A personally and politically authoritative inquiry into modern war
crimes. Allen (Comparative Literature/Syracuse Univ.) describes and
analyzes three kinds of genocidal rape practiced by the Serb forces
in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. First, soldiers brutally rape
women in public, returning several days later to guarantee safe
passsage for the terrified villagers only if they promise never to
return. Second, persons held in concentration camps are repeatedly
raped and often killed. Finally, soldiers repeatedly rape women
until they become pregnant. The acts of rape continue until late
enough in the pregnancy to preclude a safe abortion. The women are
then released, eventually to give birth to a Serb child. Using
accounts of camp survivors and those who work to help them, Allen
chooses to bypass "proper scholarly standards of source
documentation" in order to ensure the safety of her informants and
future survivors of genocidal rape. Allen concentrates on genocidal
rape as it takes form in impregnating women, since this particular
form of genocide is unprecedented. Further, according to Allen, it
is a logically flawed system of genocide, "possible only because
the policy's authors erase all identity characteristics of the
mother other than that as a sexual container." Allen attempts to
locate genocidal rape in the legal text of international war
crimes, but concludes that current conceptions are not sufficient
to guarantee justice against such acts. Alternatively, she suggests
such violence should be prosecuted as biological warfare, because
the crime requires the perpetrator to be biologically male and the
victim a biological female capable of conceiving a child.
Throughout, Allen reminds the reader that her primary goal with
providing evidence of genocidal rape is to stop the violence, and
she calls everyone to action to end the aggression. Allen provides
a general and informative map to decoding ethnic relations and a
specific and essential outline of genocidal rape. (Kirkus Reviews)
In 1992, Beverly Allen learned of the existence of rape/death camps
in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia from a former student, a women of
Croatian heritage. In these camps, women have been detained and
raped repeatedly by Serbian soldiers, whose goal often is to
impregnate their victims or to torture them before they are killed.
In this highly personal account, Beverly Allen provides a
compelling testimony and analysis of the horrifying phenomenon of
"a military policy of rape for the purpose of genocide". In Rape
Warfare, Allen examines the complexity of identity in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia through the accounts of rape/death
camp survivors and those who work to help them. She then presents
and analyzes the information she has gathered about genocidal rape,
all the while asking, "How can I, an empathizing outsider,
communicate what is happening without reinforcing the damage that
has already been done?" In a nuanced discussion of the ethics of
representing such atrocities, she decides to "forgo storytelling
except when the stories I tell are my own". Allen concludes with an
impassioned argument for bringing to trial the perpetrators of
genocidal rape. By turns personal, polemical, and informative, Rape
Warfare is a lucid guide for anyone seeking to make sense of what
is happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.
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