[ALBSA-Info] Special Report on Kosova Horror: Rape victims' babies pay the price of war

[Eriola Kruja]

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Sunday April 16, 2000 		The Observer

Rape victims' babies pay the price of war

Kosovo: special report

Up to 20,000 women were raped during the Kosovan carnage. Now the
victims are bearing children fathered by their Serb tormentors. In this
harrowing dispatch, Helen Smith reports on the awful fate awaiting the
offspring of conflict



He was a healthy little boy and Mirvetahad produced him. But birth, the 
fifth in
her short lifetime, had not brought joy,only dread. As he was pulled from 
her
loins, as the nurses at Kosovo'sBritish-administered university hospital
handed her the baby, as the young Albanian mother took the child, she
prepared to do the deed.

She cradled him to her chest, she looked into her boy's eyes, she stroked 
his face
and she snapped his neck. They say it was a fairly clean business. Mirveta 
had
used her bare hands. It is said that, in tears, she handed her baby back to 
the
nurses, holding his snapped, limp neck. In Pristina, in her psychiatric 
detention cell,
she has been weeping ever since.

'Who knows? She may have looked into the baby's face and seen the eyes of 
the
Serb who raped her.'

The words are uttered coolly, undramatically, by Sevdije Ahmeti almost
as a matter of course. Ahmeti, tirelesshuman rights activist, mother and 
member
of Kosovo's transitional government, does not want me or anyone to 
sensationalise
this poor woman's plight. 'She is a victim too. She is just 20 years old and 
cannot
read or write. She has been abandoned by her husband. Psychologically raped 
a
second time.'

She reels off Mirveta's details from a thick, yellow notepad. 'She is 
repenting, of
course, but the attitude that she is a cold-blooded murderer is wrong. Who
knows what this poor girl has been through? Who knows why she didn't
abort?

'There were marks, signs of bites and bruises over her body, her intimate 
parts.
We want to protect her; we will try to get her a new lawyer.'

This is what Ahmeti does: she speaks for the estimated 20,000 women now 
carrying
Kosovo's dark secret. The innumerable women who were raped, and impregnated,
abandoned by family and friends. The women outcasts violated, tortured and 
left
for dead; the 'touched' women, who have now heaped shame on the houses of 
their
husbands. The women who see the war every day, in their minds, in their 
bodies,
through their rape-babies.

It is Friday morning and there are snowflakes splattering the window panes
of the Centre for Protection of Women and Children which Ahmeti set up in 
1993.
Women trudge up the hill on which the centre stands, daintily side-stepping 
the
litter and carrion birds that defile so much of the province.

Sometimes, when they are feeling strong, they step inside. Sometimes, if 
Ahmeti is
lucky, a woman will even tell her story. Sofar, 76 women, mostly young and
beautiful, the daughters of eminent Kosovars and village elders (women
targeted by the Serbs) have been mustered enough courage to enter the 
centre.

For everyone who had come there, Ahmeti said you could count at least a 
hundred
more. They are just the tip of the iceberg; the very few who have managed to 
break
the 'metallic silence' that surrounds the issue of being 'touched'.

For rape is not a word that Kosovar women ever use. This is not Bosnia; 
there
is no cosmopolitan Sarajevo. There is only provincial Pristina. In the 
villages and
hamlets, where the Yugoslav police, military and Serb paramilitaries 
evidently
ran amok, rape has yet to enter their ancient lexicon.

'These are simple women, women who have been degraded, disgraced, and will
carry this trauma like a bullet for the rest of their lives,' Ahmeti 
murmurs,
chain-smoking. 'Raped women all over the world find it hard to speak, here 
they can
hardly do it at all.

'They rarely tell each other... we've had cases of suicide, the lunacy of 
women
losing all access to their children if it gets out.'

Mirveta, the pretty infanticidal mother, is no exception. She is typical of 
the
selection process pursued by the perpetrators, according to a Human
Rights Watch report released last month.

As they tried to ethnically cleanseKosovo, paramilitaries - often aided by
masked Serb neighbours - systematically searched villages for girls of 
prime,
child-bearing age.

It was about power and control, humiliation and revenge. And what better
way to damage the enemy's morale than to hit at his family? 'Our society is 
a
traditional one where Albanian men are brought up to see themselves as
breadwinners and protectors,' Ahmeti points out.

'Once you touch the woman, you touch the honour of the family and you 
provoke
the man to react. The Serbs knew this. Belgrade had, for years, put out
propaganda that the only thing Albanian women could do was produce like 
mice.
So daughters were gang-raped in front of their fathers, wives in front of 
their
husbands, nieces in front of their uncles, mothers in front of their 
children, just to
dehumanise, just to degrade.'

