witnessed, but were able to draw some sort of meaning out of the shocking violence and injustice they had observed. It's no exaggeration to say I returned to Australia fundamentally altered by what I had read and observed. In the wake of that experience, I found the strictures of international law far less meaningful than I had before. Not long afterwards, I enrolled in a course in creative writing and my whole life pivoted towards stories.
The Age
a day ago
- Politics
- The Age
How my summer at The Hague shaped a lifetime
In Summer 2006, when I was practising as a junior lawyer, I was accepted for an internship at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). I took leave from my job as a public law lawyer and left for The Hague with lofty ambitions of pursuing a career in international law. Though I knew the work of the ICTY was important, in truth, I knew very little about the war in Yugoslavia. The siege of Sarajevo, the longest siege in modern military history, had peppered the news throughout my years in high school, but the facts of this many-sided conflict were resistant to a straightforward description. The ICTY was an ad-hoc tribunal established by a resolution of the Security Council in 1993, intended to prosecute those who had held senior positions in the government and military for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was the first properly international tribunal of its kind and relied on the principle of international law that certain crimes are so fundamental to our shared humanity that they are binding, whether or not a nation-state has agreed to them. Some said the ICTY heralded a new era in international law and order, in which atrocities would never go unpunished. Others were more circumspect, given the international community's stunning inaction throughout the war. In the mid-2000s, Slobodan Milošević was being tried for his role as a politician for participating in war crimes in an effort to realise his plan for Greater Serbia (which effectively meant using force to connect Serbia with Serbian-held territories in Bosnia and Croatia). A former lawyer, Milošević had, in a colourful fashion, represented himself during these proceedings, consistently denying his guilt and refusing to recognise the ICTY's jurisdiction. But after I had accepted my internship and before I arrived, Milošević died suddenly of a heart attack whilst detained at the tribunal. His unexpected death meant he was never actually convicted of the crimes for which he was indicted. When I arrived at the tribunal two months later, the mood there was distinctly sombre; questions were being asked about what meaningful legacy the tribunal could have in the absence of a final judgment against this man who many regarded as the war's symbolic figurehead. July marks the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. In 2001, in the first conviction of its kind since the Nuremberg trials, the tribunal found in the case against Radislav Krstić, a military commander, that a genocide had unequivocally occurred. This finding was particularly significant since Srebrenica had been designated a UN 'safe area' and placed under the protection of UN troops. Their mandate was to protect the roughly 60,000 Bosnian Muslims who resided there, many of whom had been internally displaced from other areas of Bosnia. In reality, the UN troops were so effective in demilitarising the area in the lead up to July 1995 that Bosnian Muslims were largely unable to defend themselves when Serb troops advanced and UN troops, ill-equipped to defend the town, watched on. Over less than a week, more than 8000 Bosnian Muslim men between the ages of 16 and 65 were systematically murdered by Serb-controlled forces. To evade the killings, a column of approximately 10,000 Bosnian Muslims escaped into the woods near Srebrenica and survivors refer to these men – husbands, brothers, sons – as those who never returned 'out of the woods'. In some of the most harrowing testimony given at the tribunal, witnesses described Serb soldiers disguising themselves in UN uniforms to lure them out. Later, to conceal the crimes, mass grave sites were moved by excavators to secondary and even tertiary locations. Despite being the location for the adjudication of many of the world's highest-level conflicts, The Hague is a sedate, even serene city. In summer, the weather was temperate. On weekends, I went to the beach and waded out into an ocean that barely mustered a swell. The tulips at that time of year bloom in colours that are vivid and intense. Each day, I cycled along the flat streets, past the distinctive orange-brick houses and the canals to work at the tribunal. I arrived at the aptly named Churchillplein, where the flags of many countries were strung on flagpoles in a colourful row like prayer flags. Although until that point my specialisation and expertise had been in public law, something else quickly drew my attention. At every opportunity, I went to watch the tribunal in session and found myself torn between two conflicting feelings: on the one hand, the defendants appeared so incredibly ordinary, yet had been accused of unimaginable crimes; on the other hand, there was something utterly transfixing about the testimony of witnesses who gave evidence against people who, up to that point, they had lived alongside. Many women, for example, spoke of the last moments of seeing their teenage sons alive before they were transported from the UN base on buses. Despite the enormity of their losses, these witnesses, ordinary people in most cases, found the words to speak compellingly, hauntingly, about experiences that were nothing less than catastrophic. Loading Though debate continues about the tribunal's legacy, particularly because of widespread genocide denial, one of its very valuable achievements was providing a forum for survivors to speak about their experiences. In allowing more than 4000 witnesses to give evidence, the narrative of the war was shifted in a crucial way: the story of the war was told by survivors instead of by the leaders who perpetrated and encouraged mass violence. In retrospect, I think what I recognised in the testimony of witnesses was language operating at its most powerful. In these testimonies, these witnesses were not defeated by the horrific events they had witnessed, but were able to draw some sort of meaning out of the shocking violence and injustice they had observed. It's no exaggeration to say I returned to Australia fundamentally altered by what I had read and observed. In the wake of that experience, I found the strictures of international law far less meaningful than I had before. Not long afterwards, I enrolled in a course in creative writing and my whole life pivoted towards stories.
