The New York Times June 22, 1999<\/p>\n
Kosovo Victims Must Choose to Deny Rape or Be Hated<\/strong><\/p>\n By ELISABETH BUMILLER<\/p>\n ZRZE, Yugoslavia — The 22-year-old woman, married four months ago, Her husband, Behan Thaqi, thinks differently. “I am 100 percent certain Thaqi says his wife denies the rape because “she doesn’t dare tell that Kissing her, he said, “is like kissing a dead body.”<\/p>\n There are few more harsh illustrations of the difficulties in getting A horrific social stigma accompanies rape in Kosovo, bringing lifelong In interviews over the past two weeks, dozens of women and men in Kosovo So far, there is no solid evidence of systematic rapes by the Serbs, as Ms. Racaj, who is from the small southern town of Kline, said 10 men An hour later, Ms. Racaj said, the paramilitary forces slashed thewomen’s pants\u00a0around their thighs, then put the women on a large truck heading toward the\u00a0border with her and the women’s families.<\/p>\n “They were crying and saying, ‘Better dead than what they did to us,”‘ A 28-year-old teacher from the city of Mitrovica, who agreed to be Another woman, who asked that only her first name, Zyrafete, be used, Every night Serbian soldiers dragged three to four women out of each Other refugees told of Serbian soldiers who took away the most beautiful So far, there is no solid proof in Kosovo of the kind of systematic But just as in Bosnia, investigators expect that more evidence and “It’s too soon,” said Valentina Gjuraj, a 24-year-old journalist in the For now, State Department officials in Washington say they have But the report did not specify the number of women raped or Djakovica, once beautiful, is a city in the shadow of the Accursed One woman said she had heard that 12 women committed suicide after Yet at the Djakovica offices of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the rebels “We know there was a camp,” said Shkendije Hoda, 28, a slight woman Ms. Hoda based her assertion on information from women she knows, The Serbs, she said, left many raped women alive as psychological Over in Cabrat, the once-lovely neighborhood that is Djakovica’s oldest Domi said his daughter was shot in the leg while fleeing, and that he But that girl’s father, whose hands trembled in an interview, said the One of the most extensive accounts of sexual assault was given by Zyrafete, 23, the mother of a four-year-old boy, was herded with a When she told them she wanted to bring along her son, they said no, The police took her into another room, she said, demanded money, asked “When I finished all these things, one policeman said, ‘Take off your At this point, Zyrafete said, she fainted, and regained consciousness Despite the crucial missing details of her account, Zyrafete said she Officials at the maternity hospital in Kukes, Albania, the grimy Last week, across the border in Zrze, the 22-year-old woman who said To her husband of four months, everything is “black,” and the future “I have no will,” he said, “to have children.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The New York Times June 22, 1999 Kosovo Victims Must Choose to Deny Rape or Be Hated By ELISABETH BUMILLER ZRZE, Yugoslavia — The 22-year-old woman, married four months ago, said she was taken from this small southern village by Serbian forces, held for a day in the local police station, beaten, then threatened with … <\/p>\n
\nsaid she was taken from this small southern village by Serbian forces, held for
\na day in the local police station, beaten, then threatened with death. But
\nshe was not, she said, raped.<\/p>\n
\nthat they raped her,” said Thaqi, 34, a farmer imprisoned by the Serbs for
\nsupplying weapons to the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian guerrillas who
\nfought Serbian forces. “I know that when women get in their hands, there is
\nno chance to escape.”<\/p>\n
\nkind of story.” If she admitted it to him, he said, “I would ask for a
\ndivorce — even if I had 20 children.” As his wife listened, silent and
\nshamefaced, in a corner of their empty home, looted of all furniture and possessions\u00a0by the Serbs, Thaqi added: “I don’t hate her, but the story is before my eyes.\u00a0I feel very cold toward her.”<\/p>\n
\nKosovo Albanian women to talk about being raped by Serbian forces than these\u00a0words from Thaqi, a rough-spoken man with an eighth-grade education. Not all\u00a0Kosovo Albanian men share his attitudes, but the majority of male villagers\u00a0do.<\/p>\n
\nshame to a woman and her family. It is the biggest problem that human rights
\norganizations face as they begin to collect information on whether Serbian
