Introduction
In the last four years the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia has
broken apart. Driven by nationalism, the wars in Slovenia, Croatia
and Bosnia have killed
an estimated 300,000 people, wounded another 1,500,000 and forced
4,500,000 people to
become refugees. While the world sees daily reports of Serbian
aggression and nationalist
extremism, feminists in Serbia have been protesting all acts of
aggression and supporting
the victims of violence, including that advocated by their own
government.
This paper will describe the conditions and factors
influencing
women’s lives in Serbia, and the ways women have organised to
resist violence and
assist one another. In Serbia women have witnessed ordinary people
become killers or
victims. To resist nationalism, sexism, and war feminists founded an
anti-war and feminist
movement. With activism and civil disobedience they have transformed
women’s
desperation and anger into action. Since 1990, feminists have created
the SOS Telephone,
Women’s Lobby, Women’s Parliament, Women in Black, the
Women’s Studies
Research and Communication Centre; the Autonomous Women’s Centre
Against Sexual
Violence, the Centre for Girls and two Women’s Houses (for
battered women), and a
feminist publishing house - "1994."
Background
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a
multi-national
socialist state in Eastern Europe made-up of six republics —
Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Serbia, and two
autonomous provinces within
Serbia - Vojvodina and Kosovo. Throughout the 1980s nationalism among
the republics grew,
spurred on by the fall of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe. In
May/June 1991
Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia. The
Yugoslav National
Army, led by Serbian leader Slobadan Milosevic, resisted these moves
for independence. In
Slovenia, the fighting lasted 10 days before the Yugoslav National
Army withdrew leaving
Slovenia an independent nation. In Croatia, the war was longer and
bloodier. In September,
1991, in an effort to stop the fighting, the United Nations imposed
an arms embargo on all
the former Yugoslav republics which gave the Serbian controlled
Yugoslav National Army far
greater military strength. Local militant ethnic groups and
nationalists attempted to
seize control of the land where their populations were concentrated.
Possessing greater
military force, Serbs seized the land inhabited predominantly, but in
no way exclusively,
by Serbs. In January, 1992, a peacekeeping plan, enforced by United
Nations troops was
accepted.
In April, 1992, just as Bosnia-Herzegovina declared
its independence
from Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav Army, along with Serb nationalists,
launched the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Of all the republics in former Yugoslavia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina was the
most ethnically mixed. Although the conflicts have been driven on all
sides by
nationalism, it was the Serbs, with greater military force, who
initiated "ethnic
cleansing," a term used to describe the forceful removal or
killing of civilian
Croats and Muslims. Throughout the conflict, the Republic of Serbia
has claimed that it is
officially uninvolved in the wars. Other than a few conflicts along
the border, there has
been no fighting in Serbia.
The efforts to create nationally or ethnically pure
territories has
meant that the wars are aimed primarily at civilian populations.
According to the United
States Committee for Refugees,
"In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the most extreme
elements of the
nationalist Serb community — aided and abetted by their
patron in Serbia — have
chosen to wipe out, liquidate, remove, rather than to live with,
those who are somehow
‘different.’ Their methods are crude, but effective:
artillery barrages of
civilian centres; forced population movements; appropriation of
property. Those who
survive and are not driven out face imprisonment, rape and the
forced separation from
family. ....Nationalist Croat forces and, to a lesser extent,
troops of the mostly Muslim
Bosnian army have also committed violent, heinous acts"
(Winter, 1993).
Nationalism in Serbia
In Serbia the Communist leadership did not want to
loose power through
democratization, so they used ethnic nationalism to manipulate the
people and create a
popular base for their continuing control. They succeeded in pulling
Serbs toward Serbia
and pushing others toward their own nationalist groups, who then
chose independence to
escape growing Serbian nationalism (Denitch 1994, p. 184). Largely
through mass rallies
and state controlled media people were taught to hate those who were
different.
"It all began with ‘sweet’ stories
about national states,
national rights, life within ethnic boundaries" (The
Women’s Parliament, 20 May
1992). Nationalism was constructed on a highly imagined community
inhabited by people
whose identities that had little to do with accurate history,
geography or real attributes
(Denitch 1994, p. 187). Over several years old unresolved ethnic and
national conflicts
were given new life. Specials were shown on TV about Serbian history
which recounted the
victimisation of Serbs. For example, the Serbian popular press retold
stories of Croatian
war crimes against Serbs during World War II (Denitch 1994, p. 176).
As tales of the
Serbian defeats and victimizations were rejuvenated with new emotion,
all
"others" became potential threats to Serbia - Albanians (in
Kosovo), Slovenes,
Croats and Muslims (in Bosnia-Herzegovina).
At the beginning of the wars (in Slovenia, Croatia
and Bosnia) there
were all day media programmes against the "enemy," whose
identity changed as the
war moved eastward (from Slovenia, to Croatia, to Bosnia). Every
night before and after
the TV news there were extra segments of pictures of dead or tortured
people with an
accompanying commentary on "what the enemy has done to innocent
Serbs."
A "cleansing" of the culture initiated by
Serb officials
removed books, films, and works of art created by those who were not
Serbs. Singers,
artists and actors who were not Serbs were banned, harassed, and
finally, most of them
left the country. Textbooks were rewritten to include the nationalist
view of history.
Beginning in Fall 1991 textbooks for elementary and secondary school
in the Republic of
Serbia had to include a "detailed account of wars,
exterminations, tortures,
destructions of people" (Imsirovic and Cetkovic, 1991). The
ideology of
"brotherhood and unity," used for 45 years to hold
Yugoslavia together under
Communism, disappeared. Some people with non-Serb names removed their
name plates from
their doors. Many people had to conform to nationalist ideology in
order to keep their
jobs and live in the community. Nationalism created splits among
those of the same
nationality. Vera, a resident of Belgrade, said, "A painful
thought for me is - will
my friends be nationalists when I go to talk to them? Will they still
be my friends?"
As nurtured animosities grew, opportunists exploited the
conditions.
