Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told have committed suicide by throwing herself into a well after having been raped. 27 Killing preceded by rape. There are some reports of women having been raped before being killed. The actual number of women who were raped before they were killed can be expected to be significantly higher than is indicated by the reports. Experience suggests that in conflict situations women are at great risk of being raped before they are killed, and that those killed frequently outnumber those who survive. Since the subject of rape is extremely sensitive in the Kosovo Albanian society, it may therefore be suspected that in many cases an interviewee would choose not to give this kind of detail out of respect for the person who had been killed. That having been said, there are eyewitnesses who have described how they witnessed women being raped and then killed. In Pristina an old woman recounts having seen a 17-year-old girl raped and killed. In another statement a young man described how he saw a woman who had been shot in the leg and the body of another woman who had been shot in the chest. The wounded woman told him that they had both been raped by paramilitaries before they were shot. 28 Rape before killing can be inferred from descriptions of the state of the woman's body when it was found. One old man, for example, described how he went inside a house and saw the body of a woman lying on a sofa. She was partly undressed, her jacket was open so that her breast was exposed, and the lower part of the body was naked. She had been repeatedly stabbed in her back and shot in the head and abdomen." 29 30 Rape accompanied by other forms of torture and ill-treatment. Rape is itself a crime of torture. Additionally, rape was reported as having been committed in connection with other kinds of physical violence. For example, one 75-year-old man described how in late April 1999 he met three women who told him that 12 masked men had raped them together with 20-30 other women. Their bodies had been cut on their breasts, in the genital area, and on their faces. 31 Rape following abduction. There are many accounts of young women being abducted either individually or in groups. In most cases they would be returned after some hours, but in other cases the interviewee would not have any further information concerning the fate of these women. Given the pattern of deliberate selection of young women for rape, as noted above, it is reasonable to fear that rape is what befell women who were abducted and subsequently were unaccounted for. In instances when abducted women were returned they were very often in such a state that it would be quite clear to others what had happened to them. One interviewee who had left Staro Selo to go to Urosevac was told by fellow villagers arriving later in Urosevac that six young girls had been taken away by paramilitaries, and no one knew what had 32 happened to them. In Velika Krusa (Urahovac) VJ had gathered 1,000 people (women and children) in the mosque. Every hour VJ came and demanded money and also took two or three girls away with them http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch7.htm (9 of 17)12/5/2003 11:51:55 AM