Cult of fertility among the Bosnian People

23rd 1790 general Walisch with numerous
troops, good machines and cannons besieged
Cetin from all sides, which was defended
by a 120 year old captain Ali Bey
Beširević with a thousand fellows. All
inhabitants of Cetinje, beside the old
captain and 124 of his fellows (which
escaped to Mala Kladuša) found a hero's
death in the battle for their hearth.
Cetin burned for four days, until all
things wooden burnt down." Daily attacks
on villages around Kladuša, plundering and
banditry left soot, dead and wounded to be
a burden for the living. Continuous
healing of the wounded helped people forge
a wealth of experience.
Johan Weickard Valvasor in 1689 writes:
"During the peace even our people go to
Turkey (i.e. Cazin krajina/boarder) taking
and plundering everything they can." Since
he's writing about his own people, he's
not saying that they're stealing, raping
and killing "everything" they find, and
behind such campaigns there are countless
martyrs buried alongside the road and a
lot of work for hospitals which helped the
wounded.
After 1790, when Mala Kladuša was
inhabited by victims from Drežnik,
Cetingrad, Sadikovac, Tatarvaroš and other
villages Kardun and Lika, one could hear
groans from brushwood huts from the
wounded and mutilated women and children,
elderly and young people alike. There a
refuge from the slaughter was found by
once numerous families Keikić, Mujić,
Galijašević, Murtić, Ćehić, Džanić,
Kajtazović, Hasić.
They left their houses on Kardun and Lika,
their brothers and sisters, fathers and
mothers who simply disappeared unless
suffocated in caves by straw. Lapašić,
though a servant of Austrain authorities,
said about the crimes against Muslims:
"But as the Christened Turks were tortured
by Christian inhabitants in Lika, they
killed most of them, they also tormented
the poor Vrangradce (people from Vrnograč),
not just the Christian and Orthodox people
from borderlands but also military
officers." They forced them to crush the
tombstones of their deceased and to build
roads with them so that all trace of
"Turks" will be lost.
Inhabitants of Mala Kladuša brought the
weak, wounded and the sick, as well as the
experience in healing. Healing knowledge
was transferred from one generation to the
next from the grandfathers mouth to the
grandchild and that's how today we still
know how to bandage a festering wound, how
to fix a broken hand or leg, how to make a
cure for fever.
(4) During the war in BiH from 1992-1995 a
mass torture was performed over the civil
society, women, children, elderly but also
male civilians. Around 80% of rapes took
place in concentration camps. The main
goal of systematic mass rape in Bosnia was
a war strategy to accelerate deportation
of non-Serb national groups from certain
areas, as a strategy accepted by Bosnian
Serbs and Serbian politicians. Rape of
Bosnian women should be looked at through
different goggles: since the attack on
Bosnian women was one form of aggression.
The most severe form of torture was sexual
abuse. There is clear evidence that rape
and other forms of sexual violence were
not results of armed conflicts or a form
of revenge of the brave armed forces, but
a well-planned and systematic policy in
the context of operation>ethnic
cleansing>. Rape was one form of
aggression. In December 1992 the Mission
for finding proof from the EU, found out
that 20 000 women were raped by the army
of the Bosnian Serbs. In their third
report the UN commission for human rights
10.02.1993 special correspondent on the
situation of human rights on the territory
of ex-Yugoslavia concluded with the help
of medical and psychiatric experts: >That
rape was used as a slow instrument of
ethnical cleansing, most of the raped
Raif Esmerović
12
Cult of fertility among the Bosnian People