News.com.au
17-06-2025
- News.com.au
Survivors of Bosnia 'rape camps' come forward 30 years on
It took years for Zehra Murguz to be able to testify about what happened to her and other Muslim women in the "rape camps" run by Serb forces during the war in Bosnia. One of the awful memories that drove her to give evidence was of seeing a girl of 12 "with a doll in her arms" dragged into one of them. Murguz felt she was also speaking "in the name of all the others, of that girl of 12 who will never talk... who was never found". The horror began for her in the summer of 1992 when Serb forces took the mountain town of Foca and Murguz was taken to the Partizan gym, one of several notorious rape camps the Serbs ran. For months dozens of Muslim women and girls were gang raped and forced into sexual slavery there. Others were sold or killed. At least 20,000 people suffered sexual violence across Bosnia as Yugoslavia collapsed into the worst war Europe had then seen since 1945. Most victims were Bosnian Muslims, but Serbs and Croat women also suffered. In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia became the first court in Europe to recognise rape as a crime against humanity in an historic verdict against three Bosnian Serb army officers from Foca. While a handful of survivors driven by a thirst for justice continue to collect thousands of testimonies, many remain locked in silence more than three decades on. - Triple murder and rape - Murguz, 61, began her judicial journey when she returned to Bosnia in 2011 -- after years living in exile in Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia -- to bring her neighbour to book for raping her during the war. "If I don't speak, it will be as if the crime never happened," she told herself. He was still living in Foca and "wasn't hiding", she said. He was arrested and tried in the local court in 2012. Going there was "like going back to 1992", to the "agony" of that time, Murguz recalled. "I came face to face with him, we looked each other in the eye, and justice won out," she said. The man was jailed for 14 years, a "light sentence", said Murguz "for the murder of three people and a rape". But the conviction at last "stamped him with his true identity -- war criminal", she told AFP from a sewing workshop in Sarajevo run by the Victims of the War Foca 1992-1995 group. Around her other survivors wove fabric together, a form of collective therapy. "To this day, only 18 verdicts have been delivered for crimes of sexual violence committed in Foca," said the group's president, Midheta Kaloper, 52. "Three trials are ongoing. A lot of time has passed, and witnesses are exhausted." She herself was a victim of "an unspeakable, inexplicable crime" in Gorazde, the "worst torture a girl can endure", she said. She still hopes the suspect will be tried in Bosnia, not in Serbia where he now lives. But Kaloper warned that things have "stagnated" over the last five years, with 258 cases involving 2,046 suspects still needing to be judged, according to figures from the High Council of Magistrates. Bosnian judges had tried 773 war crime cases by the end of last year -- over a quarter involving sexual violence -- according to the OSCE monitoring mission. It said there had been "significant delays" in hundreds of others where the suspects have yet to be identified. "What kills us most is the excessive length of these proceedings," said Kaloper. - 'Timebomb' - "We have been fighting for 30 years, and our only real success has been obtaining the law on civilian war victims," under which survivors can be given a pension worth about $400 a month, she said. However, the law only covers the Muslim-Croat half of Bosnia and those living there, and not those living in the self-governing Serb Republika Srpska (RS) and the small mixed Brcko District in the northeast, which have different judicial systems. Around 1,000 survivors have obtained war victim status in the Muslim-Croat federation and some 100 more in the RS and Brcko, said Ajna Mahmic, of the Swiss legal NGO Trial International. Rape, she said, still carries a particular stigma. "Unfortunately, as a society we still put the blame and shame on the victims rather than the perpetrators. "Many of the survivors do not feel secure," Mahmic told AFP. "Some of the perpetrators are still living freely and some are working in public institutions," some in positions of authority. Not to mention the continued glorification "of war criminals (in the Balkans) and the minimisation of the suffering we have endured", Kaloper added. Nearly half of ongoing cases are held up because the accused are abroad, an OSCE report said in January. Another "worrying trend is the widespread failure of courts to grant victims compensation" in criminal cases, the OSCE added. While witnesses could testify anonymously in The Hague, there is nothing to protect their identity in civil compensation proceedings in Bosnia. "Even today it is very difficult for victims to speak," said Bakira Hasecic, 71, head of the Women Victims of War group, and they keep the "weight of this tragedy in their hearts". Many follow what their former torturers are up to on social networks. It is an emotional "timebomb that can explode at any moment and drives some to call us", she said. Though over 30 years have passed, 15 more victims stepped forward needing to talk in the last few months alone, Hasecic said.
