Author: admin

In this piece,  Besire, a trauma psychotherapist/psychologist in Pristina, Kosovo interviews and makes a few comments for context.  She herself was a refugee who survived very difficult times.  She wanted the women’s stories to break through the walls of her office into the world and did the women. here must s be pointed out that stories are given with the consent of clients.  These stories need to be held, cradled and the women celebrated for their courage, their strength and their love.  

Teuta’s Story

I just want people to know what we experienced and what we still deal with!  I’m the lucky woman, because my husband knows what happened to me, accepted that, and try to be supportive at maximum, but there are thousands of woman that can’t talk about their experience, they suffer in silence. Alone. In my village there are a lot of woman who were raped and never dare to talk or seek treatment, because if they speak they can be excluded from the family, abused, made into prostitutes and remain homeless. Speaking about what happened can bring terrible things.  There is humiliation,  fear, shame, guilt and anger!

I would like people to not judge us, not stigmatize us, to see as like a normal women.

We didn’t choose to be raped or tortured, they choose us. With what we could protect our self?

It was very easy to be man in the war time, because they took the weapons and fight in mountain, or some just hiding in mountains, but we were unprotected, without weapons, we fought for our children and ourselves with our bodies.

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In the summer of 1998, my life changed forever. As was usual for our summer vacation, my husband, myself and our two children came from Germany where we have lived for several years to our home of origin in Kosovo. I was pregnant with our third child.  We planned to stay a month with our families as we normally did and then return to Germany where my husband worked in construction and I was caretaker for his boss’s two children. We had a nice life.

A few years earlier, my husband had finished the army in Croatia so he was an experienced military man.  The war between the Serbian and Albanian Kosovars had begun in earnest in January 1998.  Our army people came to our house and asked my husband to join KLA — Kosovo Liberation Army. It was a request he  couldn’t refuse — these were our people — so my husband joined. I didn’t go back to Germany but remained in our birthplace with my mother-in-law in her home while my husband went into the mountains with KLA.

War had been going on for six months and everywhere was heard shots.

People stayed at home all the time, only in the cases when we absolutely needed something from town or to visit doctor did we go out. I was scared, mostly because i was pregnant and the children were so young, 4 and 2 years old.  I heard that other people in some villages were already left their homes to go the mountains where they felt safer – they were afraid to walk on the roads because the enemy soldiers would harm them, rape or kill them.  I was sure that very soon we would have to do this as well.

Days went by, months went by and my husband could not come home because he could be captured by the enemy forces and killed automatically. Time for birth was approaching. I couldn’t decide if I should go to the hospital or give birth at home.

In hospital were working just Serbian doctors and nurses, I heard cases that  they kill Albanian babies and tortured the mothers, so I decided to give birth at home with the help of my mother in law.

In January 1999, she arrived; I gave birth to my third child.  Only three weeks after bringing into life my daughter, the enemy came to our house and we were forced to leave.

The village was surrounded by military and paramilitary forces and we escaped to the mountains. We all knew that when the enemy came into the village or neighborhood they burned houses, maltreated/abused or raped women and killed men and sometimes boys.

Together with my mother in law and other fellow villagers, we spent many days there in cold weather and without any food. We were unprepared to leave the houses.  We took what we could: some bags with food, mostly bread but that was not enough for staying long. We created plastic pavilions (tents)  to  sleep but it was snowing and extremely cold. Everywhere you could hear children crying. The children were sleeping in their clothes and boots and the babies got severe rashes.

Besire: During the time when the civilian population stayed in the mountains, they used fire, and diapers often washed with water only, we had no soap or sometimes the ashes of the fire that was more efficient for fading.  The enemy saw the fires and knew where we were. 

The small baby I kept all the time at the breast in order to keep her warm and trying to feed.  But I didn’t have milk enough because I didn’t eat, saving bread, our primary food by now, for children. My mother in law was taking care for other two children most of the time.

