Calling the Ghosts

On April 29, 1992 the Serbian paramilitary violently seized power in the small, ethnically-mixed town of Prijedor, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Within weeks the horror began in earnest. Among those caught in the genocidal undertow of "ethnic cleansing" were Jadranka Cigelji and Nusreta Sivac, childhood friends, lawyers, mothers, "ordinary modern women." Calling the Ghosts is a profoundly disturbing, profoundly moving first person account of the systematic humiliation, torture, rape, and murder of Muslim and Croatian women and men witnessed or suffered by the two friends in the infamous Omarska detention camp. The circumstances are made all the more horrifying by the fact that many of their Serbian captors--including the camp's monstrous commandant, Zeljko Mejakic--were former acquaintances and neighbors. Somehow both women survived this unspeakable ordeal, summarily liberated with others in the camp after international attention began to focus on the atrocities being uncovered by journalists. After a long struggle to regain a semblance of physical and emotional strength, Jadranka and Nusreta take up the struggle to bear witness to the crimes they and other women experienced in the camps. The video follows their efforts to gather the testimonies of other survivors, and their participation in the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague (where, for the first time, rape was listed as a war crime). A somber, eloquently expressed, and beautifully shot video, Calling the Ghosts serves at once as a warning against the evil and hatred which continue to walk the earth, a cry for an end to violence against women, and a paean to the strength of the human spirit. A must for all library collections interested in international affairs, women's studies, and human rights issues. Editor's Choice. Aud: C, P. (G. Handman)