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tv   Doc Film  Deutsche Welle  October 27, 2019 2:30am-3:01am CET

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culture between here and there challenging for everything. traditionalists i think it was worth it for me to come to germany. in the thick of our losses to workers as from an instructor for an hour or 2 children $100.00 of us was one of the toughest. what's your story take part sheriff on info migrants caught. in. the war in bosnia ended almost 24 years ago but for some the conflict lives on is a better part of everyday life. but we're not children of love we're children of hate it took me a long time to accept that the war is the only reason i'm alive days. children born
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of wartime rape a taboo topic in bosnia these children are now adults fighting against discrimination. because it's important to keep the pressure on those in power so they finally change the laws over to amy says. but there are several i keep it there's going to and i was there but i was 15 and in high school when i found a box with all the notes from the psychologists and therapists my mother went to see that they documented every detail of the rape what happened to her injuries and i was alone at home and read it all of us and suddenly i didn't know who i was anymore my whole life just fell apart. and this couple.
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when we meet on a usage she's 25 and studying psychology in sarajevo her mother never wanted her to know that she was conceived by rape. ever since her discovery has felt like a living legacy of the war. in. between 1900 to 1905 so every year it was ravaged by an ethnic conflict between bosnian muslims serbs and croats . the war was characterized by ethnic cleansing mass murder and systematic militarized great. no one knows how many women were sexually assaulted. estimates range between 205-0000. up to 4000 children were born to the victims in bosnia they're called the invisible children. for many the war is history but not for i know as a child of rape she's endured stigmatization and discrimination official bosnian documents require a father's name as files the field is empty. it
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told. lies and now after more than 20 years when ever i go to the authorities i still have to tell some guy behind the counter that my mother was raped i don't know who my biological father is can i still apply for student aid. and do. i know he has teamed up with others in the same situation their association forgotten children of war is fighting for an end to discrimination and for equal rights they also want the government to recognize bosnia's invisible children as war victims a status that grants certain types of assistance that demand has drawn abusive comments on their facebook page. close to. my it could be close to. one rehearsal wrote us on our mothers or prostitutes it wasn't our fault. but
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they'd sold their bodies for a little food. comments like that to be shocked me really. should be. many invisible children have never overcome their feelings of shame. feelings i know as mother knows well she lives 200 kilometers from sarajevo . and i went through so much with me we were all alone. the hardest thing was when someone at work would ask me who and his father was when . we were like a leaf in the wind tossed every which way by the things happening around us. until she was 7 i know lived with her mothers of you know in a woman safe house run by an aid organization sabina had a waitressing job in a cafe. that was where she met her
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husband but the mason took her and i know and they moved to his home village. but after the war hatred and distrust ran deep in bosnian society. the dog. really wasn't easy here in the village and years and just unthinkable the single man would marry a woman with a child. never once asked why doesn't he find himself another woman one without a child. it was or was it over 2 months when no one apart from news read knew the story of your birth. and wanted to keep it a secret forever. when it became known that sabina had been raped by an enemy soldier and conceived i know the family faced open hostility. to.
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us. the hardest part was explaining she would all those abusive terms meant. she wanted to know the definition of bastard in all those words. i know a step father knows would serve as a soldier in the war he longed for a happy family life but the usages were ostracized in the village and i now faced repeated verbal harassment. rules for move the room i had so many problems with the people here they didn't know what to make of our situation it took a long time and there was such an unending amount of arguments before they finally accepted our family and i now i finally had someone i could take care of she gave my life meaning. a broader up center discourse i mean more smoothly for yourselves only schoolboys today.
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i know as mother had already endured a horrific ordeal after being raped by a croatian soldier she went into denial. by the time she realized she was pregnant it was too late for an abortion. money so you promised so someone we had a talk on i don't want to keep or i didn't even see or as a human being that some of the city is going to match i just waited to get the birth over with to be finally rid of this thing inside me because somebody all day long after she was born i didn't pick her up for 3 months didn't change a single diaper. sometimes i still wonder if it would have been better to give her up for adoption i love me and then she wouldn't have to deal with all of this today . maybe she'd just be working somewhere as a hairdresser and her life would be simpler no it's not true. on what isn't a minute. far as i'm concerned life what i know would be meaningless.