"The spectre of nationalism was thus
awakened. Profiteers,
gangsters and murderers grabbed the opportunities offered by it.
A state of general
uncertainty, endangerment and mistrust was created. Paranoia has
become our everyday
reality"(The Women’s Parliament, 20 May 1992).
Feminism Prior to 1990
Compared to the other former Communist countries
the borders of
Yugoslavia were more open, allowing communication and exchange of
ideas, one of which was
feminism. The first presentation of contemporary feminist ideas was
at a Croatian
sociological association meeting in 1976. The first feminist
conference, The
Woman’s Question: A New Approach, was held in 1978 at the
Student’s Cultural
Centre in Belgrade. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce the
ideas of feminism and
begin to challenge socialist patriarchy and the assumption that
women’s struggle was
synonymous with class struggle (Papic 1995). Inspired and motivated
by this meeting
"Woman and Society" discussion groups formed in Zagreb and
Belgrade.
In 1986 feminists in Belgrade defined their
organization, "Women
and Society" as feminist. The Yugoslav governmental organization
The Conference for
the Social Activities of Women condemned this move and accused the
group of being an
"enemy of the state," "pro-capitalist," and
"pro-western."
The group operated independently without any state institutional or
financial support
(Mladjenovic and Litricin, 1993). The growth of feminist groups was
also hindered by the
Communist ideology that everyone must work together for change. Many
of the women did not
want to exclude men. When men came to meetings they always wanted to
know why the group
only talked about women. The fear of women only groups still exists
all over Eastern
Europe.
The feminist group in Belgrade held workshops and
public discussions on
violence, abortion, sexuality, worker’s rights, psychiatry and
medicine. On
International Women’s Day, 8 March, they did research on the
streets of Belgrade by
stopping women and asking them ten questions about their lives. Five
years later, on the
same day, women in Belgrade founded the SOS Hotline for Women and
Children Victims of
Violence.
In 1990 the so called democratisation process
brought the first
multi-party elections to Yugoslavia. In that year feminists formed
four women’s
organisations. In the Summer of 1990 women from different
non-nationalistic parties formed
the Women’s Lobby to create a space for women’s critical
voices and to influence
public opinion and the policies of the political parties in the
election. The Women’s
Lobby took a strong stand against nationalism because of the
nationalists’ call for
women to have more babies for greater Serbia. On 5 December 1990 the
Women’s Lobby
issued a call to voters, "Do not vote for the Serbian Socialist
Party, Serbian
Radical Party, Serbian People’s Renovation and all other
nationalist, Fascist,
warrior parties" (Women in Black, 17 December 1992).
As the elections approached in the Fall 1990 women
formed the
Women’s Party, ZEST (an acronym for Zenska Stranka, the Z stood
for women, E for
ethics, S for solidarity and T for tolerance). The women saw a need
for a women’s
party because "[a]lthough legally equal and free, women have for
decades been living
the life of second-rate citizens and unrealised and subjected
individuals in the family
and society alike"(The Women’s Party Charter of Intentions,
1990 as cited in
Cockburn, 1991). ZEST had three Principles of Activity: 1) "For
democracy and against
all forms and aspects of discrimination and authoritarian power and
authority in
society," 2) "For peace, tolerance and co-operation among
nations and
peoples," 3) "For quality of life as a crucial aim of
development." Under
these Principles ZEST outlined eight Programmatic Goals: 1) a system
of mixed economy, 2)
an independent judiciary, 3) good health care, 4) a healthy
environment, 5) radical reform
of the education system, 6) improvement of the quality of family
life, 7) autonomous
culture, and 8) equal opportunities for communication. With the aim
of improving the lives
of women, they organised public discussions about housewives, women
artists and work. As
militarism grew they lobbied the Parliaments of the republics to
negotiate a peace
(Women’s Party - ZEST, 5 July 1991).
The election resulted in a Serbian Parliament with
only 1.6 percent
women (the lowest percentage in Europe), so women formed the
Women’s Parliament on 8
March 1991 to monitor new laws that pertained to women (Mladjenovic
and Litricin, 1993).
Throughout 1990 and 1991 women’s groups organised and
participated in protests
calling for women’s rights and a demilitarisation of
Yugoslavia.
Women’s Anti-War Groups
Women have been and are the majority of the
organisers and participants
of the peace movement in Belgrade. Prior to the outbreak of war in
the Yugoslav republics
women formed organisations against mobilisations for war. In March
1991, several
women’s groups from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia collectively
called Women for Peace
issued a statement calling for "a peaceful and negotiated
solution to all
controversial issues," and a "demobil[ization] of all
reserve police units in
all republics and provinces." (Lokar et al., March 1991)
Throughout the Spring and
Summer of 1991, the Belgrade Women’s Lobby took part in peace
demonstrations, issued
weekly calls for an end to bloodshed, and criticised media programs
that promoted
nationalism and violence against women. After the start of the war in
Slovenia the
Belgrade Women’s Lobby appealed to the federal
government.
"We ask that the units of the Federal Army
unconditionally withdraw
to their barracks. The youth did not go to serve in the military
in order to impede the
separation of any ethnic group from Yugoslavia. A Yugoslavia
maintained by force is
useless to everyone"(Belgrade Women’s Lobby, July
1991).
The Mother’s Protest
During the Summer of 1991 women concerned about
their sons in the
Federal Yugoslav Army organised protests against the war. At the
beginning of the war all
regular soldiers belonged to the Yugoslav National Army, whose
responsibility was to stop
moves for independence by Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. Croat mothers
did not want their
sons fighting with Serbs to prevent Croatia’s move for
independence - that would put
their sons on the "wrong" side of the war. Serb mothers did
not want their sons
fighting in Croatia, a land that didn’t belong to them. The
women used their role as
mothers to express concern for their sons and call for peace. The
women stated their
opposition to the war,
"We refuse that our sons become the
victims of senseless
militarists. It is not clear what are the goals for which we
should sacrifice our sons.
Our sons have been deceived: they have to participate in a war
for which they are not the
least bit responsible, in a war that has not even been declared.
