Sarajevo - Vogošća

Kon-Tiki Pension has been advertised by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Tourist Board as accommodation for tourists.

During the war, Kon-Tiki Pension was officially used by units of Republika Srpska from 2 May 1992 to 8 July 1992. After taking control of Vogosca, a suburb of Sarajevo, Serbian forces took almost the entire Muslim civilian population to a Yugoslav People’s Army barracks in Semizovac. From here the inmates were taken to various camps. One of them was Kon-Tiki Pension, also known as Sonja’s Restaurant. It is located twenty to twenty-five metres from an old WWII bunker. The detention conditions were totally inadequate. The house was overcrowded, the prisoners were not given enough to eat and drink, and there were not enough places to sleep. According to detainees, the ‘soulless elite’ came to this place in expensive cars: Dragan Vukanovic, Sinisa N, Miro Vujovic and others were given access to the Kon-Tiki ‘women’s prison’ as a kind of reward, as well as a litre of brandy and half a kilo of coffee.

A particularly perfidious rape was committed by a group of twenty Serbs in the Kon-Tiki boarding house. Two girls, aged seven and thirteen, were raped in the presence of their mother. The girls died from the rape. Fifty women and children were held in the Kon-Tiki boarding house.

One of the detainees was present when two other Muslim girls were raped and killed by Serbian officers in front of a group of Muslim women. Two other Kon-Tiki inmates told Newsday (Newsday is a newspaper published in the United States) that they were raped ‘in a public house’ by UN officials and a Serb soldier. The Kon-Tiki was also visited by UN peacekeepers. The ‘party guests’ partied loudly and stayed late into the night. Among the visitors was Richard Gray, a senior New Zealand military observer who not only visited the Kon-Tiki but also the Park Hotel in Vogosca, where women were also raped.