Topic: Lola's War: Rape without Punishment

Speaker Name: Dr Olivera Simic, Associate Professor at Griffith Law School, Griffith University, Australia

In this seminar, Dr. Simic will speak about her recently published book, Lola’s War: Rape without Punishment. The book offers a subtle understanding of the Bosnian war by listening to the voice of Lola, a rural Bosnian woman who in the first two months of war had become a widow, displaced, unemployed, homeless, disabled and a sole caretaker of her nine-month-old baby, four-year-old daughter and six-year-old son with whom she was forcibly taken from her family home to detention and rape camp. In span of only few weeks, her whole life was torn into pieces and turned into nightmare. In Lola’s War Dr Simić tells extraordinary story of one woman and her three decades long fight for justice. She explores the meanings of transitional justice by using in-depth narrative of a woman, wartime rape survivor who came out the other side of a trial empty handed and with no justice in sight. Her perpetrator is still at large, and she lives in continual fear that he will retaliate against her and her children for her role in his trial.

This event will take place in-person on Thursday 23 May 2024 at 12:30pm in the Board Room, School of Law, QUB (MST.09.022)