\nforces used rape as a premeditated tactic. The act has been classified
\nas a war crime by the international war crimes tribunal for the former
\nYugoslavia in The Hague.<\/p>\n
\nand in refugee camps in Albania told stories suggesting that sexual assault
\nand intimidation, if not rape, were widespread, used by Serbian forces to
\nstrike at the heart of a Muslim society in which the virginity and fidelity of
\nwomen are central.<\/p>\n
\nwas reported in Bosnia, and not a single woman said in the interviews that
\nshe was sexually penetrated by a Serbian soldier. But one woman, Vase
\nRacaj, 35, said she saw women being raped. She said that on the afternoon of April\u00a027, Serbian paramilitary forces in black masks pulled 10 young women out of\u00a0a refugee convoy of trucks, cars and tractors that she was in. It had
\nbeen heading toward the town of Prizren and the Albanian border.<\/p>\n
\nthen raped the women in an open field about 30 feet from the road, in view
\nof the women’s families, who were held at gunpoint by Serbian soldiers.<\/p>\n
\nMs.Racaj said, as her own eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n
\nidentified only by her last name, Avdullahi, said she was threatened
\nwith rape on a bridge while a Serbian soldier held a gun to her
\nfather-in-law’s throat, but she eventually was allowed to go free.<\/p>\n
\nsaid that she was sexually assaulted at knifepoint in the village of
\nDragacin in southern Kosovo. Both Zyrafete, 23, and another woman from the same\u00a0village, Sherife Trolli, 48, said that about 300 women were held in three houses\u00a0for three days in the village, with about one-third of them in each house.<\/p>\n
\nhouse for an hour or two each, Zyrafete and Ms. Trolli said. The women were
\nreturned to the house sobbing and refused to tell the other women what
\nhad happened to them.<\/p>\n
\nwomen from the groups driven from their homes, and five men from Mitrovica
\nsaid Serbs had written on a wall at a city high school, “We’re going to
\nrape your women, and they will give birth to Serbian children.”<\/p>\n
\nrape of tens of thousands of women that was reported in Bosnia, or of Bosnian
\n“rape camps” where women were held captive for days, repeatedly assaulted and\u00a0often killed afterward. Nor was there any mention of rape in the war crimes\u00a0tribunal’s indictment last month of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav
\npresident, for crimes against humanity, although the chief prosecutor
\nhas said she expects to expand the charges.<\/p>\n
\ntestimony from women will come to light over the next months, after one million\u00a0refugees settle back home and bury their dead.<\/p>\n
\nwestern city of Djakovica, where one of the worst massacres of the
\nSerbian terror campaign occurred. “I found five bodies yesterday,” she said.
\n“They were the bodies of my best friends.”<\/p>\n
\nreceived refugee reports that Serbs were using the Hotel Karagac in the town of
\nPec and an army camp near Djakovica as rape camps. Human Rights Watch has
\nreported the rape of two women in Dragacin. And the United Nations
\nPopulation Fund has released a report that Kosovo Albanian women “were
\nindividually raped by many men,” and “sometimes even for days.”<\/p>\n
\ninterviewed; nor did it give details of specific cases.<\/p>\n
\nMountains where last week shocked citizens asked reporters they met on the street\u00a0to come see the burned bodies in their backyards. Virtually everyone who\u00a0was questioned there reported hearing talk about the existence of a rape
\ncamp, either near the Serbian army barracks by a stadium or near additional
\nbarracks next to a church.<\/p>\n
\nbeing in the rape camp. But no one had any real information, either because they\u00a0had just come back from refugee camps, had been hiding for two months intheir homes or, perhaps, were afraid to speak.<\/p>\n
\nwho only days ago moved into the city’s cultural center to operate as an
\nunofficial local government, there was no uncertainty at all.<\/p>\n
\nwith a revolver in her back pocket who described herself as the commander for\u00a0information and who said she had just come out from hiding in the hills
\ntwo days before.<\/p>\n
\ndescribing them as witnesses to the camps, and she said that the rebels would soon\u00a0be collecting their own information on rape. For now, Ms. Hoda said the
\nwomen’s stories are “secret.” She added that rape was a strategy of war by the
\nSerbs “to destroy the spirit of the brave soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation
\nArmy.”<\/p>\n
\ntorture. Women “are not as afraid of death as they are of rape,” Ms. Hoda said.
