By Gigi Manukyan
The “rape hotel” now turned healing spa in Visegrad, Republika Srpska, personifies Bosnia’s animosity towards its female survivors: better left dead than burden society with the echoes of a long-forgotten war.
Photo by Aleksandar Bogicevic, CC BY-SA 3.0, on Wikimedia Commons
Despite the massive strides towards gender equality by feminist movements worldwide, gender-based violence (GBV) —specifically, sexual violence against women—is still a global issue. One out of every three women is expected to experience gender-based violence at least once in their lifetime. In times of conflict, those odds only increase (The Facts, 2014). Nowhere was this more evident than during the Bosnian War, where “rape camps” and sexual slavery marked the war’s silent and enduring legacy.
An estimated 20,000-50,000 women and girls experienced some form of sexual violence throughout (Radovic, 2021). Not only that. In the years after, victims were subject to scrutiny and condemnation by their families and the Bosnian society as a whole. The infamous “rape hotel” now turned healing spa in Visegrad, Republika Srpska, personifies Bosnia’s animosity towards its female survivors.
Walking through Vilina Vas, you can feel the haunting screams of its wartime tenants piercing through the walls where at least 200 Bosniak girls as young as 13 years old were held captive and sexually assaulted by Serbian paramilitary group, the White Eagles (Memisevic, 2020a). Regardless of its rebrand, nothing of the original layout has changed—not even the bed frames that still terrorize the memories of its survivors. This is an incongruous feature of a place claiming to be a therapeutic haven with life-changing healing waters. There is nothing heavenly about swimming in a pool where Bosniak men and boys were tortured and shot dead, nor sleeping in rooms where Bosniak girls flung themselves from the windows to avoid torturous nights of rampant rape. However, neither of these gruesome events stop the influx of tourists from visiting. When I attempted to book a stay, I found that the hotel was booked for the next three months.
In 2020, the Bosnian Tourist Board and the municipality of Visegrad started a promotional campaign that included the Vilina Vlas Hotel’s participation (Memisevic, 2020b). Denying the crimes carried out by Bosnian Serbs perfectly captures the public response to wartime sexual violence survivors: better left dead than burden society with the echoes of a long-forgotten war.
After thirty long years, the survivors of Vilina Vlas are still fighting for justice. When the leader of the White Eagles, Milan Lukic, was sentenced by the International Criminal Court for his role in crimes against humanity committed in Bosnia, the charges failed to include “sexual violence” as a crime (Memisevic, 2020a). In fact, many of the perpetrators of sexual violence never stood trial and continue to walk the streets, while the victims remain crippled by trauma. According to a United Nations’ study on sexual violence throughout the Bosnian War, “62% of survivors were unemployed, 64% had no social support, and more than a half of them lived under the poverty line” (“UN Committee”, 2020). Furthermore, “less than 1 percent of the total estimated number of victims of sexual violence war crimes have seen their cases brought to court since war crime trials began in Bosnia in 2004” (Crosby, 2017).
The injustice with survivors of sexual violence is not uniquely a Bosnian problem, but one that recurs throughout history. During the Armenian Genocide, Armenian girls were brutally raped, forcefully converted to Islam, and kept as wives by Turkish men. During the Nanjing Massacre, or alternately known as the Rape of Nanjing, the Japanese Imperial Army savagely tortured Chinese girls, including shoving inanimate objects into their vaginas (“HyperWar”, 1948). However, in each of these cases, the perpetrators adamantly denied any wrongdoing, thus the victims never received any justice.
Stereotypes against women perpetuate many of these crimes, as well as the general attitude towards victims represented by the “healing spa” in Visegrad. Most of these perpetrators have rigid perceptions of gender roles that view women as subordinate to men, resulting in their objectification and commoditization during times of war. Time and again we observe how sexual violence against women receive impunity, and such crimes continue to transpire. Only when women and men become absolute equals within both the legal framework and societal norms, will rape hotels rebranded as medical spas cease to exist.
Works Cited:
Crosby, Alan. “Amnesty Chides Bosnia For Denying Justice To Victims Of Sexual Violence.” RadioFreeEurope, RadioLiberty, 12 Sept. 2017,
www.rferl.org/a/amnesty-international-childes-bosnia-denying-justice-victims-sexual-violence-w ar-crimes/28730317.html.
HyperWar: International Military Tribunal for the Far East [Chapter 8],
www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/IMTFE/IMTFE-8.html.
Memisevic, Ehlimana. “Promoting a Bosnian War ‘Rape Hotel’ Means Erasing History.” Balkan Insight, 25 Aug. 2020,
balkaninsight.com/2020/08/17/promoting-a-bosnian-war-rape-hotel-means-erasing-history/.
Memisevic, Ehlimana. “Serb Authorities Want Tourists to Stay in a Hotel That Was Once a Rape Camp.” TRT World, TRT World, 11 July 2020,
www.trtworld.com/opinion/serb-authorities-want-tourists-to-stay-in-a-hotel-that-was-once-a-rape -camp-38050.
“The Facts on International Gender-Based Violence.” Futures Without Violence, 26 Aug. 2014, www.futureswithoutviolence.org/the-facts-on-international-gender-based-violence/.
Radovic, Ivana. “Wartime Sexual Violence in Bosnia: The Human Trafficking Connection.” Balkan Insight, 4 Jan. 2021,
balkaninsight.com/2020/12/31/wartime-sexual-violence-in-bosnia-the-human-trafficking-connect ion/.
“UN Committee Calls on Bosnia and Herzegovina to Recognise Sexual Violence Survivors’ Rights after 25 Years of Impunity.” OHCHR, 2020,
www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?LangID=E&NewsID=26171.
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