It is estimated by the World Health Organisation and the US-based Centre for
Disease Control that as many as 20,000 Kosovar women (4.4 per cent of the
population) were raped in the two years prior to Nato's forces entering the
benighted territory. Numbers to match Bosnia, if not more.

But unlike Bosnia, where international organisations were located throughout 
the
war, the province was on its own. If, as Human Rights Watch argues, 
politicians
did not exploit the fate of the women (which would have been a way of
drumming up support for the Nato bombing campaign), aid organisations
also played it down.

'I think there was a deliberate policy to keep it quiet. We knew, in such a
patriarchal society, where the perception of rape is so medieval, that it 
would
probably cause a lot of social distress,' said Gamilla Backman, an adviser 
on
violence prevention at the World Health Organisation. 'Making revelations 
just to
shake mentalities might have had the opposite effect and made life even more
difficult for victims brave enough to speak.

'The international community has got cynical about rape. Time has shown, 
with
the women of Bosnia, how very little talking can achieve.'

By the time the province was liberated, hundreds of women who had been
plucked from columns of refugees as they tried to flee the Serb onslaught 
were
discovered wandering the hills, often disoriented, drugged, half-naked and
half-crazed.

'There was always so much focus on the refugees who managed to get out and 
so
little on the people who stayed inside - the 700,000 of them who suffered 
the real
trauma,' said Ahmeti.

How many of these women then found themselves pregnant will remain a
mystery. How many gave birth is almost impossible to determine because of
taboo.

Local humanitarian groups, including the Red Cross, have estimated that 100
rape-babies were born in January alone. Innumerable others almost certainly 
came
into the world on bathroom floors and kitchen tables, behind the high-walled
homes of family clans who have vowed never to speak.

'Only God knows,' said Professor Skender Boshnjaku, Kosovo's leading
neuropsychiatrist, who specialises in women's illness, 'how many have been
born in secret. I know of children who are being brought up by their 
grandmothers,
women who want to protect their daughters. These babies will know a lot of
hate, they will not have a lot of love.'

The issue of babies 'born of violence' is not a subject Kosovars find easy 
to
address. Boshnjaku concentrates on his shoes when the conversation veers in 
the
direction of the rape-babies. Did he think I would be able to talk to some 
of the
victims?

No, he said flatly. Albanian women did not talk about themselves. They did 
not talk
about their feelings. They used language economically, usually to convey the
essentials of their primitive lives. They were 'the property of men, to be 
bought,
sold and betrothed before birth'. They are 'sacks to be filled,' he says, 
citing the
Kanun, the medieval war-and-peace code of behaviour still adhered to in 
these parts.

'Ours was a society built on generations of hate. There are older Albanians 
who
speak Serbian, but generally there was very little interaction between our 
people
and the Serbs. And now,' he said, waving his hands desperately, 'there are 
these
babies.'

Even Ahmeti, who hails from a family of open-minded, well-travelled 
intellectuals,
finds the phenomenon of Albanian-Serb progeny un-comfortable. Some women 
will
accept them, some will nurture them begrudgingly, some will reject them. 
But,
she said, they will not be dumped inorphanages and they will not be left in
baskets and boxes on the streets.

'They are innocent children, they are notto blame,' she said. 'People, here, 
will
take them into their homes and married women will be able to cover up. Our 
hope
is that they grow up without the guilt of their mothers.' The local 
authorities are
about to start a television campaign appealing for prospective parents. 'It
concerns me greatly that some are calling them "children of shame".'

But rape, I am told on my first night in Pristina, is worse than death. To 
be an
Albanian who gives birth to a child sired by a Serb is to be sentenced to a 
living
hell.

Pedric, who told me this, is young and worldly. 'If I were normal, I would 
keep the
kid, accept my wife. But in Kosovo, in our culture, death is better than 
rape. I could
not accept my wife. She would be dirty, evil, the castle of the enemy,' he 
booms.
'A lot of women have been very sensible. They have kept quiet about it, they 
have
given birth at home and, if they are even more sensible, they do what that 
woman
(Mirveta) did last month. They kill their scum-babies.'

Agron Krasniqi, a gynaecologist at Pristina's University Hospital, is also 
at
the table. 'All of us, we were conducting abortions around the clock,' he 
said. 'Only
a few weeks ago we had a woman whocame to the hospital and said she was
raped and could we help. She was six months pregnant. There are so many
women like that...Women who couldn't physically make the journeys to 
hospitals
and private clinics because they couldn't afford it or didn't dare tell 
their husbands.
In this instance, there was nothing we could do. It was a terrible business, 
as
terrible as the abandoned babies we've also got at the hospital.'