That they should give
their lives for imperialist purposes is the project of
politicians. It is a disgrace to
win a fratricidal war" (Mothers of the Soldiers of Belgrade
20 July 1991).
The first large protest against the war was held by
several hundred
parents, mostly mothers of conscripted men, in the Serbian National
Assembly in Belgrade
on 2 July 1991. In their statement they said, "The protests of
mothers is a feminine
spontaneous reaction to the disgrace of the civil war"
(Mother’s Movement, July
1991). Repeatedly, throughout the summer, in letters to officials and
public statements,
the mothers called for an end to the war and a return of their
sons.
At the end of August, 1991 approximately a thousand
parents, mostly
mothers, from Croatia and a few from Bosnia-Herzegovina attempted to
protest in front of
the General Headquarters of the Yugoslav National Army. They were
forced to move to the
soldiers barracks. To enable such a large gathering 40 buses were
used to bring the women
from Croatia to Belgrade. The leaders of the group, Mothers for
Peace, from Zagreb, had
the Croatian flag as a sign of their organisation. One of the authors
of this paper, Lepa
Mladjenovic attended the protest and participated with mixed
feelings.
"I was very excited. The first night the
auditorium of the
soldier’s barracks in Belgrade was packed with women. It was
amazing. Never before in
this male space had there been such a scene. At the front of the
auditorium, on the
podium, were the "fathers" - the army officers. The
women were sitting
everywhere, talking and eating. At one point women from the
villages in Croatia stopped
listening to the men and started to softly sing a tender old
Croat song. In contrast to
the fathers in uniform with their hard strict military culture,
the women’s voices
were from another world. On the other hand, at that time if more
than 20 women got
together, I had to wonder how did it happen. It usually meant
that some larger political
thought or organization stood behind the event."
While Mladjenovic was excited and moved by large
numbers of women coming
together to protest the war, she recognised that some women acted
with the support of men
whose goal was their own nationalism and interest in preventing the
Federal Yugoslav Army
from intervening in their move for independence.
A woman from Pancevo, Serbia spoke about the
anti-war movement there.
"The mothers, wives and sister of drafted
men came to the Council
Building after having spent several days in front of the
barracks. Tired and weeping, the
women demanded that their dear ones be allowed to return to their
homes. They were torn
between the feeling of obligation (in Vojvodina they say:
‘Raise a son, send him to
the Army’) and the deepest conviction that nothing was more
important than their
sons’ lives" (Ildiko, 22 February 1992).
The Mother’s Protests were the first public
resistance to the wars.
Since the political tradition of fifty years of communism had
suppressed people’s
rebellious motivations, the Mother’s Protest was important in
breaking that
tradition. Also, the Mother’s Protest contained a general peace
message. It was a
good use of the patriarchal role of mothers to save men and stand
against authority.
Unfortunately, the nationalist ideology was much stronger than their
peace protests. Later
the statements of the mothers implied that their sons should be
fighting for their own
"blood and soil" if necessary. These sentiments slowly grew
into pro-Serb and
pro-Croat nationalist ideologies and peace was forgotten.
Centre for Anti-War Action
During the Summer of 1991 women founded the Centre
for Anti-War Action
and women are still the most active participants. Men were not active
in the Centre for
several reasons. The Centre formed at a time when men were being
mobilised by the Yugoslav
National Army, so many men who feared being drafted avoided the
Centre. In addition, many
men found the volunteer non-hierarchical culture and organisation of
the Centre to be
foreign to them. The men were more accustomed to working in
hierarchies. Also, the work at
the Centre was unpaid and volunteer work was a new phenomenon in
Eastern Europe. The
women, who for thousands of years have been doing unpaid work in the
home as wives and
mothers, understood this concept immediately. They were more able to
see that important
work is not necessarily officially recognised or paid for.
Women in Black, Belgrade
By the fall of 1991 feminists dissatisfied with the
character of the
anti-war protests decided to found another organisation. The women
were inspired by the
Israeli group Women in Black who wore black and protested in silence
their country’s
treatment of the Palestinians.
Women in Black made its first appearance in
Belgrade on 9 October 1991.
In their first public statement the activists defined themselves as
an anti-nationalist,
anti-militarist, feminist, pacifist group who rejected the reduction
of women to the role
of mothers.
"The work of women in peace groups is
presupposed, it is invisible,
trying, women’s work; it’s a part of ‘our’
role; to care for others,
to comfort, aid, tend wounds, and feed. The painful realisation
that the peace movement
would to some extent also follow a patriarchal model caused a
serious dilemma for
feminist-pacifists. We wanted our presence to be VISIBLE, not to
be seen as something
‘natural,’ as part of a woman’s role. We wanted it
to be clearly understood
that what we were doing was our political choice, a radical
criticism of the patriarchal,
militarist regime and a non-violent act of resistance to policies
that destroy cities,
kill people, and annihilate human relations" (Women In
Black, 1993).
Another political aim of Women in Black is to
strengthen the solidarity
among women who have been separated by guns and borders.
"We are the group of women who believe
that solidarity is one of
the deepest values of our existence, that active solidarity
between women is the force and
the tenderness by which we can overcome isolation, loneliness,
traumas and other
consequences of hatred. We are the ones who come out in the
public with our bodies and our
visions of the world without war, rape, violence and
militarism" (Women in Black, 10
June 1992).
Every week since the formation of Women in Black
the activists have
protested the wars by putting on black clothes and standing silently
in the Republic
Square in Belgrade.
"We are the group of women who stand in
silence and black every
week to express our disapproval against war. We have decided to
see what is the
women’s side of this war. Women wear black in our countries
to show the grief for
death of the loved ones. We wear black for the death of all the
victims of war. We wear
black because the people have been thrown out of their homes,
because women have been
raped, because cities and villages have been burned and
destroyed"(Women In Black, 10
June 1992).
