(2) Patriarchal, and conservative society such as Bosnia, imposed the fact that the father should be the leader of the household, and that his wife is behind him, i.e. the mother, they lead the family in an authoritative way which was void of any possibility of choice. As the mother/mother in law was a victim of such a system, she acted the same way towards her daughter in law on purpose or not, and with this she consciously or unconsciously encourages and justifies mistreatment from her son. Mothers of daughters in law threatened their daughters that they have to be hard working and obedient and that if "your husband starts to hate you, so will God!" They threatened that they won't be able to return to their house, since "you chose your own husband and now deal with the consequences!" or they would say a fairly familiar phrase at that time: "My daughter, suffer, I also suffered!".
Of course, there were different parents which didn't allow their daughters to be tortured by their husbands in the husbands home; there were families which were harmonious and such things were rare. Because of the disastrous position of women in this part of our country in central part of Bosnia, especially Sarajevo, Tuzla, Zenica, Banja Luka, people used to say "we wouldn't give our cat, let alone our daughter to get married in Cazinska krajina (Cazin boarder).
(3) Source of this aggressive behaviour should be sought in historical misfortunes and issues which were constantly present in this area, Dr. Husein Dzanic wrote about this in his work "Medicine and healing practices of Muslims in Mala Kladuša":
To go through all the things that the Bosnian's of Cazin have gone through and stay unschated is not a small matter. All things which were ours meant that it was owned by others for both kingdoms. Disease and hunger were an everyday occurrence for inhabitants of Cazin. The people remember, and Bašagić wrote down in 1900 :"On June 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 women were Bosnian Muslim women from BiH which were raped by Serbian forces> i.e. that rape must be considered as systematic and ordered action and important element of Serbian war strategy. Through medical centre for rape and sexual abuse under the name >Medica> in Zenica from 1993-1997 over 35 000 women passed. These numbers were mentioned to show the number and methodicalness of rape of Bosnian women and girls. All studies show that rape was not an aggressive manifestation of sexuality, but a sexual manifestation of aggression. In case of BiH it was the roughest form of aggression, which was only a substitute for genocide. In large wars in Europe it was known that victors would abuse the situation and would trample their victims, but there was never a systematically organized sexual terror. First time in history, rape of women, which was planned and organised during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was pronounced a war crime and a crime against humanity. ( http://www.accts.org.ba/sekcija%20z.html)
(5) It is interesting that this area, especially BiH, is historically prone to occupation and hegemony, starting from the Roman Empire, which occupied our Illyrian forefathers, all the way to the advent of the Slavs, Ottomans, Austro-Hungary and in the end Yugoslavia.