Int'l Business Times
17-06-2025
- Int'l Business Times
Survivors Of Bosnia 'Rape Camps' Come Forward 30 Years On
It took years for Zehra Murguz to be able to testify about what happened to her and other Muslim women in the "rape camps" run by Serb forces during the war in Bosnia. One of the awful memories that drove her to give evidence was of seeing a girl of 12 "with a doll in her arms" dragged into one of them. Murguz felt she was also speaking "in the name of all the others, of that girl of 12 who will never talk... who was never found". The horror began for her in the summer of 1992 when Serb forces took the mountain town of Foca and Murguz was taken to the Partizan gym, one of several notorious rape camps the Serbs ran. For months dozens of Muslim women and girls were gang raped and forced into sexual slavery there. Others were sold or killed. At least 20,000 people suffered sexual violence across Bosnia as Yugoslavia collapsed into the worst war Europe had then seen since 1945. Most victims were Bosnian Muslims, but Serbs and Croat women also suffered. In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia became the first court in Europe to recognise rape as a crime against humanity in an historic verdict against three Bosnian Serb army officers from Foca. While a handful of survivors driven by a thirst for justice continue to collect thousands of testimonies, many remain locked in silence more than three decades on. Murguz, 61, began her judicial journey when she returned to Bosnia in 2011 -- after years living in exile in Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia -- to bring her neighbour to book for raping her during the war. "If I don't speak, it will be as if the crime never happened," she told herself. He was still living in Foca and "wasn't hiding", she said. He was arrested and tried in the local court in 2012. Going there was "like going back to 1992", to the "agony" of that time, Murguz recalled. "I came face to face with him, we looked each other in the eye, and justice won out," she said. The man was jailed for 14 years, a "light sentence", said Murguz "for the murder of three people and a rape". But the conviction at last "stamped him with his true identity -- war criminal", she told AFP from a sewing workshop in Sarajevo run by the Victims of the War Foca 1992-1995 group. Around her other survivors wove fabric together, a form of collective therapy. "To this day, only 18 verdicts have been delivered for crimes of sexual violence committed in Foca," said the group's president, Midheta Kaloper, 52. "Three trials are ongoing. A lot of time has passed, and witnesses are exhausted." She herself was a victim of "an unspeakable, inexplicable crime" in Gorazde, the "worst torture a girl can endure", she said. She still hopes the suspect will be tried in Bosnia, not in Serbia where he now lives. But Kaloper warned that things have "stagnated" over the last five years, with 258 cases involving 2,046 suspects still needing to be judged, according to figures from the High Council of Magistrates. Bosnian judges had tried 773 war crime cases by the end of last year -- over a quarter involving sexual violence -- according to the OSCE monitoring mission. It said there had been "significant delays" in hundreds of others where the suspects have yet to be identified. "What kills us most is the excessive length of these proceedings," said Kaloper. "We have been fighting for 30 years, and our only real success has been obtaining the law on civilian war victims," under which survivors can be given a pension worth about $400 a month, she said. However, the law only covers the Muslim-Croat half of Bosnia and those living there, and not those living in the self-governing Serb Republika Srpska (RS) and the small mixed Brcko District in the northeast, which have different judicial systems. Around 1,000 survivors have obtained war victim status in the Muslim-Croat federation and some 100 more in the RS and Brcko, said Ajna Mahmic, of the Swiss legal NGO Trial International. Rape, she said, still carries a particular stigma. "Unfortunately, as a society we still put the blame and shame on the victims rather than the perpetrators. "Many of the survivors do not feel secure," Mahmic told AFP. "Some of the perpetrators are still living freely and some are working in public institutions," some in positions of authority. Not to mention the continued glorification "of war criminals (in the Balkans) and the minimisation of the suffering we have endured", Kaloper added. Nearly half of ongoing cases are held up because the accused are abroad, an OSCE report said in January. Another "worrying trend is the widespread failure of courts to grant victims compensation" in criminal cases, the OSCE added. While witnesses could testify anonymously in The Hague, there is nothing to protect their identity in civil compensation proceedings in Bosnia. "Even today it is very difficult for victims to speak," said Bakira Hasecic, 71, head of the Women Victims of War group, and they keep the "weight of this tragedy in their hearts". Many follow what their former torturers are up to on social networks. It is an emotional "timebomb that can explode at any moment and drives some to call us", she said. Though over 30 years have passed, 15 more victims stepped forward needing to talk in the last few months alone, Hasecic said. Bakira Hasecic: 'Even today it is very difficult for victims to speak' AFP Stitching her life back together: Zehra Murguz AFP Bosnian rape survivors weave together in a therapy centre in Sarajevo AFP Glorifying guilty men: a monument to Bosnian Serb fighters in Foca AFP
