Part 3 of 3 (Part
1 and Part 2)
Feminist
Resistance
to Violence
Against Women
The SOS
Hotline
The founders of the feminist anti-violence movement in Serbia
view violence
against women and children as a social and political issue, not the
private interactions
between men and women, or within the family. The movement and
organizations working
against violence against women grew out of the feminist movement
established in Serbia,
Yugoslavia in the 1980s. The first SOS Hotline in the Socialist Federal
Republic of
Yugoslavia opened in 1987 in Zagreb, Croatia. Following this the women
in Belgrade, Serbia
tried for several years to establish a similar crisis line, but the
authorities were
suspicious of this work and refused to grant them space and resources.
After persistent
effort, on 8 March 1990, International Women’s Day, the SOS
Hotline for Women and
Children Victims of Violence opened in Belgrade.
The original mission of the SOS Hotline for Women and Children
was three fold: 1)
to assist victims of violence through a hotline, 2) to make visible to
the public the
existence, seriousness and reality of men’s violence against women
and children, and
3) to initiate institutional change to
bring about more
prompt, serious, and sensitive response to victims of violence (Mrsevic
and Hughes 1997).
From 1990 to 1993, the SOS Hotline was the only feminist
organization that women
and children could contact for assistance concerning violence against
women, their
friends, or family.
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 the women could regain their autonomy and
self esteem.
The Group for Women Raped in War wanted to help the women
through the procedures
of medical institutions and refugee organizations. They looked for
women in hospitals
where survivors went to have abortions or await delivery of babies.
Sometimes, they
received referrals from doctors, but there was poor collaboration since
state
institutions’ interests were different from that of the Group for
Women Raped in War.
Medical personnel in gynecological wards treated women who were raped
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
victimization.
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 do: go back to parents, leave the country, stay in
Belgrade, find work and,
for some, 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. The
media in Serbia never covered these rapes and the Serbian public could
remain unaware of
the ethnic cleansing, concentration camps and systematic rapes
organized and carried out
by Serbs in Bosnia.
The Autonomous Women’s
Center
Against Sexual
Violence
The Group for Women Raped in War founded the Autonomous
Women’s Center
Against Sexual Violence. With the financial support of organizations
from Europe and the
United States the Center 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
founders of the Autonomous Women’s Center Against Sexual Violence
are women who
refuse to be by-standers to the destruction of people-whether they live
in their own
neighborhoods or other parts of former Yugoslavia. They women refuse to
be victims,
although some have been victimized.
The Autonomous Women’s Center Against Sexual Violence was
created for all
women who have survived rape and sexual abuse, whether from war zones
or from
neighborhoods in Belgrade. The Center set up a multiple approach to
sexual violence. They
analyzed 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 Center has a SOS Rape Hotline, individual counseling and in
autumn 1994, the
Center organized support groups for survivors of sexual abuse. Women
come to the Center
from several different populations and backgrounds. The Center 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 Center to talk about their abuse. Young women (ages 16-20)
from the Belgrade
Maternity House frequently come to the Center 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 Center for
humanitarian supplies
and personal support.
For several years, the Autonomous Women’s Center was the
only women’s
drop-in center in Serbia that organized women’s counseling, worked
on women’s
rights campaigns, networked with different women’s groups in the
country, and had 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.
Growth of Women’s
Movement-1995 through 1998
The SOS Hotline and the Autonomous Women’s Center Against
Sexual Violence
provided the training grounds for many feminists in Serbia who have
expanded the
women’s support and anti-violence work by founding many other
organizations in
Belgrade and throughout Serbia, including Kosovo. Although patriarchal
cultural traditions
and the totalitarian political climate in Serbia make the rise of
women’s
organizations difficult, the feminist movement against all types of
violence has spread to
towns and cities outside Belgrade. At the end of 1998, there were
initiatives in seventeen
towns that are part of the feminist network. The Belgrade groups
supported the new
organizations with written materials, education and exchanges of
experience.
Two new women’s centers were formed that gave support to
victims of
violence-the Incest Trauma Center and the Counseling Center for Women.
