Foča

Karaman’s house in Miljevina near Foča is named after its prewar owner Nusret Karaman. The house had two floors and two entrances. The ground floor consisted of a living room, bathroom and kitchen, while the upper floor had three rooms. The house was not quite finished and not furnished. Many apartments and houses where women were imprisoned were used as brothels, ‘managed’ and logistically organised by groups of soldiers, mostly members of paramilitary formations. This house was set up as a brothel in early August 1992 after Dragoljub Kunarac brought four women from the house on Osmana Áikica Street in Foča, house number 16, and handed them over to Pero Elez, commander of the Miljevina battalion. Its headquarters were in the hotel in Miljevina—very close to Karaman’s house. Mostly girls, but also women from the Partizan sports hall and from the elementary school in Kalinovik were imprisoned here. The girls and women held captive could be raped by any soldier allowed into the house.

The prisoners had no medical help. Fear, frustration, insomnia and hunger were an integral part of life in Karaman’s house. These women, too, had to do housework in addition to sexual exploitation—they cooked, cleaned and served Bosnian Serb soldiers.

The soldiers often told them that they would kill them when they were done with them because they knew too much.