After the Mother’s Protests were over the
feminists shifted the
philosophy and approach to protesting the war. The statements and
writings became more
overtly political and analytically feminist. Gone were the maternal
pleadings for peace to
save their sons. For example,
"The militarization of former Yugoslavia
has meant the imposition
of military values, and militaristic language; a cult of
necrophilia (expressed in slogans
as ‘the frontiers of Serbia are where Serbs are
buried’); and acceptance of
political and moral totalitarianism" (Zajovic, December
1991).
With the establishment of the more radical Women in
Black, a political
shift in analysis and naming occurred — Serbian nationalism is
seen as a motivating
force and the Serbian government is named as the aggressor.
"We say that the Serbian regime and its
repressive structures
(Federal Army and paramilitary formation) are responsible for all
three wars, in Slovenia,
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbian regime leads wars in
the name of all citizens
of Serbia. This way all the citizens become the hostages of their
imperialistic
politics" (Women In Black, 10 June 1992).
During the time the women’s groups were
forming and evolving,
nationalism was intensifying, forcing women’s groups to decide
where they stood. The
Women’s Lobby and Women in Black took anti-nationalist stands
and said so publicly.
ZEST, the Women’s Party disbanded because of conflicts over
nationalism. The SOS
Hotline for Women and Children Victims of Violence made a policy of
non-nationalism which
created conflicts among the volunteers. Eventually some of the women
with nationalistic
views left, but some stayed and have remained silent (Mladjenovic and
Litricin, 1992).
Ethnic Cleansing, Rape and War
Crimes
"Ethnic cleansing" is a term for the mass
expulsion, killing
and raping of people. In this war it has been carried out mainly by
Serb paramilitaries
and the army. These acts meet the legal definition of genocide —
the attempt to
destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group. Many civilians
were (are still being) killed, others were (and still are being)
forced from their homes
and towns to become refugees or into concentration camps. Sexual
abuse and violence
against women has been central in the planned policy of "ethnic
cleansing." When
the Yugoslav Federal Army shelled cities, maternity hospitals were
targeted. Special
concentration camps were created to rape and prostitute women; these
hotels and prisons
are called rape camps by survivors. In Vogosca, near Sarajevo, women
with Croat and Muslim
names were killed after they were raped; in Foca, the Serbs held
women for months in an
indoor sports arena where nightly men would come with flashlights to
make their choices
for rape; at Omarska, women were forced by Serb soldiers to work
during the day and were
raped according to a schedule, once every four nights (Gutman 1993).
From the start of the war in Bosnia in 1992,
Serbian paramilitary forces
committed systematic rape against Muslim and Croat women. Later, in
Spring 1993, Bosnian
Croat nationalists adopted the strategy to create an ethnically pure
Croatian sector
(Gutman 1994). Forces of the predominantly Muslim government forces
of Bosnia have also
been charged with atrocities, but these do not appear to be
government policy as with the
Serbs. Women of all nationalities have been raped, but Muslim women
have been
disproportionately among the victims, and Serbian paramilitaries
disproportionately among
the rapists (Stiglmayer, 1994). Also implicated in the sexual abuse
and prostitution of
women are the United Nations "peacekeeping" forces (Gutman,
31 October 1993;
Bernstein, 21 June 1993).
Forced impregnation has also been a weapon of
nationalism and ethnic
cleansing in the campaign of violence against women. In this male
ideology the ethnicity
of a baby is the same as its father. Serb soldiers and paramilitary
troops who raped women
told them that they would give birth to "little Chetniks"
or Serbian soldiers,
who would grow up to kill them. Other Croat or Muslim women were told
that if a woman
carries a Serbian baby, then she too is Serb (State Commission for
Gathering Facts on War
Crimes in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, October 1992). Some
women were held in
rape camps in Bosnia until their pregnancies were so advanced that
they would not be able
to obtain an abortion (Tresnjevika, 28 September 1992). Since the
goal of ethnic cleansing
is the creation of an ethnically and nationally pure population the
forced impregnation of
non-Serb women has required some twists in thinking in Serbian
nationalist ideology.
Long before the atrocities of the Serbs came to
international attention
Women in Black issued a statement calling for an end to war crimes.
In October 1991, the
Women’s Parliament and the Belgrade Women’s Lobby issued a
statement
"Against War Crime" in which they listed acts which are war
crimes, including:
inhuman treatment of civilians, inflicting bodily harm, torture,
prostitution, rape,
stealing or destroying the property of others, including historical
and cultural
monuments, and the destruction of cities, towns and villages. They
reminded people that
Yugoslavia had signed all United Nations conventions and agreements,
including the Geneva
Convention on war (Women in Black, 9 October 1991). In 1992 Women in
Black called for the
naming of war crimes and the prosecution of perpetrators (Women in
Black, September 1992).
The feminists in Belgrade have maintained the
position that all
survivors of rape be recognised, but stating that many more rapes
have been committed by
Serbian forces.
The Feminists of Belgrade and Serbia do not
support the position about
symmetrical suffering. They are conscious that the more powerful
and better armed
military-political forces of Karadzic in Bosnia (the army of the
Serb’s Republic).
have the largest number of rapes on their consciences. How many
exactly, it will be
difficult to know, even after the war. The high percentage of
Muslim women raped in the
war in Bosnia is not a reason to forget the suffering of women of
other nationalities and
religions, atheists, or those claiming no particular nationality.
(Women in Black, 1993,
p. 92a).
Refugees in Serbia
"You can go anywhere in the world but
home" said Milka
Zulicic, economist and refugee from Sarajevo living in Belgrade
(Statement made at a
workshop at the Third International Meeting of Women in Black, Novi
Sad, Serbia, 4 - 6
August 1994). She is Montenegrin, but keeps her husband’s Muslim
name, although he
has been dead many years. In February, 1993 she sent her oldest son,
age 21, to Montenegro
by train to get food from relatives living there. When the train
passed near the border of
Bosnia a group of unidentified men entered the train and asked for
identification.
Zulicic’s son and 18 men with Muslim names were removed from the
train. None of them
has been seen since. It is thought that the leader of this
paramilitary unit is a member
of the Serbian Parliament. Now, Ms. Zulicic in an active member of
Women in Black and
waits with her other son for an immigration visa to somewhere else in
the world.