Abandoned babies?

'Yes, we've got eight new-born babies and a roomful in the paediatric ward. 
There are
boys as well. In our culture, boys are usually never abandoned. It is fair 
to say
most are the product of rape.' No one wants to talk about the abandoned
babies; no one wants to associate them with rape. But there they are, on the
second floor of the Pristina clinic in an airy room off a chamber lined with
incubators. Babies less than eight weeks old lie in little plastic cases, 
the others in
blue-and-white check-cloth cots.

The doctors have given them names which they have written in blue ink on 
plasters
they have stuck to their beds. 'They have nothing. The least we can do for 
their
dignity is give them names,' said Enser, the neo-natalist. 'We try to cradle 
them,
hug them whenever we can, because we now know how important the first six
months are in a baby's life. Before we didn't do it, and you could see the
difference.'

Did the mothers ever return to claim them? 'Never,' he said. 'And we don't
really have any idea who they are because they usually come alone, very
early, around 5am so no one will see them and then they give us false names.
An American woman, a midwife, came theother day. She wanted to adopt Teuta, 
our
oldest one, but the authorities don't want any to go abroad, they want them 
to stay
here.'

In the paediatric wing, there are 12 more abandoned children, all between 
six and
18 months. They are kept for most of the day in a small room, playing on 
plastic
tricycles, lying on mattresses, sitting on nurses' laps. Some are dark, some 
blond,
some obviously Slavic with give-away high cheekbones and broad faces.

When we open the door they come rushing out, tugging at the hems of our
skirts, jumping up and down, beseeching to be held. 'They are lovely 
children,' said
the nurse, apologising for her insistence that in the room, at least, we do 
not take
any pictures. 'There are other rape-babies, you know, in other hospitals. 
There are
some in Prizren and some in Pec.'Around Pec, Serb paramilitaries and the 
Yugoslav
army appear to have acted with wanton abandon, raping women in barracks,
public buildings and private homes. It is in Pec that the UN-sponsored 
International
Rescue Committee has established the Women's Wellness Centre, one of only
two international organisations in Kosovo specialising exclusively in 
violence
against women. The centre has taken a holistic approach in its attempt to 
attract
victims. And since opening six months ago it has run classes in English, 
sewing
and art.

But getting these same women to tell their stories is another matter. 'We 
have a
lot of cases of domestic violence, which is prevalent in this culture,' said 
Jeanne
Ward, an American psychotherapist who has worked on similar programmes in
New York. 'But so far absolutely no rape cases, although a great many women 
are
suffering from depression, isolation, nightmares, flashbacks, all the 
symptoms
of such trauma. Confidentiality is a big problem here and the social stigma 
is just
so great. Kosovar women are afraid that if they are perceived to have been 
raped
they will automatically be cut off from their families, children, everyone 
.'

'Let me tell you a story,' she said. 'I know of one woman who was raped and 
when it
got out she was immediately dropped by her fiancé. The dishonour, he said, 
was
just too much. Since she's been deflowered and is no longer seen as fit for
marriage, her family have made her a prisoner. She is now a servant to the
household.'

The centre's Albanian director, Lumnije Decani, interrupted. 'Jeanne is 
right,' she
said. 'It will take time, but I'm sure women will come. They want to, I 
know, they
need to talk, which is why we are going to install 24-hour hotlines. You 
should go to
Belegu.' 'And Lubeniq,' said the American.

It was in Lubeniq that about 70 men were shot dead in the village square, 
after
taking up arms to protect their women. They had heard about the mass rapes.
And they were scared. Belegu lies in the middle of a plain and Lubeniq 
stands on a
hill on the road that leads to it. They are both wretched places, polluted 
by violence
and death.

We stop at Lubeniq on the way to Belegu to find children playing around 
their
relatives' graves. 'My daddy is in there,' said Mentor Ukshinaj, pointing to 
the
mound of earth bearing a wooden stump and the name of Hajdar Ukshinaj. 'He 
died
protecting my mummy. He died in front of me.'

When we go to Belegu, the members of the first house, a fine stone building
erected around a triangular courtyard, rush out to greet us. Beqir Zukaj, a 
proud
man in a white felt cap who is the head of the extended family, did not 
mince his
gestures. Outside his stone, high-walled house, he made thrusting movements 
and
performed the charade of ripping off his wife's clothes. 'It didn't happen 
here,' he
said. 'It happened in the big barn in the other end of the village.'