France 24
17-06-2025
- France 24
Survivors of Bosnia 'rape camps' come forward 30 years on
One of the awful memories that drove her to give evidence was of seeing a girl of 12 "with a doll in her arms" dragged into one of them. Murguz felt she was also speaking "in the name of all the others, of that girl of 12 who will never talk... who was never found". The horror began for her in the summer of 1992 when Serb forces took the mountain town of Foca and Murguz was taken to the Partizan gym, one of several notorious rape camps the Serbs ran. For months dozens of Muslim women and girls were gang raped and forced into sexual slavery there. Others were sold or killed. At least 20,000 people suffered sexual violence across Bosnia as Yugoslavia collapsed into the worst war Europe had then seen since 1945. Most victims were Bosnian Muslims, but Serbs and Croat women also suffered. In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia became the first court in Europe to recognise rape as a crime against humanity in an historic verdict against three Bosnian Serb army officers from Foca. While a handful of survivors driven by a thirst for justice continue to collect thousands of testimonies, many remain locked in silence more than three decades on. Triple murder and rape Murguz, 61, began her judicial journey when she returned to Bosnia in 2011 -- after years living in exile in Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia -- to bring her neighbour to book for raping her during the war. "If I don't speak, it will be as if the crime never happened," she told herself. He was still living in Foca and "wasn't hiding", she said. He was arrested and tried in the local court in 2012. Going there was "like going back to 1992", to the "agony" of that time, Murguz recalled. "I came face to face with him, we looked each other in the eye, and justice won out," she said. The man was jailed for 14 years, a "light sentence", said Murguz "for the murder of three people and a rape". But the conviction at last "stamped him with his true identity -- war criminal", she told AFP from a sewing workshop in Sarajevo run by the Victims of the War Foca 1992-1995 group. Around her other survivors wove fabric together, a form of collective therapy. "To this day, only 18 verdicts have been delivered for crimes of sexual violence committed in Foca," said the group's president, Midheta Kaloper, 52. "Three trials are ongoing. A lot of time has passed, and witnesses are exhausted." She herself was a victim of "an unspeakable, inexplicable crime" in Gorazde, the "worst torture a girl can endure", she said. She still hopes the suspect will be tried in Bosnia, not in Serbia where he now lives. But Kaloper warned that things have "stagnated" over the last five years, with 258 cases involving 2,046 suspects still needing to be judged, according to figures from the High Council of Magistrates. Bosnian judges had tried 773 war crime cases by the end of last year -- over a quarter involving sexual violence -- according to the OSCE monitoring mission. It said there had been "significant delays" in hundreds of others where the suspects have yet to be identified. "What kills us most is the excessive length of these proceedings," said Kaloper. 'Timebomb' "We have been fighting for 30 years, and our only real success has been obtaining the law on civilian war victims," under which survivors can be given a pension worth about $400 a month, she said. However, the law only covers the Muslim-Croat half of Bosnia and those living there, and not those living in the self-governing Serb Republika Srpska (RS) and the small mixed Brcko District in the northeast, which have different judicial systems. Around 1,000 survivors have obtained war victim status in the Muslim-Croat federation and some 100 more in the RS and Brcko, said Ajna Mahmic, of the Swiss legal NGO Trial International. Rape, she said, still carries a particular stigma. "Unfortunately, as a society we still put the blame and shame on the victims rather than the perpetrators. "Many of the survivors do not feel secure," Mahmic told AFP. "Some of the perpetrators are still living freely and some are working in public institutions," some in positions of authority. Not to mention the continued glorification "of war criminals (in the Balkans) and the minimisation of the suffering we have endured", Kaloper added. Nearly half of ongoing cases are held up because the accused are abroad, an OSCE report said in January. Another "worrying trend is the widespread failure of courts to grant victims compensation" in criminal cases, the OSCE added. While witnesses could testify anonymously in The Hague, there is nothing to protect their identity in civil compensation proceedings in Bosnia. "Even today it is very difficult for victims to speak," said Bakira Hasecic, 71, head of the Women Victims of War group, and they keep the "weight of this tragedy in their hearts". Many follow what their former torturers are up to on social networks. It is an emotional "timebomb that can explode at any moment and drives some to call us", she said. Though over 30 years have passed, 15 more victims stepped forward needing to talk in the last few months alone, Hasecic said. © 2025 AFP