Traditionally, refugees are thought to be those who
have
"fled," but the refugees who have become politically active
in Belgrade clearly
and forcefully state that they are those who have been
"expelled." They were
forced to leave their homes by military aggression in their home
regions. All would like
to return home. Instead they are forced to apply for and await
immigration to receptive
countries all over the world. The implication is that they will
never, or at least not in
the foreseeable future, return to their homes or homeland.
According to The Serbian Commissariat for Refugees
and the Red Cross of
Serbia at the end of 1993 there were 559,000 registered and 150,000
unregistered refugees
in the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. As with most
refugee populations
they are predominantly women and children. Of the adults, 84 percent
are women. A sizeable
percentage of the children are without parents, because their
families in
Bosnia-Herzegovina sent them to Serbia to be safe with relatives or
friends for what they
thought would be a short period of time. A number of these children
have been sent since
to live in orphanages or refugee camps. Over 95 percent of the
refugees live with
relatives or friends, only 4.8 percent live in refugee camps, which
are old barracks and
dormitories away from the population centres, with no
transportation
In some cases women have resorted to prostitution
to feed themselves and
their children. Due to the unpopularity of the Serbian regime, aid
from humanitarian
sources is scarce. Refugees are often harassed and made to feel
guilty for being a burden.
Fights often break out in schools between refugee and local children.
Refugees are also
subject to nationalistic harassment because they speak with a Bosnian
dialect. Some women
say they are afraid to speak in public.
At the Third International Meeting of Women in
Black in Novi Sad (4 - 6
August 1994) many women refugees spoke about their experiences. One
woman, from the Centre
for Victims of War in Zagreb, Croatia who had been a refugee for one
and a half years
attempted to hold back grief and tears as she spoke about her
experience with dignity.
"It is hard to touch the wound which
bleeds, but I will try to
suffer this pain to talk. If this story could change something, I
would be satisfied. I
have been a refugee since February 1993. I try to raise my head
and have courage. At first
the pain was too heavy, but I tried to put together the pieces of
my personality and I
have dedicated the last of my power to share with poor people
— refugees who have the
same destiny. I am proud today. I have succeeded in not providing
satisfaction to the
enemy. I am not broken or destroyed. Through modest efforts I do
something everyday to
heal my own pain and suffering, as well as others who are
suffering. You have to be able
to enter the soul of a refugee to understand. People judge us by
outside appearance. I
invest tremendous effort to look well. I do not want to allow
them to ruin us completely.
We have survived many humiliations, but we will fight to return
home again. I am feeling
stronger than any dirty games they play with us. It is our hope,
our vision, our destiny
to return again to the most beautiful country in the world —
Bosnia."
This woman describes a personal form of resistance
to the violence done
to her and her country. She, along with other refugees who spoke at
the meeting, pointed
out the importance of telling their story in the hopes that it will
make a difference. Her
speech was halting and at times she had to stop to collect herself,
but it was imperative
to her to make her statement without breaking down into uncontrolled
emotion. Her personal
form of resistance was to not allow herself to be diminished in any
way.
Motherhood and Reproductive Rights
The nationalist ideology of the Serbian leaders
calls for women to do
their duty to the country by having more babies and willingly
sacrificing their sons.
Mythic figures are called upon to coerce women into supporting
nationalist goals, while
the law makers are changing the constitution and laws, so that women
will have no choice
but to comply.
"In tandem with the cult of blood and
soil, the new Serbian
nationalists also summoned to life the symbolic mediaeval figure
of mother Yugovich —
the long suffering, brave, stoic mother of nine, offering her
children up to death in the
defence of the fatherland. Maternity is now to be seen as an
obligation, not as a free
option for women; the sexuality of women has to be controlled and
reduced to
procreation"(Zajovic, December 1991).
Militaristic nationalism insists that Serbian women
must have more
babies so that the nation will be able to defend itself in war. One
politician said,
"I call upon all Serbian women to give birth to one more son in
order to carry out
their national debt." Following the war in Slovenia, another
politician said,
"For each soldier fallen in the war against Slovenia, Serbian
women must give birth
to 100 more sons" (Zajovic, December 1991).
Abortion has been readily available to women in
Serbia by special law
since 1951. In the new Constitution of 1974 abortion was guaranteed
as a human right by
Article 191 of "Free Parenthood." This article protected
"the human right
to decide about the birth of one’s own
children"(Mladjenovic and Litricin,
October 1992).
In April 1992, a new constitution was formed for
the "Third
Yugoslavia." It eliminated Article 191 on
"Free-Parenthood." The absence of
this protection means that Serbian women’s reproductive rights,
such as access to
contraceptives and abortions, are no longer guaranteed. Already,
nationalists have drafted
new legislation to restrict access to abortion. In the proposed
legislation, after the
10th week of pregnancy a medical reason would be needed to get an
abortion. Rape would not
be an adequate reason. Currently, a woman undergoing an abortion must
pay 80 dinars for
the anaesthesia (the average salary in Belgrade during the Summer of
1994 was 167
dinars/month). Because of the high cost of abortions illegal
abortions are becoming more
common.
Nationalists are calling for legal restrictions on
abortions. In arguing
for restrictions on abortions they compare the number of abortions to
the number of
soldier killed in the war. Currently the party of the government
holds to a socialist
heritage which guarantees a woman’s right to abortion. Because
of Milosevic’s
military aggression feminists oppose his government, but the
alternative parties may be
worse. All the opposition parties are nationalist and would restrict
abortion immediately
if they came to power. Lepa Mladjenovic asks, "What’s a
radical feminist here
supposed to do?"
