https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/03/world/150-muslims-say-serbs-raped-them-in-bosnia.

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150 Muslims Say Serbs Raped Them in

Bosnia
By JOHN F. BURNS and

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At least 150 Muslim women and teen-age girls who have crossed into Government-held areas
of Sarajevo in recent weeks are said to be in advanced stages of pregnancy and have asserted
that they became pregnant after being raped by Serbian nationalist fighters. They also said
they had been imprisoned for months afterward in an attempt to keep them from having
abortions.

The accusations, some of them from girls as young as 14, were reported originally by the state
commission for the investigation of war crimes, a Bosnian Government agency that is
amassing evidence on a range of alleged abuses by Serbian forces in the six-month Bosnian
war. Doctors, lawyers and social workers who have talked with some of the women say that
they believe that their accounts are credible.

The war-crimes commission says it has signed statements from dozens of the women, some of
which have been shown to reporters. Commission officials say they have other evidence, in
the form of signed statements by the women or by friends and relatives who assert that they
were present or nearby when abuses occurred, indicating that as many as 12,000 women and
girls, mostly Muslims, have been raped in the course of the war.

Accusations of widespread rape by the Serbian fighters began circulating in April and May,
soon after the conflict began, when irregular paramilitary groups known as Chetniks, some
from Serbia and others from Bosnia, swept through predominantly Muslim areas of eastern
Bosnia. Patterns of Brutality

In more than a dozen signed statements shown to reporters, and in an interview that a 15-year-
old girl who said she was one of the victims gave in Sarajevo this week, the attackers were
said to have told the victims that they would be forced to bear "Chetnik" children.

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"We are seeing the same pattern repeatedly, of Chetniks telling these women, 'It is better to
give birth to Chetniks than to Muslim filth,' " said Mahir Zisko, executive director of the war-
crimes commission. "Another statement by the Chetniks that recurs in the statements is:
'When we let you go home you'll have to give birth to a Chetnik. We won't let you go while
you can have an abortion.' "

By presenting the Serbian fighters as guilty of criminal brutality, the Bosnian Government
hopes to prompt action in its support by foreign governments. For months, it has been
pressing for military intervention by the United States and other Western powers, or at least
for arms supplies.

But while the war-crimes commission has a clear political motive for spreading its
accusations against the Serbian forces, it has built a record for being at least broadly reliable.
Serbs' Cautious Reaction

From April on, it was telling agencies like the International Committee of the Red Cross that
the Serbian forces had established what the commission called "concentration camps" for
Muslims. But it was not until July, when reporters first reached some of the camps, that
Western governments accepted that the assertions were broadly accurate. Serbian forces have
since dismantled some of the camps and released thousands of detainees.

Serbian nationalist officials reacted with caution when confronted with the accusation that
Muslim women and girls have been raped and held into the fifth and sixth month of
pregnancy in an effort to force them to give birth.
Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, said in interviews with two British television
networks today that abuses were occurring on both sides of the war, and that it was impossible
for Serbian leaders to control all of the fighters who claimed to be engaged in the Serbian
cause, many of whom belonged to irregular formations.

A Serbian military liaison officer at the United Nations headquarters here, Momo Starcevic,
was equally cautious. Reached by Reuters, he said, "I don't know anything about these
charges, but if they are true they must be punished."

The 15-year-old Muslim girl met with reporters from Reuters and the British Broadcasting
Corporation on Thursday, but she declined to speak with other news organizations after what
her parents said had been a stressful experience in recounting her ordeal. Doctors at Kosevo
Hospital, Sarajevo's largest, performed an abortion on the girl on Wednesday night, in what
they said was her 19th week of pregnancy.

The reporters who spoke with the teen-ager said she had told them that she was seized by
Serbian fighters in May in the Serb-held Sarajevo district of Grbavica. They said she told
them she was released in mid-September, when she crossed a bridge across the Miljacka
River, which separates Grbavica from the Government-held heart of Sarajevo.

In a tape-recording made during the interview, she said she had been held in a small room
with about 20 other girls, then taken one night by several Serbian fighters to another room,
where they had been ordered to undress.

"We refused, then they beat us and tore our clothes off," the girl said. "They pushed us on the
floor. Two of the men held me down while two others raped me. I shouted at them and tried to
fight back but it was no use. As they raped me they said they'd make sure I gave birth to a
Serbian baby, and they kept repeating that during the rest of the time that they kept me there."
Separated and Attacked

Similar accounts were given in the dozen signed statements made available by the war-crimes
commission. Most of the statements were made by women and girls who said they were
attacked in April and May in towns and villages in eastern Bosnia, now mostly Serb-held,
where the Serbian forces began their campaign.

The statements offered graphic accounts of rapes that Serbian fighters were said to have
committed in and around the towns of Zvornik, Foca, Visegrad and Rogatica, among others.
The alleged victims, and in one case a victim's mother, recounted incidents in which, in the
words of one typical account, "the prettiest girls" were selected by the Serbian fighters,
separated from other women and girls, and attacked.

In several statements, given by people who said they were witnesses, the victims were said to
have disappeared after being raped. In one case, the witness, a 21-year-old woman who was
not attacked, said that she had been told that two friends who had been raped had been killed
and their bodies dumped into the Drina River, which forms the border between Bosnia and
Serbia.