"They cannot film what we have gone through," Bakira Hasecic of the Women Victims of War (WVW) association told AFP this week.
The disquiet started after press reports said the film was a love story between a Muslim woman and her Serb rapist during the country's 1992-95 war.
This prompted Hasecic's organisation, one of several representing war rape victims, to pressure the culture ministry of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat Federation to cancel Jolie's license to start shooting here in November.
The ministry acceded, annulled the permit in October, then reinstated the license after Jolie gave the ministry a copy of the script, which her entourage insists does not include any rape-love story.
But the debate continues.
"We will not allow Angelina to present us in a way to create a balance between the victim and its executioner," Hasecic warned. "We will not allow our suffering to be filmed as a non-truth."
Her insistence and the authorities' reaction -- demanding to see Jolie's script -- in turn chafed local filmmakers, who strongly denounced what they said were government attempts to censor what a movie could show.
Jolie has offered to meet with representatives of victims to clarify matters, asking people to judge the movie only once they have seen it.
In the meantime, Hasecic herself has come under fire by others who accuse her of monopolising the role of spokesperson for rape victims.
"One association and one woman cannot speak in the name of all women," said Enisa Salcinovic of the Association of Concentration Camp Torture Survivors (ACCTS) of the Sarajevo area.
"The minister should have called on us as well. Our members are women camp survivors and since it was said the story was happening in a camp, it would be necessary to talk with women from camps, if anybody," she insisted.
Jolie is now expected to meet victims' associations leaders before filming starts in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo and the central Zenica region.
"Angelina will come and we will work this out," Hasecic said, saying only that "talks are underway" and conceding that her initial opposition was based on a brief description of the movie.
A copy of the film synopsis, called "Untitled love story", obtained by AFP contains no mention of the reported rape story.
The summary says only the love story starts in 1992 in eastern Bosnia when a young couple is separated at the beginning of the war. They meet again under new circumstances when the Muslim girl is a camp prisoner and her former boyfriend a warden at the facility.
"Their relationship gets a completely new dimension. Daniel... tries to find the best solution that would be acceptable for all. The question is if such a solution exists at all...," the synopsis reads.
The two sides remain polarised, with Hasecic insisting it "says enough" and "hurts the victims, offending their dignity."
Salcinovic, meanwhile, insists that "victims cannot be hurt by a story they know nothing about."
Local media sees the controversy as a fight for both political influence in Bosnia's multi-ethnic state and the "monopolisation of victims' status".
The influential Bosnian weekly Dani (Days) accused Hasecic of trying to "barter with victims emotions" for influence, saying victims' associations across the country are often controlled by politicians.
"Therefore victims ... are classical hostages of the political elite and manipulated by politicians," Dani wrote.
It has been estimated that thousands of women, mostly Muslims, were raped during Bosnia's vicious war that was sparked by the break-up of the communist federation of Yugoslavia.
The Bosnian atrocities, in part, prompted a groundbreaking UN Security Council resolution adopted 10 years ago Sunday, the first to address the impact of war on women. Resolution 1325 calls on all parties to take special measures to protect women and girls from sexual violence and rape in conflict situations.
A number of Bosnian Serbs have been convicted either by the UN War Crimes Court for the former Yugoslavia or by local courts on crimes against humanity and war crimes for rape and forced prostitution of Bosnian Muslim women.
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