There is little education available on birth
control and there is not a
consistent adequate supply of contraceptives. The international
sanctions against Serbia
have prevented contraceptives from being imported. Now one
pharmaceutical company in
Serbia is manufacturing birth control pills, but the supply is
intermittent. The hormone
levels vary for different pills, and there is no consumer education
on the difference. A
woman is supposed to get a prescription for contraceptive pills, but
pharmacists often
will sell them without a prescription. The IUD is used, but without
proper care. Some
women have had IUDs in place for up to seven years even though they
should be removed
after three years. Contraceptives such as the diaphragm and sponge
are unavailable. One
woman said she had only seen a diaphragm once in her life. Although
condoms are available
men don’t like them and often refuse to use them. Withdrawal is
still frequently used
as the only form of birth control. Pregnancy is a constant fear for
women. As summarised
by Stanislava Otasevic, a physician at the Autonomous Women’s
Centre Against Sexual
Violence, "No one is educated. Women are not consulted. No one
speaks with
them."
Transformation of Women’s Lives in
Serbia
One of the authors of this paper, Zorica Mrsevic,
observed how life has
changed in the past four years.
"I have been a witness to how easily what
has been socially
constructed can be destroyed. Within a few months practically
everything was changed. All
the rules of the game are now different. Institutions for which
we believed would exist
forever don’t exist anymore. All that I had invested myself
in is worth nothing. We
became miserable. In the previous time we lived an easy life, not
on a high standard, but
somehow, everything was easy — to go on holiday, to get a
flat from the institution
where you worked, to buy new clothes, to eat whatever you wanted,
to have fun, to visit
restaurants, to travel abroad, to have free medical care. Now we
spend practically all our
earned money only for food. Our clothes and shoes, as well as our
health and good moods,
come from the previous time. The winter of 1993/1994 was the
hardest in my life. We lived
by eating only potatoes and beans and we had to spend our life
savings to buy that. Our
salaries were between 10 and 20 DM per month."
Slavica Stojanovic´ was not a feminist before the
war. Now she
translates Virginia Woolf into Serbo-Croat, teaches courses on
women’s literature in
the Women’s Studies Centre, co-founded the Autonomous
Women’s Centre Against
Sexual Violence and, in 1994, started a feminist press called
"1994." She was in
crisis at the beginning of the war because she didn’t know what
to do, but felt a
strong sense of responsibility to Yugoslavia.
"My grandmother lived under the
Austro-Hungarian rule and out of
the experience of her youth she despised inter-ethnic conflicts
which were provoked by
rulers who had vested interests in creating animosity. My
grandmother remembered the
enthusiasm of the time when Yugoslavia was founded as a
multi-ethnic country after World
War I. She lived near the Italian border in the early years of
fascism and openly opposed
it. At the beginning of World War II she lived in Zagreb and was
forced to leave because
she was Serb. She came to live in Belgrade and her house was
bombed in 1941 by the Germans
and again in 1944 by the Americans. Until her death, a few years
ago, at age 90, she
called herself ‘Yugoslav.’ It was her political choice.
I was raised with these
ideas. When this war started I had to make a distinction between
the values I wanted to
retain from "Yugoslavia" and the material/territorial
idea of Yugoslavia."
Slavica said that she "doesn’t care for
borders." Like
Virginia Woolf, she says,
"the whole world is my country. I want to
work for values that are
more open than nationalism. When Slovenia and Croatia wanted
independence, I supported
unity, but that meant I supported the war. I wanted to support
unity, but I needed to
respect their choice for independence and I couldn’t support
crimes. I had political
doubts about the motivations of some people who wanted separate
states. Because
populations in the republics are so mixed I knew that separating
Yugoslavia would be very
difficult and risky. I am not happy with the nationalistic states
with their patterns of
domination."
With tears Slavica described the pain she lived in
at the beginning of
the wars. "For one year I woke up as if someone had grabbed me.
I didn’t know
what to do. It was like I was having a heart attack."
Another woman, said that prior to 1990 she
published research papers,
but growing nationalism, war propaganda and eventual war compelled
her to change the focus
of her work and life.
"I felt lonely and frightened among men
and my colleagues. I needed
strongly to be surrounded by women. First, I joined the
Women’s Studies Research and
Communication Centre because it was a form of scholarship that
was closest to my previous
work, but with a feminist approach. Soon after this, I realised
that this was not enough,
that violence against women is very wide spread and I needed to
do more than stay in my
room with my books and my computer. That was a luxury that
belongs to another time. More
practical and less theoretical work was needed, so I joined the
SOS Hotline and the
Autonomous Women’s Centre Against Sexual Violence. During
this time I realised that I
was a lesbian, so my life in the women’s groups is not only
a scholastic adventure,
but the adventure of my life."
Feminists Organise Against
Violence Against Women
The Group for Women Raped in
War
In December 1992 women from the SOS Hotline founded
the Group for Women
Raped in War. Their aim was to support women raped in the war with
basic needs, such as
food, clothing, medicine, money and friendship. They wanted to create
solidarity among
survivors of sexual abuse in war so they could regain their autonomy
and self esteem.
The Group for Women Raped in War wanted to assist
women raped in war
through the procedures of medical institutions and refugee
organizations. They looked for
women in hospitals where survivors went to have an abortion or to
await delivery of
babies. Sometimes, they received referrals from doctors, but there
was poor collaboration
since state institution’s interests were different from that of
the Group for Women
Raped in War. Medical personnel in gynaecological wards treated women
as "guilty
victims." Survivors of war rape were treated the same way,
unless they were Serbs -
then the hospitals had a nationalist interest in their stories of
victimisation. Serb
officials used the testimonies of the rapes of Serbian women to
support their claim that
Croats and Muslims were the aggressors. Thus they used women’s
bodies and pain in
support of nationalism. In May 1993 while volunteers from the SOS
Hotline sat in the
hospital with a depressed rape survivor, who had just had a painful
second trimester
abortion, the doctors were photocopying her story and preparing to
take it to the European
Parliament. The Group for Women Raped in War supported the
women’s decisions in
whatever they chose: to go back to parents, to leave the country, to
stay in Belgrade, to
find work and, for some, to keep their babies or give them up for
adoption.