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anyway and it was not what created a happy home for the victims of rape it can be challenging to lead a normal family life in. the small town of good roster is located 200 kilometers from new straits village. it's home to a hospital nurse in move which and his adoptive father moved him in the war alan's mother was raped by numerous serbian soldiers when she came to this hospital to give birth it was under seige moved him was the custodian here. with no true born to go to spend and no here she gave birth to him. the next day she just disappeared she left him here. who flew to the hospital was
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full of war casualties at the time and it was. there were hardly any normal patients rebirth certainly could refer. to him and other hospital employees cared for the infant. going to sit seriously with. the slave and they going to him to. give orders to warn them fellas yeah but he tried to say i did not have. to leave much as a kite and how it's good and says i'm. allan takes us home to his apartment but he doesn't want to meet his wife and child. so it was that on my birthday that was the best day. plus i 5 know for the period. such. happy celebrations were only possible because more him often took the orphaned island home with him.
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one day i came home and had to tell my family that we would soon have to show you by the arm and the just the hospital put him up for adoption. and the phone there was a rule the kid started crying and that's how it happened we couldn't part with him so we adopted him ourselves. alan's adoptive family brought him up like their own son but that didn't protect him from being singled out for verbal abuse for many he remained the son of an enemy. it's very upsetting to be called serb bastard or told you were found in a garbage bin being excluded like that was really awful for me condemn the victims
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not the perpetrators and they still do to this day. to the. trauma exclusion stigma discrimination. this is what the war bequeath to the invisible children. pollin and i know that in 2017 through a study on post-war trauma together they set up their organization forgotten children of war they've already managed to kindle unprecedented public debate in bosnia about the subject of wartime rape. because it was the business community. but. our 1st big step is getting an appraisal of the legal situation. gotten ourselves a lawyer. she's examining bosnian laws and international conventions. the children's rights convention or the
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human rights convention of. just. one lasting problem which children of the war face is that we've lost a fundamental human right the right to respect for private and family life. as they push for legislative reform they hope to raise awareness of their situation with. the others actually it's worthwhile going public and talking openly about this after all the years we suffered in endure a humiliation what we know where we come from. who has worked for so long. in bosnia herzegovina today people like alan and i know are not considered war victims. i know is working to change that with the help of lawyer of go down and check mine it's a formality with wide reaching consequences the children of veterans and war invalids are entitled to housing benefits and educational grants. the children of rape victims get no such support.
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the nicholas new ball to when the children of rape victims by or inherit property for example they have to pay the full tax write that more victims on the other hand get a 50 percent tax rebate. but each. is trying to clarify whether bosnian law is in breach of international conventions and human rights. she's optimistic and explains why. as let's quit eating let me eat. i'm only see them have gone through the international conventions to see if bosnian law is in violation and then i came across this section that states there is an ombudsman for cases like ours so i looked it up in the ministry. but it turns out they don't have an ombudsman much they just never installed the position but i do know that. they're quite the ones that the un could address that. yes that would be
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good because of our own legal assessment otherwise they won't find out about it not to talk of course there's international conventions carry weight in bosnia a country that depends on financial aid. lawyers use them as a basis to press for reforms. to plan on the ease of the last to me our legal assessment is probably the 1st ever on wartime rape no it's definitely the 1st ever consequence of the laws simply have to be altered to reflect what happened with them and to comply with international norms not a. means to a problem. bosnia's laws were hardly adopted from the federation of yugoslavia to which it belonged. bosnia-herzegovina was established by the 1995 digna courts which ended the war and set up a power sharing government designed to represent the country's 3 major ethnic groups . it was considered a temporary solution but to this day the presidency rotates between a serb
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a muslim and the croats. and its frozen ethnic divisions and place. i know wants to do her part to overcome these divisions she's enrolled in a youth academy financed by the german government it's open to bosnia muslim serbs and croats students. during the 12 month course to young people learn about political processes and civic engagement and human rights and they graduate with a diploma that makes them eligible to apply for jobs with the government or human rights groups. initially i know didn't share her personal history with her fellow students but then didn't read her story going to be a reporter now she too was engaged with the invisible children's fight for equality . was out of the mothers of. there's a value added in the victims get
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a small benefit in the croat and muslim regions of bosnia it's about $300.00 euro but in the serb part it's much less that's absurd as a major crime is the same no matter where it happened you can't. differentiate between banja luka and sarajevo you know it was that i would assume you are sure that i know now yet another one is the plane i was very reserved she would never open up and tell you all about herself the most the some people think she's aloof even a little arrogant. but what's impressed me about her particularly after i heard her personal story is that she never makes distinctions in university to those. for her all victims are equal. they are all equally traumatised. by that officials will question you and force you to tell them the whole story yeah it's attached not only just the scope of what place you know it's normal for you and you're used to it but it's dreadful question why do you have to divulge the
