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"When they explained my origin to me, I didn't know where Bosnia was or that there had been a war." Lejla Damon, is 26 years old. She was raised in a middle class family in London. Her parents are journalists and in the 1990's they covered the Bosnian war for SKY NEWS.
In December 1992, while filming in a Sarajevo hospital under shelling, a woman wanted to drown the baby she had just given birth to. The baby was born as a result of rape and seen in the mother's eyes as the seed of the enemy. This baby was Lejla Damon.For Alen, the war started years later, on the day he discovered he was adopted. His biological mother had abandoned him because he was the result of a rape by a Serbian soldier. Ajna is also a child born of war, but her mother decided to keep her despite the psychological problems she endured after being raped during the war.
For Meliha (Bosnian of Muslim origin), Nevenka (Bosnian from Croatian origin) and Milica (Bosnian from Serbian origin) the war is not over. All of them, as well as the other women in their families were victims of sexual violence caused by troops of different banners. This documentary shows the witnesses and their struggle to break the silence and overcome the stigma in a society that still suffers the consequences of war, 25 years later.
“My neighbors never came back. I am afraid. I feel like there is still someone out there in the woods”.
Nevenka Kobranovik, a Bosnian woman of Croatian origin raped by Bosnian Serb troops. Subsequently, she was sexually abused and rejected by her husband, who had been detained in one of the concentration camps in the area. She could never bring his aggressors to justice due to lack of evidence and lack of resources, and she still suffers a lot of physical and psychological sequels.
“We feel relieved when we see a war criminal behind bars.”
Meliha Merdjic, a Bosnian Muslim woman from Visegrad who was raped at age 13 while her father and brother were murdered. Her mother survived torture and sexual violence at the Vilina Vlas detention center, in the Drina Valley. Now, both work together in the Association of Women Victims of War in Sarajevo and continue to bring war criminals to justice.
“I had a normal life before April 18th, 1992.”
Milica Dekic, a Bosnian woman of Serbian origin who was raped together with other women by members of the Croatian Defense Council that detained them in a house for two months. Years later, she managed to take six of the rapists to Court, but only one was sentenced and never spent time in prison.
“When I met my biological father I saw it written on his face that he was a murderer.”
Alen Muhic was adopted when he was a few weeks old by a Muslim family from Gorazde. His biological mother abandoned him as soon as she gave birth, after having been raped by a Serbian soldier. Now age 25 Alen has fought to identify and meet his biological parents and now he helps others in a similar situation to do the same.
"We cannot change the past, but we can change the future and prevent children born of war from being stigmatized, anywhere in the world"
Ajna Jusic graduated in psychology. Her mother, raped by a Serbian soldier during the war, decided to keep her child. After years of hiding her identity, Ajna initiated the project Zaboravljena djeca rata (Forgotten Children of war) to encourage others like herself to come out of the shadows and educate young people of her generation to fight against gender and sexual violence.
“When they told me that I was the daughter of a woman raped during the Balkan conflict, I did not know where Bosnia was, nor that there had been a war there”.
Lejla Damon, was born on Christmas Day 1992 at a hospital in Sarajevo. Her biological mother begged a journalist who interviewed her to take the baby. 25 years later, Lejla has met her biological mother and now she works to fight against the stigma of children born as a result of war rapes.
“The first time I heard about the rapes was when I arrived at the Hague Court”
Dusan Tadic, was the first Serb-Bosnian military man arrested and sentenced by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia. He lives in Serbia, where he returned after fulfilling a sentence of 20 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the region of Prijedor. He claims his innocence despite having been condemned for murders, rapes and tortures in the concentration camps of Trnopolje I Keraterm, to the Northwest of Bosnia.
Between 1992 and 1994, the Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic traveled to refugee camps to learn firsthand the experiences of women who had been victims of rape as a weapon of war. The novel “As if I am not there”, published by Abacus in 1999 resulted from the testimonies she obtained on these travels.
This work is the seed from where the theater project was born. First of all, we thought about making an adaptation but, after experiencing the reality on the ground, everything changed. After talking with these women, we had the need to explain it from a different perspective.
From the beginning, we asked ourselves: what were we doing in 1992? In Bosnia and Herzegovina, a war had broken out, fracturing a society and ruining many personal dreams, and in here, while Barcelona was holding the Olympics, we had the sensation that it was the beginning of a new era that would be much better than the previous one. That war upset us, of course, and many of us got involved in the protests and solidarity events that were organized, but it was a war that we knew only from the news and the number of casualties.
During the various trips to the area, we have met some of the survivors of that conflict and the children that were born from women who were raped. They often told us that they feel they have been forgotten by everybody. It is not easy for them to talk about what happened and relive such traumatic events but at the same time they want to be heard, and we can help them make their voices heard by a wider audience.
They are the protagonists of our work. And we... perhaps can only do what we should have done before...listen to them.
In November 2021 the Culture and Conflict team was able to take the project to the Balkans. On a tour in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Zagreb (Croatia) and Ljubljana (Slovenia), the documentary, the photographic exhibition and the play were presented, and various discussions were held with the public on a subject still taboo in these countries.
The filmmaker Violeta Rodríguez infiltrated the artistic team and with this short she offers her most personal look at the team's work on and off stage.
All the survivors who star in this project have been survivors of war and victims of peace, because today they still suffer institutional neglect and social stigma, in addition to the physical and psychological consequences. But not everything is dark. Some have stopped being afraid and continue to bring war criminals to justice. And the sons and daughters born as a result of rape, now in their thirties, are no longer the seeds of hatred that the aggressors intended to plant, but a sample of how love and the ability to overcome barbarism can heal.
The approach of the photographic installation consists of two differentiated spaces:
The first, made with printed panels, takes us to Bosnia in the year 92 where rapes and torture were carried out in centers scattered throughout the territory. Through these panels we get to know each of the characters, who explain their reality from a personal perspective.
Symbolizing the anti-sniper barriers that the citizens from sarajevo installed at the crossroads of the city, the visitor is immersed in the second space: a spread of white and shabby sheets, among which are six large-format printed portraits. An emotional space that wants to pay tribute to all the "invisible" women and children who did not survive or have suffered the trauma of family, social and institutional silence.