The Group for Women Raped in War’s political
goal was to make
visible the systematic and genocidal rape of women with Muslim and
Croat names by Serb
soldiers. These rapes were never covered by the media in Serbia and
the Serbian public was
not aware of the ethnic cleansing, concentration camps and systematic
rapes organised and
carried out by Serbs in Bosnia.
The Autonomous Women’s Centre Against
Sexual Violence
The Group for Women Raped In War founded the
Autonomous Women’s
Center Against Sexual Violence. With the financial support of many
organisations from
Europe and the United States the Centre opened on International Human
Rights Day, 10
December 1993. In their opening address they said, "We wish to
stress once again that
women’s rights are human rights, that human rights are above
national interests, and
that the State must not kill its citizens" (Women’s Lobby,
10 December 1993).
The Autonomous Women’s Centre Against Sexual
Violence was created
for all women who have survived rape and sexual abuse, whether from
war zones or from
neighbourhoods in Belgrade. The Centre set up a multiple approach to
sexual violence. They
analysed and responded to rape at the individual, social and
political level. Their goal
is to respond to the emotional needs of the rape survivor, and
comprehend and condemn the
use of sexual violence as a method to keep women powerless in society
and as a political
and military weapon of war and ethnic cleansing.
The Centre has a SOS Rape Hotline, individual
counselling and in Fall
1994, the Centre organised support groups for survivors of sexual
abuse. Women come to the
Centre from several different populations and backgrounds. The Centre
sees women coming
from war zones and local women who were sexually assaulted. Mothers
of children who are
being sexually abused have called for assistance and teen-age and
adult incest survivors
call or visit the Centre to talk about their abuse. Young women (ages
16 - 20) from the
Belgrade Maternity House frequently come to the Centre to find
support. These women are
waiting to deliver babies. Some of these pregnancies are the result
of rape, but many of
the women become pregnant from boyfriends and then are rejected by
their families because
they were not married. Also, refugee women and children come to the
Centre for
humanitarian supplies and personal support.
The Autonomous Women’s Centre is the only
women’s drop-in
centre in Serbia that organises women’s counselling, works on
women’s rights
campaigns, networks with different women’s groups in the
country, and has an ongoing
public campaign to "make sexual violence against women socially
visible." An
additional aim of the Center is to maintain communication with
feminists and activists
against violence against women in Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Centre for Women’s Studies Research
and Communication
The Centre for Women’s Studies Research and
Communication was
founded by activists interested in feminist theory. Some of the women
were university
professors who observed the invisibility of women in the social
sciences and humanities.
All of the women had observed the realities of women’s lives and
wanted to read and
discuss works written by women that attempted to explain the
experiences of women and the
world. On 8 March 1992 the Centre for Women’s Studies Research
and Communication
formed to teach and study feminist knowledge.
The Centre is an independent collective with no
institutional
affiliation, although several of the instructors are faculty members
at the University of
Belgrade. In their first year (1992/1993) offered one class per week
and in the second
year (1993/1994) there were two classes per week. During this time
they worked solely in a
volunteer basis. In the third year (1994/1995) ) the Center received
some funding from
outside Yugoslavia and increased their offering to four classes per
week. More and more
students are coming to study. The program of classes for the past two
years has consisted
of: Analysis of Contemporary Serb and Croat Women Writers; Feminist
Theories; History of
Philosophy; Anthropology; Sociology; History of Feminist Ideas;
Psychology of Women; and
Women and Law. The Women’s Studies curriculum focuses on
feminist theory. Many of the
women from the Center, are involved in anti-war groups or groups for
victims of violence.
Women’s studies is the place they have created for theoretical
discussion.
Arkadia - Lesbian and Gay
Lobby
Lesbians and gay men from Belgrade started meeting
as a group for the
first time at the end of 1990. In the beginning they met in a coffee
shop; as the group
expanded they moved to people’s kitchens and flats. They
officially became Arkadia -
Lesbian and Gay Lobby in December 1990. The group sought to promote
the visibility and
rights of lesbians and gay men. In their first public statement they
said,
"Women, homosexuals and lesbians are an
integral part of this
society, still their human rights are violated daily, still they
are discriminated against
and humiliated daily, even though they are active in all the
political parties which
nevertheless perpetuate institutionalisation of the violence
against their
existence"(Arkadia and Women’s Lobby, 16 August
1991).
Nationalism and war have deeply influenced the
formation and policies of
Arkadia, like all other organisations. The first public discussion on
social visibility
took place on June 27, 1991.
"It was a sunny day and some people were
coming directly from the
river beaches to the meeting. We had four speakers, and the
discussion was a very good
one. But the news of the day was that the Yugoslav Army started
to shoot in Slovenia
— we were not at all aware at that moment that this was the
day the war(s) began. For
the next few months we were waiting [for] the end of the war,
even though the killings
were already spreading to Croatia and the news was very bad"
(Arkadia and
Women’s Lobby, 1994).
The wars and nationalism eventually came to
dominate everyone’s
lives and the organisations to which they belonged. Nationalism split
Arkadia. Those
favoring a non-nationalist, anti-militarist policy prevailed.
"The summer [of 1992] we had an open
discussion and lots of
quarrelling; some of us were firmly insisting on a
non-nationalist policy for the group.
The people who were saying, ‘I hate Gypsies and Albanians
but I am gay and I want to
be in this group’ did not feel comfortable with us any more.
We stopped informing
them about the meetings. But we are still left with the
unanswered question: what shall we
do with lesbians and gay men who support the war?"(Arkadia
and Women’s Lobby,
1994).
Members of Arkadia face discrimination, harassment
and violence. The
police harass members. Police came to the apartment of a male founder
of Arkadia, took him
to the police station and beat him for listening to excessively loud
Croatian music. He
was also asked questions about Arkadia.
For three years Arkadia could not find a place to
meet - no institution
wanted to be associated with gays and lesbians. Only after
women’s groups got rooms
of their own was Arkadia able to meet in those spaces. At this time
lesbians started
holding lesbian-only meetings and a few are searching for funding to
rent a flat and start
a lesbian information center.