Sevdije Hoxha was there and she remembered everything. Hundreds of
people had converged on Belegu from other villages on the plain and when the
Serbs began to encircle them they hid in the barn.

We went to the barn and she showed us its big lime-coloured doors. 'They 
came,
they separated the women from the men, they took all our documents and then 
they
took away the young ones. They took them to the brick building here,' she 
said,
pointing to the half-constructed red-brick villa next door. 'We had 
plastered some of
the pretty ones with animal manure, to make them smell and look less nice, 
but
they took them anyway. You could hear them scream, beg, shout. Many have
never come back to their villages. They got on tractors, they went to 
Albania and
from there, I think, they went abroad.'

The ones who returned to Belegu are broken. 'Broken lives, broken hearts,' 
said
Imer Zukaj, who spent years working in Switzerland. 'There is one young girl 
here.
She is 17 years old. She was raped by six Serbs, who pinned her down, cut 
her
breasts. Whenever I, or any man, greets her, which is when we go to her 
home,
she jumps in the air and screams. She is not well. She is on medication. She
doesn't speak. Nobody, you know, will marry her, her life is finished.'

When I asked Ahmeti if I could meet some of the victims, she glared. Hers is
the only organisation that has managed to reach out to women trapped in 
villages
like Belegu; she is furious that more has not been done for them.

After last month's infanticide, WHO initiated a programme to sensitise 
doctors
and nurses dealing with women about to give birth - to spot those who might 
want
to reject their babies. Other than that, Ahmeti said, psycho-social support 
has
been minimal. The women are outcasts. Some are war widows and many have no
work, no family, no one to turn to. There has been almost no attempt to 
socialise,
reintegrate or resettle them with therapeutic counselling. Or to provide
witness protection so they may eventually give evidence before the criminal 
tribunal
at The Hague.


'This is a torn society and there are somany things that have to be done, 
but
these women's needs have really never been addressed. Wherever you go in
Kosovo you bump into victims, but these particular ones gain nothing from 
talking.
You just rape their psyche a second time.'

She is right, of course. In Kosovo, everyone at some stage has been a victim
and you do not have to go far to bump into one. Seated in front of Ahmeti,
interviewing her, is 29-year-old Luljeta Selimi, a journalist who trained as 
a
gynaecologist (a profession never allowed to flourish under the Serbs). 
'Please
excuse my English. I used to speak it very well, but last April the Serbs 
arrested
me helping a friend give birth. They kept me in water for nine hours, beat 
me until I
fainted and then threw me on a rubbish dump. It was Gypsies who saved me and
took me to Macedonia,' she said. 'You will never find these women. I have 
had to
spend weeks in villages posing as a doctor, gaining their trust, staying at 
their
homes.'

Selimi, it turns out, has collected testimonies from 200 rape victims; each
case documented in black notebooks and on cassette. 'I want the world to 
know
what happened to my country, to these women. Thousands of women who now
have nothing.'

Over the course of the next week she brought me three victims; women who are
young, educated and angry with the world. Angry that Nato did not intervene 
or send
in ground troops earlier; that help has not been more forthcoming; that they 
have
been left to drift, dependent on small kindnesses. They have come to me,
because they could never have me go to them - it would raise too many
suspicions. They are willing to talk because they want the world to know 
that
they exist. They have lost their homes, they have lost their valuables 
(extorted by
the rapists) but they are still the lucky ones. At least they have been 
spared
becoming pregnant.

'They stopped our car as my husband, son and daughter were driving towards 
the
Macedonian border on 22 March, two days before Nato intervened,' said the
school-teacher from a hamlet south of Pristina. 'They were paramilitaries, 
some
wore bandannas, some masks.

'They made us get out and walk over the hills and then _ and then they took 
me,
they made me comb my hair and they did what they did. When my husband tried 
to
stop them, they shot him dead. My children were there, watching.'

The two other women were similarly stopped, one as she tried to flee across
the Albanian border, the other as she hid with her family in the forest, 
hours after
the Serbs had torched their village in the middle of Kosovo.

Both were virgins before and both have avoided sex since. Both hardly leave 
their
homes. And both have the saddest, most vacant eyes I have ever seen.

'So what do you think I should do?' asked the one with red-dyed hair, the 
one who
was raped for hours in the forest.

I looked at her and thought: 'Yes, what next?' Here I am, privy to the most 
painful
event this woman will ever endure and I have no ready answer; no relief to 
proffer,
only the ability to make her, and the children of war, 'exist'.

                                                    Some names have been 
changed.
















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