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Illyrian Princess · #89 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 06:34 PM

After hearing of rape incidents that happened during the war in Kosovo, I couldn't believe the excessive cases. After doing research and actually developing conversations with Bosnian co-workers back in the day, I was appalled by the cases during the Bosnia war as well. I wouldn't be surprised if women in Croatia or other countries endured the same torture.

Kosovo:

Quote:

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.

Quote:

"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."

http://www.hrw.org/press/2000/03/kosrape.htm

Quote:

Two ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo told Human Rights Watch yesterday that they had been raped by Serbian security forces while being held captive in Kosovo. Three other rape victims from the same village have also reported their cases to doctors in northern Albania.

According to what I read back then, they were held in a crowded room full of children and elderly. Then, each of the women were called to a separate room. None of them knew what was going to happen. According to one of the women being interviewed:

"Two ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo told Human Rights Watch yesterday that they had been raped by Serbian security forces while being held captive in Kosovo. Three other rape victims from the same village have also reported their cases to doctors in northern Albania.he house was full of members of the Serbian security forces, she told Human Rights Watch. They asked her questions, using a mixture of gestures and very basic words to communicate, as the woman hardly understood Serbian. They asked her age -- twenty-three, she said -- whether she had any children, and the whereabouts of her husband. They asked her for money.

When she told them that she had none, they ordered her to take off her clothes. She started crying and pulling out her hair, which made the men laugh. They put on some music. After she took off her clothes, the men approached her one by one as she stood before them naked.

She told Human Rights Watch that all of them looked at her, then they left her alone in the room with the man she believed to be their commander and another officer. The commander, whom she recognized as such because he had gold stars on his cap and had issued orders to others, reclined on his back about ten feet away from where the victim and the officer were lying on a bed. The man on the bed, who was nude, touched her breasts but did not force her to touch him. "I kept crying all the time and pushing his hands away," she said. "Finally he said to me, I'm not going to do anything. The commander just stared at us."
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/kosovo98/flash5.shtml

Bosnia, Croatia...

Quote:

Human Rights Watch has been documenting violations of the rules of war in Croatia and Bosnia since the beginning of the wars there in 1991 and 1992, respectively.The wars in the former Yugoslavia are in fact wars against civilians who have been subjected to violent and abusive practices on the basis of nationality. Crimes have been committed by all sides, but the chief offenders have been Serbian military and paramilitary forces.

http://www.hrw.org/about/projects/womrep/General-25.htm