But enemy forces didn’t even allow us to stay in the mountains they gathered hundreds of people who they had forced to leave their houses and in big crowds we were forced to move from one village to another.  

Men were sent in an unknown direction, while all women were gathered in the school yard of the village and times to times the Serbian army chose some of the most beautiful women, sent them inside the school or behind the school where they would sexually abuse them. In this collection I was chosen together with 7 other women and sent by 3 paramilitary behind the school and they forced us to take our clothes away.

My one month baby was crying all the time as my mother-in-law held her on the other side of the building and this was bothering one of the paramilitaries, so he took my  mother in law who was holding the baby and brought  her behind the school where we were naked.

I remember when He asked: “Whose is this child?”  All the seven women who were naked said that: “It’s mine, it’s mine.”

Teuta started crying when she reached this part of her story and remembers this moment. She cannot stop crying and she understands very well the reaction of each woman, because all of them wanted to escape from the clutches of those “savages” as she calls them. 

After calming herself she continues her story. 

But then my mother in law shows who the real mother of the baby is and I survived from the rape this time. While leaving the group I always am sorry when I remember that had to put on clothes of another woman due to the fact that I was in a hurry to escape and i couldn’t find mine.  But our suffering did not end because after some hours, after they raped a lot of young women they forced us to go on the road with the long line of people walking or some with truck and moving from one village to another.  I was extremely tired , because I didn’t eat nothing for days .I keep all the time the baby in my arms but she was not  was  not moving anymore   because I couldn’t breastfeed her, I thought she was dead –died of starvation.  I thought that the baby was dead, and for a moment I was thinking, maybe is better because she will not suffer any more!

I was numb, i even couldn’t cry.  I decided to leave the baby near the road while we were walking, but a young Serbian solder nearby felt compassion for me, it seemed. He  tried to say something in his language but i could not understand, then he start doing like a dog, which i understood that  he was saying  to take the baby and  bury somewhere  because the dogs might eat her, so I started crying and  took  baby Flaka up again my arms. I kissed her like I wanted to apologize to her why I wanted to leave her there — I was so sure that she was dead.

Besire: From the stories of Teuta, I understood in general, the Serbian regular army, rarely mistreated civilians, they were fighting with KLA.  It was the paramilitary groups that did all the terrorizing and murdering.   

Affected by this, I continued on the road with the long line of people, and only a few minutes later a shell from a tank exploded in the middle of the line of trucks and people, causing many deaths and injuries.  Immediately after, the paramilitary forces were killing the injured people.  They did it coldly with no apparent feeling; meanwhile the others were forced to continue the trip moving around dead or dying people.

The shell noise was so great that my ears were closed and couldn’t hear anything, but I felt very warm and very strange.

There was blood.  I didn’t know I was hit at first…shrapnel struck me in the left breast and also hit the baby. Flaka started to move from the pain and in that moment I understood she had been hit in the nose and that she was still alive.

Seeing that enemy forces were killing all the wounded people I approached my mother in law and told her what was happening to me. When she saw me and baby, she was terrified.  I could see it and  she told  me, ssh,  be quiet, bear the pain   and not  scream  because she was fearful that they will kill me as they killed also many other wounded persons.  Mother-in-law helped to stop the blood with her handkerchief, and we continue the path in the long line of people, but over the days, my wound started being infected causing fever. Also, I tried to clean baby wound but she was not moving again. She was half dead!

After one day of 12 hours of hiking, we were sent to a cooperative, a building for agricultural issues, where the paramilitary forces selected me and other 120 beautiful women, took us inside the cooperative where we were systematically violated. I was with temperature and fever, because of the wound but this didn’t stop them raping me.  While my mother-in-law with many others and their children remained outside of the building and she somehow manages to send a message to my father which was enrolled in KLA and happened to be in hiding nearby.

We women were inside the cooperative but the paramilitary didn’t stay all the time inside, they mostly came around 19.00 o’clock.

My father analyzed very well the situation and after many attempts he manages to sneak through the roof and we escaped with the help of the women who remained behind.