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details of your mothers or deal to a total stranger every single time why. dashed. in here at the academy i know it isn't just learning how to fight discrimination and human rights violations of course has also helped her overcoming his ideas over meeting new people and opening up to them and you know. when she started attending the foreground there was really a pleasure to see home eyes she's ready to work on herself and she made it great progress especially on a personal development in terms of your relation to the group. now i now find she can speak openly about parts of her past but there are other parts she still guards a secret. in mitrovica 3 years i know the name of the guy who raped my mother i've done research and he has another daughter and a son. joining sides and then he might just see him as an only child i know i
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always longed for siblings. that somehow your chip prospected i just passed my brother one my sister did i look at them when they get about a dozen. 5 now and i ask myself if i've ever unknowingly crossed paths with my siblings chicago for them to simply assert that i got sent over the years my desire to meet them is grown i soon realized that's not possible i simply can't do that to my own mother and i thought that his would be devastating for her to. let me take on the sort of my doc the next biggest lie to. find out has decided not to look for her siblings who live somewhere in sarajevo. she has to find other ways to put the past behind her. the bottle is almost as a woman as i tell myself there's nothing shameful about it women though society has
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taught me that i have to feel shame but i know i have nothing to be ashamed of. that's why i've turned my life around and focused on my past it's given my life real meaning. i know meets up with lawyers killed on object one in downtown syria but. they're joined by ali who set up the association with. it has 13 members but most have stayed away because they don't want to be filmed by our cameras. the group is fighting for the same status as children of war veterans and invalids. and for the right to withhold the name of their biological father on official paperwork no questions asked for oil that's good news. i've looked at the laws in all parts of the country and everywhere public offices only require you to name one parent it doesn't matter if it's the father or mother
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. or junior tree arkell civil servants always ask for the father's name but there is no legal basis for that request also what about the house. we need to make this public as soon as past. because then you can decide which name you provide you can take care of all your paperwork without mentioning your personal story copied optional much to novice to me in the what. doesn't appear in my case i can provide the name of my adoptive father also both of my mother's parents did the same inheritance rights as my sisters. over the years of the program i mean i'm assuming that the over there in the recent well that's great if we can choose which parent today that we're adults we can decide for ourselves which name to provide the authorities with. the do more or less don't think the group agrees to hold a news conference to publicize the mistake authorities are making. it's already discovered that together they can make a difference. because. it's
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graduation day for i know and her fellow course members are mothers of beano and stepfather closer to have come for the occasion. minus studied here at the academy for a year and by the end of it was able to speak openly with their classmates about her past. as this is my mother as i said. i think. i am i think. that i missed that. let the. sun the sun more clearly go this way my i look at my mother and just see how strong she is i'm proud that she's my mother it doesn't matter to me that i was born from
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hatred she'd enough for me and wants me to be happy sheena much nelson newman intimate people tell you the men on the. tither has also completed her psychology degree she's now attending the 1st international congress of child and adolescent psychotherapy in bosnia. it was organized by her friend and mentor the trauma specialist dale she conducted the 1st scientific studies on post-war trauma in bosnia and introduced i know to alan. johnston so. this. is a commoner warns that the taboo against speaking about sexual wartime violence serves to pass the trauma like poison from one generation to the next the only
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remedy she says spoken discussion. all that gets children born of war have very painful unpleasant experiences as they grow up these often lead to trauma related disease and psychiatric disorders. for example post-traumatic stress disorders depression or some to form disorders and. in addition there are complex long term consequences such as a lack of family support which can have a social and economic impact. as a researcher our wants to put a human face on her findings she's hoping for i know how but it's a challenge. a big problem here. and a culture of rape that is. still present in tradition bound boston culture.
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so society often think of the issue afraid as mathare off and. but not as a matter of. violation of human rights has been mentoring i know over the past 2 years. her support is. for me now is the most important because. she she knows everything. and. i don't know what to do i just call on what i am and she she she she has never a time and it's to the most beautiful. moment of the nation ship so my other mother. during the conference suddenly makes a decision she feels ready to face the audience and speak for the 1st time in
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public about her past. the drop of the of my daughter and i'd like to introduce i have a usage she has a bachelor's in psychology and just graduated top of her class from the academy run by the german youth organization shuler health in leven and i hope she'll soon do her masters in psychology. thank. god peterson so that was a nascar so much and whether it was just us or whether there were others like us whether there were people who could sincerely say i understand you and what you went through wasn't easy and that's the it's not i stand before you as the living proof that the damages inflicted by war cannot be assigned to a nationality or ethnic rules and. has nothing to do
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whatsoever with nationality not when there is a traumatic experience and that's how we should treat it like you. i know will fight on not just for herself but for all those who have suffered like her so that bosnians invisible children can step out of the shadows and live a life without discrimination in dignity.
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