Women’s Law Advocacy
Centre
Operating within the SOS Hotline and the Autonomous
Women’s Centre
Against Sexual Violence were women’s law groups, which became
known as Women’s
Rights Are Human Rights. The women’s daily experience with
violence against women
demonstrated the need for legal protection for women. On 1 September
1994 the women
established the Women’s Law Advocacy Centre. Their personal
experience with victims
of violence and sexual exploitation is the ground for their
professional approach in
creating a centre dedicated to the protection of women’s legal
rights.
The work of the Advocacy Centre will be in four
areas 1) direct legal
support to women; 2) education; 3) development of strategies to
combat legal institutional
procedures and practices which discriminate against women; and 4) the
training of law
students.
In the Fall 1994 they headed a campaign against the
proposed abortion
law which would restrict women’s access to abortion. Due to
their efforts the
proposed law has been withdrawn from Parliamentary action and
returned to the Department
of Health for redrafting.
The group has also led a campaign to have rape in
marriage recognised as
a crime. During Summer 1994 they opposed provisions of a new criminal
law that did not
recognise rape in marriage. The men in Parliament laughed at their
proposal.
Women in Black’s New Year’s
Message, 1994
By the end of 1993 Women in Black had been
protesting in the streets for
over two years. In that time they acquired a jaded view of peace
plans and international
interventions. In their New Year’s Message they had only
universal condemnation.
"The sanctions imposed by the [United
Nations] Security Council do
not affect only those who have caused them: the militarist
Serbian regime and its
partners, the new elite of war-profiteers, whose world-wide bank
accounts are safe and
sound. The so-called international community has moreover given
political support to this
regime by legalising the results of its conquests and ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia and
elsewhere.... We mistrust a ‘peace’ based on
‘deals’ made by the
nationalist-militaristic elites who have caused this war. We
mistrust the so-called
mediators who use peace slogans to fan war and ethnic hatred;
they are part of the same
old patriarchal militaristic machinery. We no longer harbour the
illusion that the
international community will not apply the logic of violence and
the right of the
stronger" (Women in Black, 27 December 1993).
"Three Years of War - Against
War": The Resistance
Continues
An ending cannot be written for this paper because
the story of feminist
resistance in Serbia is far from over. As this paper is completed the
city of Bihac is
being destroyed in Bosnia. The feminist movement in Belgrade
continues to grow - this year
(1994) alone three new groups formed. The movement is being built by
women who refuse to
be by-standers to the destruction of people - whether they live in
their own
neighbourhoods or, what are now, different countries. These women
refuse to be victims,
although some have been victimised. They decided to transform their
powerlessness and
despair into a feminist women’s movement of resistance to
nationalism, militarism and
sexism.
"It is the third year and we are still on
the street. For three
years, our women’s presence has been saying to the Serbian
regime - your policy is
death, disaster and sorrow for those in whose name you are
speaking, for those you chose
to be against, and "nation interests" are nothing but
means of exerting power
and creating destruction. With our protest, we, Women in Black,
are making their violence
visible" (Women in Black, 5 October 1994).
Through their organising and activism the women
resist being silenced
and separated from those who have been defined as
"other."
"Women will remember, women are telling
each other stories of the
reality we live in and we are witnesses of many crimes for which
this regime is
responsible. Women, our friends from all parts and states of the
former Yugoslavia are
still telling us about the suffering they went through and what
is happening to them now.
Nationalism didn’t separate all of us, a stream of trust
still exists between women
of all names" (Women in Black, 5 October 1994).
Endnotes
In 1989, the
Serbian government
removed the autonomous status of Kosovo and Vojvodina.
The history leading up
to this conflict is
long and complicated and beyond the scope of this paper. For more
detailed discussion see
Meg Coulson (1993) "Looking Behind the Violent Break-up of
Yugoslavia," Feminist
Review, No. 45, pp. 86 - 101; Maja Korac (1993) "Serbian
Nationalism: Nationalism
of My Own People," Feminist Review, No 45, pp. 108 - 112;
Bogdan Denitch
(1994) Ethnic Nationalism - The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia.
Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
In 1994, The Centre
for Anti-War Action in
Belgrade published Warfare, Patriotism, and Patriarchy — The
Analysis of
Elementary School Textbooks, which analyses the messages to
students about patriotism,
national (ethnic) relations, prejudices, war, peace, and gender. The
address for the
Centre for Anti-War Action is: Kralja Petra 46, Belgrade,
Yugoslavia.
Personal communication
to Donna Hughes,
July 1994.
The first SOS Hotline
was founded in
Zagreb, Croatia on 8 March 1988.
Following the war in
Slovenia 37,000 Serbs
left Slovenia and registered as refugees in Serbia. During the war in
Croatia, tens of
thousands of Serbs fled to areas of Croatia under nationalist Serb
control, while 160,000
people (almost all Serbs) left Croatia and registered as refugees in
Serbia. All figures
are quoted from The U.S. Committee for Refugees ( September 1993),
which relied on The
Commissariat for Refugees, Republic of Serbia. In 1993, The United
Nations Human Rights
Commission (25 May 1993), basing its figures on Red Cross reports
from each country,
reported that within the territory of former Yugoslavia there were
the following numbers
of refugees: 985,000 in Croatia, 87,000 in Krajina, 469,000 in
Serbia, 2,280,000 in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 60,000 in Montenegro and 32,000 in
Macedonia.
Personal communication
from teenage boys to
Donna Hughes, July 1994.
Spoken at a workshop
at Third Annual
Meeting of Women in Black, Novi Sad, Vojvidina, Serbia, 6 August
1994.
The "first
Yugoslavia" was the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes formed after World War I and
the "second
Yugoslavia" was the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
formed after World War
II.
Personal communication
to Donna Hughes,
July 1994.
Personal communication
to Donna Hughes,
July 1994.
Personal communication
to Donna Hughes,
July 1994.
Personal communication
to Donna Hughes,
August 1994.
Personal communication
to Donna Hughes,
September 1994.
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