During the day the paramilitary stayed in front of the building, drinking coke and singing so I analyzed good the situation and escaped from behind the building and he took me from the cooperative and took me to the closest headquarters, to take medical treatment for the wound.  I told him I had to go back. He begged me not to go to the cooperative again, but I had to because we were numbered/counted every night and if one of us was missing, the enemy said that they would kill 10 women for every one escaped.

So I had to turn back, because they were like my sisters, and I could not bear the feeling of guilt of any of them would be murdered because of me –  all of them helped me to  escape when my father come for me.

As soon as I was back inside the building,  the paramilitary forces came to  violate, and rape, one if the Serbian paramilitary noticed bandage on my bosom and understood  that I had escaped for treatment  was treated, and he brutally beats me and breaks my ankle bone with his boots.

It is still not right, all these years later she cannot walk for long periods of time. 

It was not just violating us, it was that at night after all day being raped, we try to rest, they come in and urinate on us.  Taking careful time.

After several consecutive days of sexual violence in this building, some of the women were released while several others were taken by the Serb forces and later on after the war they were found dead in different wells around the area. That’s what they did.  Poison the wells with our own bodies.

Teuta was among the freed women.   She returned to her children and mother in law and then was joined by her husband later on, who explained the entire situation to him.  Her husband was one of the very supportive ones, there were fewer of those kinds of men and he still continues to support her maximally. He kept her from suicide several times.  She, after all these difficulties,  experienced many health problems including depression  and other symptoms of PTSD, migraine and other physical problems including hypertension for which she ( and the other women) have no money for medicine.  She is still undergoing prolonged exposure  psychotherapy. 

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Besire: How were the holidays for you before the war and now?  

Oh there is a huge difference. The best holiday for me was Bajram holiday. I remember the time when i was unmarried, we couldn’t wait for Bajram, and we were preparing for weeks. I lived in a big village and with a lot of cousins and sisters. We were 7 sisters and all of us had flair for singing with tambourine. So before and during holiday we went house by house to all villages, singing and dancing, especially we went to the houses when were new brides. The new brides wore the best clothes they had and we sing tothem. Now everything is different, everything is so empty.

Today we celebrate just one day of Bajram, and you don’t see joy in peoples face , neither to children, they are not happy anymore. We just say to each other “happy Holiday and that’s it, we don’t sing and dance any more like used to do, even when we smile to each other it seems to me is a fake smile. After the war things changed, it seems that the war ended but took our joy and happiness! Every holiday reminds us of who is not there and how many we don’t know what happened to them.

Besire: What is the best thing that can happen for you?

The worst thing for me now, is to see my daughter with the nose deformed from the grenade.  She is already fifteen, an excellent student and it happens  many times, she comes home  from school crying, because other children call her ” tomato nose” I pray good one day she will have the opportunity to operate her nose and to feel like other children.  That is the best that can happen to me!

Flora, a 50 year old woman, and mother of six children, is from rural Drenica Valley in Kosovo, the valley that was the hardest hit and most destroyed by war. When the war started in Drenica in February 1998,  Flora’s civilian husband, Faton, was attacked in their home by the Serbian police several times and nearly beaten to death in front of Flora and the children. When the beating was over, Faton knew he would never be safe in this world, so he left for the mountains with their 20 year old son. To justify the beating, the police used the pretext that they heard that Faton had weapons, even though they never found any. In general, the police justified abuse calling the people from Drenica terrorists — the men were always in danger as the police could enter homes whenever they wanted. They abused, harassed and threatened people, often killing them. After a while it became clear, they wanted to exterminate all the men, including boys.  So they were gone and who remained were children, women and old people.

So Flora stayed behind with the rest of the children. She continued her life making as many as seventeen loaves of bread a day for her family and for others hiding in the mountains. During some nights, the men came home for food or other necessities and to see their wives and children.

