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NEWS
3 Bosnian Serbs Are Convicted in Wartime Rapes.
February 23, 2001 By MARLISE SIMONS. THE HAGUE
In its first trial dealing exclusively with sexual violence, the United Nations war crimes tribunal today found three former Bosnian Serb soldiers guilty of raping and torturing Muslim women and girls. It also convicted two of the three men of enslaving their captives, the first time that an international tribunal has prosecuted and condemned sexual slavery.

Dragoljub Kunarac, 40, a former commander of the Bosnian Serb army, was sentenced to 28 years imprisonment. Radomir Kovac, 39, a former paramilitary commander, was sentenced to 20 years.
Both men were accused of multiple rapes, torture and enslavement. Zoran Vukovic, 39, also a former paramilitary commander, was given 12 years for rape and torture.

The verdict, read by Judge Florence Mumba of Zambia, also defined rape for the first time as a crime against humanity, one of the most heinous crimes. The tribunal has previously tried cases involving rape, but defined the rape as torture.
After World War II, only slave labor was prosecuted as slavery; the Japanese military's use of "comfort women" as sex slaves never came before an international tribunal.

As Judge Mumba's words rang through the court, the three men sat stone-faced.
The charges stem from events in 1992 and 1993, during the early part of the Bosnian conflict, after Bosnian Serb forces seized the town of Foca, southeast of Sarajevo. The court said that the two convicted of slavery had kept their captives, some as young as 12, for up to eight months, abusing them sexually, forcing them to do domestic work for their captors, and renting and selling them to other soldiers.
As she described the enslavement of four young Muslim girls by one of the accused, Mr. Kovac, Judge Mumba said the girls were handed over or sold to other soldiers, beaten, poorly housed and fed, and "had to obey every order and do whatever they were told to do, including the cooking and household chores."
In her summary, Judge Mumba frequently berated the accused first as a group, then individually.
To Mr. Kunarac, who was accused of rape and of providing the men of his unit with women, she said: "You were a soldier with courage in the field, somebody whom your men undisputedly are said to have held in high esteem. Your active participation in this nightmarish scheme of sexual exploitation is therefore even more repugnant."
She added, "In time of peace as much as in time of war, men of substance do not abuse women."

The judgment makes clear that slavery means not only slave labor but that it can also be sexual slavery," said Peggy Kuo, one of the prosecutors and a lawyer from the Justice Department in the United States. "We are pleased with the court's decision because the sentences showed that the court took the crimes very seriously."

Representatives of women's groups, which have played an important role in pressing the tribunal to prosecute war crimes, were elated.

"I'm so glad, we've been waiting so long for such clear language and convictions," said Gabriela Mischkowski, a founder of Medica Mondiale, a German-based support group for women who have suffered trauma in war.

"It's clearly a milestone in the recognition of wartime violence against women," said Kelly Askin, author of the book "War Crimes Against Women."

Legal scholars said that the judgment is likely to set new standards for trials at this tribunal and elsewhere. They said it will almost certainly influence rules for the new, permanent international criminal court and possibly national legal systems as well, as did decisions of the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
Military officers who deal with codes governing the conduct of war are certain to be informed of this decision, lawyers said.

Women's groups have argued that male historians have tended to describe mass rape, along with pillage, as an inevitable aspect of war. It was the pressure of women's groups that drew attention to the abuse of women in wartime Bosnia.

Activists from Europe and the United States also lobbied experts preparing the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in Geneva, ensuring that rape would be prosecuted as part of war crimes.