Wartime sexual violence

The Bosnian state court on Friday rejected the indictment charging Adem Kostjerevac with wartime rape because he was not questioned in accordance with the law during the investigation.

According to estimates by the United Nations, between 20,000 and 50,000 people were raped during the Bosnian war.

Wartime rape victims often keep quiet about their experiences for years in order to avoid being stigmatised or condemned by their families and communities. Tursunovic did not tell anyone about what she suffered for 17 years.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague has turned down a request for early release from Dragoljub Kunarac, the wartime leader of a Bosnian Serb Army reconnaissance unit, who was jailed by the UN court for multiple rape and the enslavement of two women in the Foca area during the Bosnian conflict.

Ljubljana – Animateka, the annual festival of animated film, will be an online-only event this year. While fill buffs will be deprived of the big-screen experience, the silver lining is that most of the films will be available for viewing around the world.

Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman told a special session of the Kosovo Assembly dedicated to raising public awareness about survivors of wartime sexual violence on Monday that victims needed protection and support but instead have been stigmatised by society for more than two decades.

"Our country, our society stigmatises us," Krasniqi Goodman said.

"There are still many mass crimes, particularly in the eastern Bosnia area, whose perpetrators have not been charged as yet, although solid documentation about these crimes exists," said Vidovic.

She said that the state prosecution should focus its resources on these more serious cases rather than on "less extensive crimes and less significant cases in terms of perpetrators' rank".

Shyhrete Tahiri-Sylejmani filed a criminal complaint to Kosovo's Special Prosecution for War Crimes on Monday in an attempt to ensure that her attacker during the 1998-99 war is prosecuted.

Railway personnel and passengers from the train that was stopped in the small Bosnian town of Strpci on February 27, 1993, when paramilitaries seized 20 passengers who were later killed, told Belgrade Higher Court on Monday recollect how no one tried to stop the abductions of 20 non-Serbs from the train.

The UN Committee Against Torture has ruled that the Bosnian authorities must pay compensation to a victim of sexual violence during the 1992-95 war and provide her with appropriate and free medical and psychological help as soon as possible.

'Invisible Child', a film directed by Muhammed Ibrahim Sisman that includes interviews with the daughters of women raped during the Bosnian war, will have its first public screening in Sarajevo on August 19.