[Kcc-News] Human Rights Watch: Serb gang-rapes in Kosovo exposed (fwd)

[Mentor Cana]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 13:11:44 -0500
From: Skye Donald <donalds at hrw.org>
To: donalds at hrw.org
Subject: Serb gang-rapes in Kosovo exposed

EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 AM GMT
TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2000

SERB GANG-RAPES IN KOSOVO EXPOSED

(New York, March 21, 2000) -- Commanding officers bear criminal
responsibility for a pattern of gang-rapes by Serbian and Yugoslav
forces in Kosovo during the NATO bombing campaign, Human Rights Watch
said in a report released today.

Human Rights Watch documented 96 cases of rape by Serbian and Yugoslav
forces against Kosovar Albanian women immediately before and during the
1999 bombing campaign, and believes that many more incidents of rape
have gone unreported.

The report said that rapes were not rare and isolated acts committed by
individuals, but rather were used deliberately as an instrument to
terrorize the civilian population, extort money from families, and push
people to flee their homes.  Virtually all of the sexual assaults Human
Rights Watch has documented were gang rapes involving at least two
perpetrators.

The 37-page report is the first to combine all credible reporting on
rape during the Kosovo conflict, and includes a map of all documented
incidents of rape in Kosovo.

"These are not occasional incidents committed by a few crazy men," said
Regan Ralph, executive director of the Women's Rights Division at Human
Rights Watch. "Rape was used as an instrument of war in Kosovo, and it
should be punished as such. The men who committed these terrible crimes
must be brought to justice."

Human Rights Watch said its research did not confirm the allegations
that Serbian and Yugoslav forces had set up "rape camps" in Pec or
Djakovica. The organization criticized NATO, the U.S. government, and
the British government for spreading unconfirmed information about rape
while the NATO bombing campaign was underway.

Since the end of the war, rapes of Serbian, Albanian, and Roma women by
ethnic Albanians -- sometimes by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) -- have also been documented.  Human Rights Watch condemns these
human rights violations and continues to document post-conflict abuses
for future reports.  However, rapes and other crimes of sexual violence
committed since the NATO-led troops entered Kosovo are beyond the scope
of this report.

The report says that rapes in Kosovo took three basic forms: rapes in
women's homes, rapes during flight, and rapes in detention.

In the first category, security forces entered private homes and raped
women either in the yard, in front of family members, or in an adjoining
room.  In the second category, internally displaced people wandering on
foot and riding on tractors were repeatedly stopped, robbed, and
threatened by the Yugoslav Army, Serbian police, or paramilitaries.  If
families could not produce cash, security forces told them that their
daughters would be taken away and raped; in some cases, even when
families did provide money, their daughters were taken away.  The third
category of rapes took place in temporary detention centers, such as
abandoned homes or barns.

The majority of rape cases were evidently committed by Serbian
paramilitaries, who wore various uniforms and often had bandanas, long
knives, long hair, and beards.  These paramilitary formations worked
closely with official government forces, either the Serbian Ministry of
Interior or the Yugoslav Army, throughout Kosovo. In several cases,
victims and witnesses identified the perpetrators as Serbian special
police, in blue or blue camouflage uniforms, or Yugoslav Army soldiers,
in green military uniforms.  Several rape victims actually reported the
crimes to Yugoslav military officers.

Human Rights Watch called on the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia to indict not only the perpetrators of rape, but also
their commanding officers.

"Women in Kosovo are waiting for justice, and so far none of the Kosovo
indictments have included sex crimes," said Regan Ralph, executive
director of the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. "The
sooner there are investigations and prosecutions, the sooner these women
can begin to rebuild their lives."

Human Rights Watch was able to interview six rape victims in depth, and
their testimonies are contained in this report.  Human Rights Watch met
two other women who acknowledged that they had been raped but refused to
give testimony. Human Rights Watch documented six cases of women who
were raped and subsequently killed. The ninety-six cases also include
rape reports deemed reliable by Human Rights Watch that were compiled by
other nongovernmental organizations.

Human Rights Watch believes that the actual number of women raped in
Kosovo between March and June 1999 is much higher than ninety-six. Due
to strong social taboos, Kosovar Albanian victims of rape are generally
reluctant to speak about their experiences, and those who remained in
Kosovo throughout the conflict may not have had an opportunity to report
abuses.

