The filming of Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut depicting
a love story between a Serbian man and a Bosnian Muslim woman has been met with significant opposition from the Bosnian community. The movie takes place during the 1992-1995 Bosnian-Serbia war in which an estimated 200,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed. This genocidal conflict was notorious for the use of sexual violence by the Serbian forces against Bosnian Muslim women.
The Bosnian war started in 1992 when the break up of the former Yugoslavia led to crises over nationalism, territory rights, and ethnic identities pitting the Bosnian Muslims, Roman Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Serbs against each other. Serbian president Slobodan Milosev
Protests regarding the filming of the movie in Bosnia began after reports depicted the movie as a love story between a Bosnian woman and her Serbian rapist. The public has been assured that while the movie does indeed depict a romance between a Serbian man and a Bosnian Muslim woman, their relationship is consensual and it does not include any sort of element of rape. Still, the resulting controversy made it impossible to shoot all of the scenes in Bosnia itself.
Two victims groups in Bosnia accused Jolie and the movie producers of attempting to "falsify the historic truth about the crimes of mass gang rapes of Bosniak women." They charge the movie producers with portraying a “loving surrender" by women to "crimes of sexual abuse" ignoring the brutal, traumatic, and violent reality of the sexual violence that characterized Serbian warfare. Jolie has offered to meet with members of the Bosnian community to discuss the movie further. She also said the following "There are many twists in the plot that address the sensitive nature of the relationship between the main characters, and that will be revealed once the film is released… My hope is that people will hold judgment until they have seen the film." Yet some are still upset by the movie and Jolie’s actions, and have complained to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) about Jolie, who is a UNHCR goodwill ambassador.
Serbian soldiers used rap
e to traumatize, demean, and intimidate the victims. They also purposefully impregnated Bosnian women with “little Chetniks” to “dilute” the Bosnian Muslim population. This use of rape as a war tactic was so extensive that it led to the international recognition of rape in such circumstances as a crime against humanity. In 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted Serbian soldiers of crimes against humanity for their use of widespread and systematic use of rape in Foca in 1992.
As unrealistic and offensive as a romance between a Bosnian Muslim and her rapist may have been, friendships and relationships between ordinary Serbs and Muslims were not uncomm
on before the outbreak of the war. Though there had been periods of inter-ethnic conflict, relations had been fairly peaceful in earlier times. Contrary to the invocations of “ancient ethnic hatreds” that were popular at the time, it was largely due to the manipulations of hard-core nationalist leaders such as Milosevic that ethnicity achieved the saliency and potency that it did during the war.
One of Jolie’s strongest critics is Bakira Hasecic, head of the “Association of Women Victims of War.” This is not the first time that Hasecic has played a role in Bosnian politics. Her stance is controversial. Another of the war’s rape victims, Enisa Salcinovic, split with Hasecic four years ago. Working now with the “Association of Concentratio
n Camp Victims,” she disapproves of Hasecic’s attempts to monopolize the voice of rape victims, explaining that she doesn’t think Hasecic should “talk in all our name.”
The Guardian quotes Bosnian scholar Belma Becirbasic, who explains the deeper significance of the current scandal surrounding Jolie’s movie: "Behind the story of Angelina Jolie and her film," she said, "is the inability of a society and culture to go forward and put the war behind us.” The fact that some are promoting dialogue about rape in Bosnia may be a sign that the Bosnian community is making steps forward. But most reports indicate that there is still room for improvement.
The complicated political system that was established by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war and separated the country into three different regions for Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats has made politics—including this October’s election—complicated and problematic. Furthermore, efforts to establish justice and accountability have not been entirely successful. Currently, Ratko Mladic, the infamous former Serbian army chief, remains at large. Many have also said that Bosnia needs to do a better job prosecuting rape perpetrators. Despite the fact that the Bosnian genocide’s horror of mass rape led to the designation of the act as a crime against humanity, only twelve cases have been prosecuted so far. The public outcry and heated debate over Jolie’s movie are further proof of the sensitive nature of the legacy of the Bosnian war.
-Caity Monroe
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