Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told armed civilian took one of the women 50 metres away from the road and raped her in front of numerous laughing VJs. She was taken back unconscious and naked to the young man's car. 44 An 18-year-old tells how in mid-May three paramilitaries entered a house occupied by IDPs in Pristina. After beating some of the men present, they turned their attention to a young woman, who was 19 years old. They took her clothes off and two of them raped her in front of her family and the interviewee. When they started to touch her the girl fainted, so that they waited until she regained consciousness. Her mother tried to protect her, but one of the paramilitaries put a knife to her chest and made her watch the scene. When they left they took another young woman with them. 45 Drugs. There are accounts of women being drugged while they were raped. This is in contrast to patterns that have been reported in connection with sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In some cases where this was reported in Kosovo, the women were drugged in the course of gang rape after having been already been raped by two or three men. In other cases the woman was drugged straight away and did not know what had happened to her afterwards: also an extremely traumatic circumstance. Two of the cases mentioned above include mention of drugs having been administered to the women in the course of the rape. In another example, at the end of March 1999 police came to a house in Pristina. They threw everybody out except one young woman, whom they to tied a bed; she was held for some 15 minutes. When she came out of the house she was normally dressed, but there was froth around her mouth. Afterwards she appeared depressed and spoke irrationally. According to the interviewee who recounted this, the woman was unable to tell anyone what had happened in the room. 46 A 28-year-old woman described how Serb paramilitaries went to the villages around Glogovac and took women away. When they were brought back, they were naked and covered in bruises, and froth was 47 coming from their mouths. After three to four hours they died. In another incident, a 22-year-old man described how police and paramilitaries entered his house in Pristina and told him and his sister to leave, but then kept his sister back. He stated: "I was soon called back by a paramilitary and he told me to take my sister who had fainted. When I came inside I saw my sister lying on the ground with water in her face and foam in her mouth. My sister told me that they had tried to rape her but that they had not succeeded as she had fainted, and the paramilitaries had let her go." 48 Rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war From refugee statements it appears that those who raped and committed other acts of sexual violence in the course of the conflict in Kosovo were from the same groups as had perpetrated other human rights violations. The VJ, police, paramilitaries and Serb civilians are all mentioned as perpetrators of rape against Kosovo Albanians women. That rape and other forms of sexual violence were used as a mean of humiliating Kosovo Albanian women and the whole of Kosovo Albanian society stands out quite clearly from the refugee statements. http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch7.htm (11 of 17)12/5/2003 11:51:55 AM