Two houses called
"Lastavica," meaning The Swallow, were established for single
women refugees
from Krajina, an area of northern Croatia that was "ethnically
cleansed" of
Serbs at the end of the war. "Women on Work" is a new
organization that supports
women’s enterprise initiatives. "Out of the Circle"
supports women with
disabilities and their families. In addition, "Bibija " a
Roma Women’s
Center was formed.
Nationalism, Militarism and
Violence Against Women
The nationalist hatred generated in Serbia has increased the
violence against
women also. In the autumn of 1991 the SOS Hotline started receiving
calls from women who
were battered after men watched the TV news in which there were stories
filled with hatred
for "the enemy." Women said the men became enraged after
listening to and
watching the nationalist propaganda and beat women as a way to avenge
their wounded
national pride. Some women reported that they were beaten for the first
time in their
lives after the men watched one of the nationalist reports on Serbian
victims of war.
Women reported that their husbands cursed the Croats and Muslims in
Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina while beating them. In most of these cases the
ethnicity of the woman
was the same as her partner. In cases where the ethnicity of the man
and the woman was
different, the man beat the woman, claiming "Our five
minutes has come,” meaning that this was the man’s
opportunity to be the victor
for his ethnicity for a short period of time (Mladjenovic 1992,
55).
Men who were in the Yugoslav army or paramilitary groups
returned to Belgrade
traumatized, angry and violent. They brought weapons they used in
fighting with them and
used them to threaten or harm women. Since the beginning of the wars,
weapons are kept in
many homes. Pistols, hand grenades, and automatic weapons have become
part of households.
"Some of the men who came back from the front (from
regular army or
paramilitary battalions) continue massacres in their homes: they
abuse women, beat their
children, sleep with machine guns under their pillows, rape their
wives while they are
sleeping, destroy the furniture,
scream, swear, spit and
accuse” (Mladjenovic 1992, 54).
Women report an increase in men’s alcohol abuse that
increases their violence
to women and children. Men, who participated in paramilitary groups
that loot houses and
businesses as part of ethnic cleansing, are angry and violent because
they have not
received the material rewards they thought they would. The men expect
and demand emotional
understanding and support from the women around them, and see their
wives as someone on
whom they can displace their rage.
The longer the wars continue the more tolerance and acceptance
there is for
violence as a way of resolving conflict or gaining control. Since the
wars, violence is
legitimated in Parliament, streets and homes, with the result being an
increase in
violence against women in the streets and homes. In Serbia, nationalism
and militarism
have become dominant ideologies in society.
Women’s groups that have formed to resist war and violence
bring a feminist
analysis to Serbian nationalism and men’s violence against women.
They see parallels
between men’s defense of their private abuse of women in their
homes and
Serbia’s defense of the violence perpetrated against people of
other ethnicities
inside the borders of former Yugoslavia. Serbian President
Miloševic resists international intervention in his war against
ethnic Albanians in
Kosova, especially the presence of peacekeeping troops by claiming that
Kosova is
Serbia’s land, and that the violence, as with men’s violence
against women and
children, is an internal and private matter, and outsiders
should
not intervene.
Feminist groups in Belgrade point out that both private and state
violence stems from
patriarchy.
"Patriarchy considers that men’s violence in the
family is a
‘private family matter’–this ideology or privacy
permits violence in all
other domains of society. When the SOS hotline for women and
children calls the police to
intervene in violent scenes, a violent husband standing beside his
bruised wife claims,
‘This is my wife, it is my issue.’ Policemen, also with
male understanding,
confirm that it is a ‘family matter.’ That is exactly the
model for how the
first man of the ruling regime leads the war in Kosova:
‘Kosova is an internal
problem of Serbia’" (Independent Women’s Groups in
Belgrade, 22 May 1998).
No
Ending
In 1994, we wrote that an ending could be written for this
paper
because the story
of feminist resistance in Serbia was far from over. In 1994, as the
paper was sent to the
publisher, the city of Bihac in Bosnia was being destroyed by Serbian
artillery. It is now
April 1999 as we write an update for this paper, and still an ending
cannot be written. As
this update of the paper is sent to the publisher, Serbian police,
military and
paramilitary units are emptying all of Kosovo of ethnic Albanians. NATO
is dropping bombs
on Belgrade, Novi Sad, Karljevo, and on Pristina and other sites in
Kosovo and Montenegro.
We can only hope that the words of Women in Black, written in 1994,
still apply:
"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).
