Source: http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990426/V000565-042699-idx.html
Accessed 26 April 1999

Women for Rape Sought by Serbs

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Associated Press Writer
Monday, April 26, 1999; 1:52 a.m. EDT

BRAZDA, Macedonia (AP) -- City by city and village by village, Serbs
are hunting down young women to rape as they loot, empty and burn
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian communities, women escaping beyond the
province's borders say.

International monitors, war crimes investigators and NATO all are
reporting numerous accounts of rapes in Kosovo -- atrocities that
Yugoslav and Serb officials deny.

Witness testimony so far indicates the rapes in Kosovo are ``neither
isolated nor incidental,'' said Patricia Sellers, a U.N. war crimes
prosecutor at The Hague, Netherlands, whose workers are gathering the
first accounts.

``When the police entered the town, that was the first question they asked:
'Are there any women here?''' said Valbona Rrustemi, 19, of the southern
Kosovo town of Urosevac.

Rrustemi fled Urosevac with her family April 16, the day after two girls
came running through her family's garden, saying Serb police were after
them, she said.

Minutes later, police knocked at the family's door, asking if there were
any young women, she said. Her father said no while she hid, Rrustemi
said.

Word later reached her of four Urosevac women who had been caught by
the Serbs that day, she said. They included a friend who was raped in the
street, Rrustemi said. She named the friend and gave her age, 22.

The woman's cousins had confirmed the attack, Rrustemi said. No one
has heard of the woman or her immediate family since.

``I don't know what happened to them. I hoped they escaped,'' said
Rrustemi, one of several women at the Brazda refugee camp to give
accounts of rapes in Urosevac.

NATO, also citing refugee accounts, contends there have been several
instances of mass rapes, well-organized on at least a local level:

--At Djakovica, near the Albanian border, Serb soldiers allegedly took
women from their families and sent them to an army camp where they
were held for repeated rapes.

--In Pec, a local Serb commander allegedly held ethnic Albanian women
at a hotel, organizing a schedule by which his soldiers could come to
spend an evening.

--At an ammunition factory and ferronickel plant at an unspecified site in
Kosovo, 100 women allegedly were still being held as of mid-April.

In many cases, word that Serbs were separating ethnic Albanians into
groups of women and men was enough to send families fleeing -- making
rape a means of emptying communities, as much as massacres, arson and
looting.

``The intent is to not just to intimidate and humiliate the actual physical
victim but also to somehow intimidate those who are standing there either
looking at it or hear about it,'' Sellers said.

The United Nations first prosecuted rape as a separate war crime after the
1992-95 Bosnian war. In the first case to focus exclusively on rape, the
U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia sentenced a Bosnian
Croat paramilitary chief in December to 10 years in prison for failing to
stop subordinates' 1993 rape of a Bosnian Muslim woman.

Serb forces in Bosnia were widely accused of using rape as a means of
``ethnic cleansing.'' Sellers said it was too early to tell if rapes in Kosovo
were as widespread as in Bosnia.

Refugees from Kosovo say the targeting of women continued even as their
convoys were being escorted out of the province.

In one instance, Serbs looking for women stopped vehicles of residents
from the area of the southern city of Gnjilane en route to the border, but
the convoy's Serb escorts protected the women, villagers said.

Many of the accounts of Serbs seeking out women to rape come from
people who escaped rather than those who were caught.

So far, reports gathered by the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe number in the dozens, ``and not many dozens,'' said Jorgen
Grunnet, a spokesman for the head of the OSCE's Kosovo mission.

Sellers predicts the numbers will rise.

``The incidents are very close right now. We notice that people are much
more willing to come forward several months ... after sexual violence has
happened,'' she said. ``Right now, some of their priorities might be actual
physical survival.''

Accounts of rapes are increasing, including reports from refugees arriving
Sunday in Macedonia that Serb paramilitaries raped four girls ages 15-20
before killing them, along with about 15 other people of their village of
Ribar i Vogel, last week.

War-crimes investigators will also have to cope with the horror with which
ethnic Albanian culture regards rape. Kosovo Albanians said many victims
may be too shattered to talk, particularly women from villages rather than
cities.

Teuta Beselica, a student forced from Pristina and now living in Skopje,
Macedonia's capital, was one of many to call rape the worst crime
imaginable -- a ``disaster'' to Kosovo Albanian families.

``It's the worst thing you can do to an Albanian male, basically,'' Beselica
said. ``Killing a man or a woman is not half as bad. And they know that.''

© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press