KARETA FEMINIST GROUP Vlaska 70A, 41 000 Zagreb, Croatia
Tel/fax: 385 41 414 834
INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE OF WOMEN OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
„BISER“, BOSANSKA 1, 41 000 Zagreb, Croatia, tel/fax: 385 41 570 518
APPEAL BY SARAJEVO WOMEN´S GROUPS
May 30, 1994
Women’s groups in Sarajevo have released the following information to our groups:
„Vesna Kesic, a member of Center for Women War Victims, the Women’s Lobby, founder of BaBe and active in the Infoteka was on a disinformation mission to Sarajevo at the beginning of May.
She approached Sarajevo women’s groups with 5.000 Deutschmarks which she promised to give to everyone under the following conditions:
- that women’s group in Sarajevo desist from calling the rapes of Bosnian Muslim and Croatian women by the Serbian Army „genocidal rape“ or „rape in the service of genocide“.“
- That Sarajevo women’s groups cannot get this money unless they work with Serbian women’s groups.
Kesic also promised that women who accept these conditions will receive invitations to international women’s conferences.
Sarajevo women’s groups consider it cruel and vicious that Kesic has come to the concentration camp-like setting of Sarajevo where financial assistance could determine whether nor not we survive in odder to blackmail us and preclude us from making uncorrected decisions. Here was an attempt to exploit the desperation of our situation and turn the women of Sarajevo in a survival competition against each other. This is something that Nazi guards did to the imamates of Auschwitz.
We never said that we would not work with Serbian women’s groups, but we must decide when, how, of if at all. The fact remains that during the entire time of this Serbian genocidal war, we haven’t felt Serbian women’s solidarity. This is part of our reality and should be respected as such.
Now, we appeal to the international women’s community for help and ask the question: DO WE HAVE TO SUBMIT TO THE BLACKMAIL OF VESNA KESIC? “
Genocide was tried for the first time at the Nuremberg Trials. At this very moment survivors, survivor support groups, and the international women’s community are the first time at this Hague War Crimes Tribunal and in survivor’s civil lawsuits in New York against Karadzic. Asking and offering to pay a survivor community to stop calling these sexual atrocities genocide is an act of revisionism. Nuremberg morally judged revisionism and collaborationism. How can we stop and prevent their newest manifestations?
INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE OF WOMEN OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA „BISER“
KARETA FEMINIST GROUP
