“I was told I was a deethnic bastard” The story of Allen, a child born from rape to war

The day he learned of it, he left a deep wound that still follows him today.

All of this started after a fight between children.

“... when I was told that I was a deethnic bastard, that I was found near a container”, says Allen for the Balkan Radio Free Europe Service, is broadcasting Periscope.

I went to my father's house and told him what I had heard and what that boy had told me. So they showed me the complete truth, which I didn't understand for many years later”, remembers Allen.

His biological mother was raped in 1993 in Foca during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The seal is the place where some of the most serious sexual crimes occurred because of which the International Criminal Tribunal in the former Yugoslavia declared sexual slavery to humanity.

“Foca is a land of screams”, has said late for Radio Free Europe Traveler Oruli, representative of the War Victims Association “Foca 92-95”.

We would like never and nowhere in the world to be violated in such a small country by young, young and female girls by the age of 77”, it has been expressed.

But Allen's story begins and continues in Gorazde a town about 20 miles [30 km] away.

It was there that he was born and adopted by hospital maintenance manager Muharem Muqih, and his wife, Advi.

In the same hospital where he was born, Allen has also known his wife and continues to work today.

Recalling the day he learned the truth about his background, Allen says that he has never felt adopted from that moment.

Mom told me, however many people say that they are not my real parents, they love me”, says Allen, and adds that for him, Advi and Muharemi are his biological parents.

Biological Parents

Allen Mupi has spent his childhood with his parents and sisters in an environment filled with love and sincerity.

At the same time, however, there has also been the great challenge of accepting and coping with his origin as well as the desire not to remain silent about what has happened.

“The heat hurts more”, he says.

We were forced to remain silent, never known as equals. But I have again spoken, and I have been able to fight for myself. Now I'm the father of three boys, I'm in a happy marriage, I work as a health worker at the hospital emergency where I was born, where I was left, where I was adopted, and where my adoptive father, Muharem Muhipe”, says Allen.

Out of respect for his parents, he did not sink too much in the past, but he wanted to get to know biological parents anyway.

At the age of 21, he learned that his father lived in Foca, went to his door, but he denied everything.

“Although there is an analysis DNA that was made in 2006, where it was confirmed that he is my biological father, he still denies this”, says Allen.

He says he agreed with this and that, for years, he lived with the knowledge that his biological father raped his mother, but that he was acquitted of counts of war crimes because of lack of evidence.

He remains a war criminal for me and I have closed this chapter. I devoted myself to my family, my private life, but most of all I'm committed to helping those people who need help”, says Allen.

Mother, who lives outside Bosnia and Herzegovina, met him for the first time in 2016, after promoting film “The name of the invisible child” telling his life story.

He describes that meeting as a very stressful experience.

I'm on her face. Besides everything she's shown me, through tears and that anger, that trauma, you see, in her face, that she, simply, is a woman who has suffered long and long. One woman who laughs in one moment cries, one moment wants to hug me, and the other doesn't want to see me with her own”, says Allen.

Today is not in contact with the biological mother. She's married and has her family.

Allen says that since his meeting, the situation has begun to negatively affect him and his family, making him feel worried and nervous.

I expected the meeting to be more than a simple acquaintance, but it was not. Again, I got involved in a situation of hope, expecting something more”, he says.

However, he adds, his biological mother does not deserve to be tried for leaving him during the war.

He says she's been placed hundreds of times in her position and she doesn't know if she'd have the guts to adopt somebody else's child, leave her to her child who remembers the trauma”.

Sometimes I think it's better that he left me because I grew up in a family that offered me love and a warm house”, says Allen.

“I am Allen”

Two films were made for his life, while all that kept him alive was the truth about his birth, his struggle for life, and his quest for meaning has included them in the book “I am Allen”

Today, he shares his story so that other children, who share his destiny, know that they are not alone, are not invisible.

He says that he decided to write the book as a self - help guide but also as a kind of manual for psychologists.

To help psychologists, to know which direction we are moving, what we don't want to talk about, what we press, why we're afraid of being punished by the community... That's why I want every kid to know he's not alone, and I want every kid to know how to help himself, because no one can help us, except themselves,”, Allen says.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is no record of the number of children born from rape to war.

Thanks to Allen Muhici's efforts, Ayna Jusic and other children born from rape in war, Bosnia and Herzegovina today has a legal framework that recognises them as civilian victims of war in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Brcko District.

Unfortunately, we are not yet in Republika Srpska, because they still deny the existence of these children”, says Allen.

He adds that, according to data from their association “the forgotten War Children”, there are about 20,000 children born as a result of rape during the war.

Some of them live in Bosnia and Herzegovina and others in other countries, such as Montenegro, the US, Scandinavian countries, and even Serbia.

Some of the children do not know that they were born from this act of rape during the war and that their mothers have suffered sexual violence during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, says Allen.

According to him, “a voice can help a hundred people”, but “Being can't help anyone”

Five thousand women have been repeatedly raped by all three sides. That's terrible. It's terrible not to mention that and that this category of civilian war victims has long been forgotten. Especially children”, Allen says.

It is estimated that during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, between 20,000 and 50,000 women have experienced sexual violence. /Periscopi/