Milica
from Modrica

What happened? It happened in Odžak in 1992, what happened... The war happened... We were arrested in 1992. On the 8th of May. Children, women and all men, maybe up to 1,350, up to 1,300 citizens, something like that, as far as I know. Women, children and men.

The men were taken to the school in Odžak and to the factory in Strolit...stayed there, and they took us back to Novi Grad to our houses because they said they couldn’t feed us...that’s what they said. But they took us women and children back to our houses so they could do what they did.

They started mass rapes, mass shootings, mass beatings, all kinds of torture, all kinds of insults...where I was abused, raped, insulted...with my three minor children – seven years, five years, and nine months. My husband had already been murdered by that time.

Mainly us women and the children, maybe 300, they put us in houses so they knew where we were so they could come and get us more easily. And if anyone ran away or hid or disappeared, they said they would kill us. So we couldn’t move away from those houses, so we were at their disposal to get us out whenever they wanted...which they did.

We went to the military police and asked for help because the HVO military were taking us away to be abused. The HVO soldiers were always on the move, with their vehicles, on foot. They took us with them. Even the children, girls, old women of seventy years… Children were raped...ten years old...seventeen...fifteen.

Yes, they told us not to tell anyone who they were because we knew them, they were all our neighbours. We couldn’t even tell the police who raped us, who abused us, tortured us, insulted us. No one dared to say who they were.

In my group, four women were kidnapped, if I’m not mistaken. Usually they took four to five women. They took us by vehicle or van. After the rapes, they threw us out, they kicked us, they shot after us...we ran...we crawled...so we returned to our homes unconscious, naked, barefoot, beaten, bloodied. Yes...that’s what they wanted, and that’s what they did. They took all our documents and it was practically house arrest. No, as I said, there were ten

to fifteen women, children, mothers with children...and they came that night and they threw us out with guns and they took my sister from another house. And they took me and two other women. They picked and chose what was for them, and the rest they took back to the houses.

Once they took me, and on that one occasion five men raped me—later I fainted, and I didn’t know how many there were...because when they took us there was a whole battalion of military, a whole yard, because that was their checkpoint. Yes, they were my neighbours.

Why did they do that? They only did it because we were Serbs. I didn’t see a single reason they had for anything else. Normal... Their life is normal and we were humiliated and are a nobody and nothing, that’s how it is. They act as if nothing happened, and if they are sentenced tomorrow, the sentences are too lenient. Two years, three, four or five, those are not sentences, that’s not for our...whoever did it, these punishments are nothing.

Many women were afraid to tell their husbands. Many divorced and had problems when their husbands came out of the camp and were exchanged and so on. Fear...I am not afraid. I am not afraid. I can’t wait for the trial so I can face it. And to tell them everything they did to me. And I hope it will be a proper trial and that the perpetrators will be punished severely for the crime they committed against me and against everyone else.

Shouldn’t I talk?