For the full text of the report, please visit the Human Rights Watch
website at http://xmail.hrw.org/embargo/ user name hrwrape, password
crisis99

Testimonies from rape victims in Kosovo are attached.


TESTIMONIES OF RAPE VICTIMS FROM KOSOVO

Women and girls were pulled from lines of refugees and sexually
assaulted, sometimes in front of other refugees. B.B., a twenty-two year
old woman from Mitrovica told Human Rights Watch:

It happened while I was in line with the people. It was April 14th when
we left our house and on the 15th we were walking near Djakovica... We
met Serb paramilitaries. ..They approached my uncle and separated him.
They took his gold and his money from him.  Then they came up to me...He
took my hand and told me to get in his car. ... He told me not to refuse
or there would be lots of victims.  He swore  at me and said, "Whore,
get in the car..." He told me not to scream and to take off my clothes.
He took off his clothes and told me to suck his thing. I did not know
what to do.  He took my head and put it near him.  He started to beat
me.  I lost consciousness.  When I came to I saw him over me.  I had
great pain.  I was screaming and scratching the ground from the pain.
Another man came with a car and he got over me.  The other man with the
car asked the first one why he was treating this whore so good.  I was
crying from the pain and he was laughing the whole time.  The second one
got off me and told me to put on my clothes.  I couldn't find them.
Just as I got dressed another one came and took me to another place a
couple of meters away and he started with the same words and did the
same things the first one did.  He kept me there for several minutes and
then told me to wear my clothes so I [looked like I did when I left the
line].  He told me not to tell anyone or they would take me for good and
shoot my family.  The men wore masks.  They wore camouflage clothes and
they were carrying weapons and knives on their belts.  They said that
they were paid to do this.  I begged him [the first rapist] to kill me
but he didn't want to.

Z.T., a twenty-three-year-old woman, was being held in a house in
Drenica by special Serbian forces.

I was held in a room full of women.  The police came, and gestured for
me to come.  A policeman made me take off my clothes and he found a note
that I was hiding in my underwear on which I had my husband's telephone
number in Switzerland.  He tore up the note and started swearing at me.
I went back to the group of women and the same policeman came back and
said, "come here."  He took me far away from the other women and did
whatever he wanted with me.

A group of twenty-seven women in the Drenica region were held by Serb
paramilitaries in a small barn. -V.B., a twenty-one year old, was seven
months pregnant when she was gang raped by Serb paramilitaries:

They put us in a small barn with hay in it. Then the four men came into
the barn and slammed the door and pointed machine guns at us.  They
asked for gold, money, and whatever we had.  We gave whatever we had.
But they were still torturing us.  They would take a girl, they kept her
outside for half an hour, and after that they would bring one back and
then they would take another.  Then they took me. I was pregnant.  I was
holding my son.  They took him away from me and gave him to my mother.
They told me to get up and follow them. I was crying and screaming,
"Take me back to my child!" They took me to another room.  It was so bad
I almost fainted.  I can't say the words they said.  They tortured me.
Because I was pregnant, they asked me where my husband was... One of
them said to another soldier, "Kick her and make the baby abort."  They
did this to me four times-they took me outside to the other place. Three
men took me one by one.  Then they asked me, "Are you desperate for your
husband?" and said, "Here we are instead of him."

In Pec, six armed and uniformed Serb men entered a house two days before
NATO entered the city. Before murdering six members of her family, the
men raped one of the women, a twenty-eight year old mother. Her
sister-in-law witnessed the rape and the murders:

They were wearing military clothes and had black scarves on their
heads.  They took my sister-in-law into the front room, and they were
hitting her and telling her to shut up.  The children were screaming,
and they also screamed at the children.  She was with the paramilitary
for one half- hour.  She was resisting, and they beat her, and the
children could hear her screaming. I could only hear what was going on.
I heard them slapping her.  The children did not understand that they
were raping her.  After they raped my sister-in-law, they put her in
line with us and shot her.

For further information, contact:
In Washington, D.C.:      Martina Vandenberg (w) 202-612-4344; (h)
202-387-2032
In New York:                 Joanne Mariner  212-216-1218
                                    Fred Abrahams  212-216-1270 (on
current abuses)
In Brussels:                    Jean-Paul Marthoz 322-732-2009

350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10118-3299
Telephone: (212)290-4700
Facsimile: (212) 736-1300
E-mail: hrwnyc at hrw.org