HMD RESPONSE PROGRAMMES IN BOSNIA - HERZEGOVINA - TUZLA

Tuzla had a pre-war population of approximately 250,000. By the end of 1995, the conflict and subsequent influx of displaces persons has swollen the population of the region immediately approximate to Tuzla, to around 440,000 persons. Since the signing of Dayton and the liberation of towns and lands to the west the number of displaced had probably halved. It is within this remaining displaced population of up to 120,000 that both the suspected and documented victims of rape and violence are to be found. Many of these are victims of concentration camps such as the infamous Omarska, much publicised by UNHCR and ICRC in 1992-93. They reside largely in collective centres improvised for residence from the city’s public building stock. There is now some relocation to refurbished houses in the surrounds of Tuzla.

Scientists discover chilling evidence of crimes committed in darkest days of Bosnian War – Unearthing the Truth : "US forensic scientists have exhumed corpses found in a mass grave at Bacici, Bosnia. The grave, thought to contain the bodies of up to 2,700 Muslims, was identified by satellite photographs. Survivors testify that Bosnian Serb forces massacred at least 3,000 mostly unarmed Muslim men after taking the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. Many were apparently buried en masse after execution in one of the most brutal episodes in the 43 month ethnic war, possibly the worst since the Nazi holocaust.” – (The Independent, 7 June 1996)

Amongst the adult refugee population there is a predominance of women. We have found that amongst these women there are few who have not suffered bereavement: the loss of a husband, sibling or child. Many have been forced to evacuate under fire- across mine fields- or under threat of violence or rape. Some have witnessed death of a family member. Many of these items of suffering are relatively easy to access by a social worker but the crime of rape is notoriously difficult to establish from an epidemiological point of view. Our appreciation of the scale of the problem is therefore based initially on the outcry and the testimony of witnesses. However, we have gained a more concrete sense of the scale of the crimes from the evidence of our own therapists working in Tuzla during the last three month period. Children are not precluded as victims from any of the above assaults or acts of violence. In fact it may be true that children sustain trauma beyond that of an adult due to the lesser developed ability to reason.

Rape Trauma Screening and Therapy programme and Women’s Day Centre, Tuzla

HMD Response is directly involved in this programme in that it facilitates an upgrading of social worker skills, in particular the basis of professional rape screening and therapy. The training is provided in the field by Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) in partnership with HMD Response. In February 1996 DRCC completed the first of its Tuzla training courses and will return in the autumn for a sequel programme, as a follow up to the last.

Further to this training the social workers are included in a separate programme, complimentary to the DRCC course. This consists of inclusion in the social worker training scheme operated by Professor Dan Creson in co-operation with the Institute of Mental Science, University of Texas. A legal component is planned for the programme in the form of a member of the British lawyer’s voluntary group, ‘Justice for Bosnia’. This human rights lawyer will orientate victim testimony to evidence useful to the War Crimes Tribunal.

Existing Programme

HMD Response began its support for the Tuzla Women’s Centre in December 1995. The support funding was to establish such a centre and to support its running costs and the salaries of the professional and support staff. The professional staffs consist of: a psychiatrist, a medical doctor, and seven field workers. All of the above mentioned staff were included in the training provided by HMD Response-DRCC.

Activities include the following:

• To improve the psycho-social functioning of the displaced women in Travnik and its vicinity;
• To visit the collective centres and private accommodations and invite women to join the social activities of the Women’s Centre;
• To stimulate and increase the frequency of movement of isolated individuals;
• To identify trauma victims through more formal meetings and to offer them support, counselling and therapeutic treatment;
• To organise educational courses for field workers in basic and advanced therapeutic skills so as to contact, select, screen and offer therapy to the target group of traumatised raped women;
• To offer individual or group therapy at the Centre according to assessment;
• To provide health advice and promote health education for women and children;
• To refer the patients to the project infirmary, located at the Centre; and
• To compile the testimonies of the clients, as property remaining at the disposal of the client.

Seven collective centres were targeted by the first seven workers trained. The centres were: Solina, Ciciban Miladije, Mihativici Sicki B, Kiseljak, Lipnica, dormitory 11, Sicki B (all are schools or kindergartens). The total present was 700 and most of these women had lost children, husbands or siblings. In the main they originated from Podrinje, Bratunac, Avornik and Srebrenica. These collective centres have received regular visits from our social workers and medical staff to hold therapy meetings and clinics.

War Crimes Tribunal

With support from the Irish Foreign Office, HMD Response has been able to offer logistic support and medical advice to representatives of the UN War Crimes Tribunal. With a formidable task ahead and with great public demands placed upon them the Tribunal has found itself under funded and under resourced. HMD Response has been careful to bring our own psycho-social programme of rape trauma screening into line with some of the needs of the Tribunal. Some of our clients are willing to contribute evidence of testimony to the Hague. Conversely, the investigators are unwilling to solicit testimony from a witness/victim programme which is not supported professionally. The Tribunal has visited our programmes and given instruction to our therapists as to the taking of testimony admissible as evidence in court. It is planned for representatives of the Tribunal to teach a course of legal issues to our training partner, DRCC, in Dublin in late summer 1996.

The European Union Administration for Mostar (EUAM) has requested assistance from our psycho-social professionals to assist and support prosecutions for paedophile crimes committed during the mass captivity of the Muslim women and children of Mostar during 1993.

We do not believe that humanitarian aid is a substitute for justice. Indeed it may be the belief of immunity from punishment that encourages the worst of outrages in conflict situations and the accompanying haze of confusion. Others feel as we do that our work is created when inadequate and late political interventions are made.

"Because memory is intensely visual at a young age, what emerges may be very graphic and intrusive…A child might not take in the full scene, but certain disturbing details will stand out in his or her memory. Sounds and smells linked with the event, for example, have a strong imprint - the olfactory and aural centres in the brain are highly developed- which can trigger unpleasant thought years later unless they are placed in context.” – (Liz Hunt, The Independent, 29 July 1996)