Leading Croatian politician, feminist activist, and scholar Rada Boric spoke to a group of women’s organizations in Taipei on August 12, 2016, at an event organized by the Garden of Hope Foundation in partnership with the Women’s Rights Foundation.

The meeting was attended by around 50 people, representing NGOs including the Awakening Foundation, Modern Women’s Foundation, ECPAT-Taiwan, Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Legislative Yuan, and members of the public. Rada started by saying that the one thing that unites women around the world is violence. This was seen outright during the breakup of Yugoslavia. As the country was torn apart by war, women on all sides of the ethnic divide were raped and killed. The plight of women refugees inspired Rada to switch from working as a linguist who authored the first Finish-Croat dictionary to sheltering women who had been raped and displaced during the conflict. She said, “I’m not claiming women are more peaceful than men, but the peace movement in the 1990s and support for male consciousness objectors were started by women.” During the war, when telephone lines were cut between the warring sides, women sent faxes to each other through Italy and other third-party countries to tell each other that they were not enemies. This developed into the Mothers for Peace campaign. Mothers would go to Belgrave to demand that the Yugoslav army let their sons be discharged so the latter would not have to kill each other. Of course, it did not succeed.

But as a result of that initiative, Croatian women’s groups started working with refugees based on the principle that they would help women whatever their ethnic background – Croatian, Serbian, or Bosnian. In Zagreb, Rada and other women founded a center for female war victims, which accepted Bosnian Muslims. As a result, she was attacked in the newspaper for supporting an enemy. Rada said the center, which developed out of a 1988 shelter that had provided counseling services for women during the socialist era, was important because it was the first to help women regain control of their lives. 25 years on, in the national courts of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro, only a handful of men have been charged with rape. “This is why we as women are disappointed by how little has been done for women who suffered during the war, so we launched the Women’s Court,” she said. The court fights for justice that women have not gotten over the last 25 years and is the first court of its kind in Europe. It makes women the subjects, not objects, of justice. Rada established the court to hold those who committed crimes accountable, and the keyword was “responsibility,” rather than accusing every man of being a rapist. The court was organized in Sarajevo, as that is the place that symbolizes the worst of the suffering in Yugoslavia.

After listening to reports from Taiwanese women’s organizations, Rada said she saw many similarities between the situation in Taiwan and Croatia and commented that the success story of the Women’s Court could serve as an example for seeking retribution for comfort women and other issues of gender justice.