Flora’s story

The 18 of September 1998 is a date that I will not forget till I die. The men from the village along with my husband and eldest son hid from the Yugoslav/Serbian forces that had been fighting Kosovo Albanians since February. As usual, I was baking loaves in the kitchen when I heard a loud noise and our very old house began to tremble. I ran outside to see what was happening and was completely shocked to see Serbian tanks rumbling through the street.

We lived at the edge of the village so when the tanks stopped before entering town, they stopped near our house.. I looked down the road and saw families, many mothers and children, leaving and moving quickly toward the mountains carrying what they could but I couldn’t go with them –I was completely unprepared, the loaves were in the fire, and I had no other food prepared so even if I wanted, I couldn’t go, my children would go hungry in the mountains.

There was no question, I decided to stay. When the rumbling tanks arrived, my children surrounded me terrified. I reassured them as I thought the soldiers wouldn’t harm defenseless women and her children. But when I saw the tank full of soldiers directly pull in the front of the house, I realized my mistake.

Five armed men jumped out of the tank and came in the house, one after another in clunking boots with no care for our home. And I remember they put black masks over their faces immediately. I motioned to my youngest daughters to come stand close to me. We gathered together, all of us, me and my children as they ordered us in their Serbian language to go into the basement of the house. My youngest daughter was 13 years old, another was 15, and my older daughter was 18.   

My daughters and I were herded downstairs. The soldiers left my son upstairs while my three daughters and me were held captive in the basement.  The masked soldiers told us to take off our clothes and when we refused, they began beating us brutally.  They tore off our clothes and then each of them raped us rotating with the four of us one after another.

I have heard that some woman during the rape lose consciousness but I was totally aware of what was happening, though at some point, stopped thinking. I heard the screaming of my daughters begging them to kill us. I couldn’t believe that what was happening was real. It cannot be described in words how I felt as a mother hearing my children screaming for my help and being able to do nothing, absolutely nothing. “For the sake of GOD, please kill us.”  I begged the rapists but they were laughing — ‘we don’t want you dead.’

I wasn’t afraid of dying; I could see Tringa, my 13 year old daughter crying and looking at me for help. My daughter Lule had a shoulder injury of some kind.  I told my daughters to stay silent, to be quiet. I didn’t know how to make their fear go away. I still remember that feeling.  They kept us in the basement for around two hours but for me it was a hundred years of terror, and helplessness.  We were all shaking and naked.

They left in the early evening, just like that, to check the other houses, I guess.  We went upstairs still naked and found my son terrified and cringing in the corner of the room. I got clothes for my daughters and tried to calm them, helped Lule with her arm, and we stayed all together close, trembling and shaking and waited to see what would happen next.

At nightfall (we were still quivering – I had taken bread from the oven, some burned), an old uncle came to the house.

When I told him what had happened, he ordered all of us to “bury” the experience, saying the rapes were “a bigger tragedy than being murdered.”

That night we took an oath, my daughter and me that we never will talk about what we experienced.

My husband is very patriarchal man, and I knew that if he understand that we were raped he would prefer killing us with his own hand than fe el that much shame. Some women were killed by their husbands.

Flora was breathless as she told the story.  She asked for water. 

My youngest who was 13 years old at the time of the rapes has been psychologically traumatized ever since. Another one of my daughters Lulja, also traumatized, had her left shoulder dislocated.

Afraid of bringing shame and isolation on my family I remained silent for all this years, even I   watched the heavy toll silence has taken on my family.   Two of my  daughters left the country after the war.  They live in Finland and for years they have been in psychotherapy because of their suffering from PTSD, anxiety and depression . Tringa, the youngest one got married, only to be rejected by her husband when he found out about the rape.  I begged her husband not to tell my husband why he was divorcing Tringa because he would kill us. 

Tringa lives with us and she is very depressed.  She never wants to go out. 

After the war I had another daughter, she was born with Down syndrome.