\n“This is the weakest side of women.”<\/p>\n
\n— where house after big house was burned to ashes and rubble — Afrim
\nDomi spoke in a neighbor’s still-standing home about his daughter, Yllka,
\n17. He said she shouted, “Better to kill me than to rape me,” while running
\nout of the family house and into the woods after Serbian soldiers surrounded
\nthe family on May 17.<\/p>\n
\nhas not been able to find her. She ran, he said, because Serbian soldiers
\nhad tried to rape her days earlier, though she escaped at that time, after
\nshe witnessed the rape of another Djakovica teen-ager in front of the
\ngirl’s family.<\/p>\n
\nSerbs had not touched his daughter, who was at that moment safe with him at
\nhome. As he spoke on the family porch, his brother, the girl’s uncle, came
\nout to loudly interrupt that there were no rapes in Djakovica, but, “If rape
\nwas going on here, they only raped women from other towns.”<\/p>\n
\nZyrafete, the woman who was held with the 300 others in the village of Dragacin.<\/p>\n
\nlarge group of women and children into a central area of the village on April
\n20. After she wound up with 100 other women held captive for three days in
\na house, Serbian police pulled her out of the group one morning, she
\nsaid, and ordered her to make them coffee.<\/p>\n
\nthen pushed the 4-year-old into the basement with some other women. Her son\u00a0became hysterical, Zyrafete said, and cried out to his mother, “Do they
\nwant to kill you?” Zyrafete told him not to worry, that she would be back.<\/p>\n
\nif her husband was a member of the rebels — she said no — then ordered
\nher at gunpoint to wash dishes, make coffee and clean their rooms.<\/p>\n
\nclothes,”‘ Zyrafete said. “I said, ‘Better that you should kill me.”‘
\nShe said the policeman kicked her, slapped her in the face, then ordered
\nothers to continue beating her. One policeman, she said, put a knife to her
\nthroat.”He said, ‘Take off your clothes or I will kill you,”‘ Zyrafete said.<\/p>\n
\nlater, lying on the floor in only her underwear. “I was crying,” she said. “I
\ndidn’t know what had happened to me.” She put her clothes back on, and
\na policeman returned her to the room with the women.<\/p>\n
\nis convinced that she was not raped. Two weeks after the assault — when
\nit isunclear how much physical evidence there might have been — Zyrafete
\nsaid she went to the gynecologist at her refugee camp in Kukes, Albania.
\n“The doctor said I hadn’t been raped,” Zyrafete said. Then she added: “I
\nthink alot of women have been raped. But women don’t want to talk about it.”<\/p>\n
\nmountain border town where 120,000 refugees made their temporary home during the\u00a0war, say that abortions tripled after the refugees began arriving in April,\u00a0going from around one a day to three. But the director of the hospital, Safet\u00a0Elezi, said no refugee woman had said she had been raped and that many\u00a0sought abortions because their husbands were missing and they were
\nliving in tents.<\/p>\n
\nshe was not raped, and whose husband said she was, had just arrived home from\u00a0Kukes. The neighbors had been asking her, she said, what happened when the\u00a0Serbian soldiers took her away. She told them she was beaten, not raped, but\u00a0said she is still ashamed that she was the one the soldiers singled out.<\/p>\n
\nwith his young wife is grim.<\/p>\n