For myself, I never told my husband about the rapes. Instead, I told him that my daughters and me were beaten as a way of explaining the anxiety and depression they’ve suffered ever since. Me as well. My husband says rape would dishonor the family; during the war, he threatened to kill me more than once if I were ever “touched” by a Serb.

How can you talk to such a person about this?” asks Flora, who confessed she told her husband she was traveling to Pristina for a doctor’s appointment about her daughter with Down syndrome rather than meeting a psychologist.

I would really prefer it if they had killed me, instead of letting me survive. 

We women who were raped and tortured don’t feel any pleasure in life. When your husband doesn’t know what happened to you, then you aren’t able to express yourself to him about anything, and you never feel good. Even if we were talking in the most beautiful moments, I hold back and then, I’m in the worst position. And that’s the very worst thing that’s happened.”

Beside the rape experience, me and my family spent the rest of the war as displaced, forced from village to village by the ethnic-cleansing campaign and under threat from the NATO bombing campaign aimed at driving enemy forces out of the Albanian-majority territory.

But  after  the terror my daughter and me experienced, my ordinary fears melted away, and I often found myself  reaching out to help fellow displaced women.

I had lived through a real trauma, and I didn’t want other women to experience the same thing. I couldn’t even scream anymore. I felt no fear.

During the war we were closed in one village mosque. The mosque was surrounded by the enemy that threatened to kill us all.  We were all woman and children.  All terrified but I acted like a leader there. I told them not to fear death.  They were all in panic and needed encouragement. I gathered all children and telling the story how one day the war will stop and we will celebrate all together in Freedom. They needed to hear these words. I just took the attitude that we had to move ahead and not look back.

After two days closed in that mosque, the enemy let us go. They put us in buses and took us to the Macedonia border. My daughters, my son and I stayed in a camp for a month knowing nothing about my husband and my older son, because we left them in them in the mountains. We were worried about them. But, I was also scared to see him because of what had happened to us.

After the war was finished we immediately came back to Kosovo where we found my son and husband both at home. The house had been ravaged, everything taken or smashed but not burned.

Before the war, we had a horse and two cows but they were killed. They were how we made a living. With my children just having an elementary school education while, me and my husband had just three year education.  So, it was very difficult for us to live, but one humanitarian organization helped us with 10 goats and for these years since the war years we bred and raised the number of goats, so today they are our source of living, for my 10 member’s family. Today we live in very difficult economic conditions but nothing is more difficult than having to remain SILENT.

I have hidden our secret for 15 years, and I know that thousands of my sisters do the same. I know woman who live in a misery and they need support either financially, emotionally or morally.  I hope in sharing my story, people will know what we experienced and instead of judging us, will support us and help persuade other Kosovars to finally acknowledge this painful chapter from the past.

Before the war, the best Holiday for us was Bajram Holiday. Before the war we enjoyed the Holiday. One week before we women prepared everything together with great fun and then during the holiday, shared our food and joy with all our relatives and our neighbors. We celebrated three days. The first day, we wore our best clothes – the adults and the children and lunched together with our close family then in the afternoons we went out in our neighborhood to eat and decide who made the best cakes.  On the other days we went to relatives or waited for relatives to come to our home but now I don’t feel pleasure about much of anything.

It bothers me when Bajram Holiday comes because instead of bringing the biggest joy, I always feel tormented because my soul has been killed. And I think most of us who experienced war feel like that and I know many years will pass, generations even before our people start to enjoy the holidays as we enjoyed them before.

Neither my nieces or nephews, my children or grandchildren will enjoy them but maybe their nieces or nephews yes, their grandchildren will be pure enough that they will not have experienced what we have and don’t really know what war means.

I would do anything to see men talking openly to wives who have been victimized by the enemy, Woman first of all should be supported   by their husband. Suffering in silence is killing me day by day.   If I don’t get anything out of telling my story, maybe someone else will. I may have lost a battle, but I don’t want others to experience the same.

We need support, support from the state and support from society. When that happens, that’s when we’ll be at peace.