5,000 Hanging Skirts: How Women Remember War Rape in Kosova

http://www.juancole.com/2015/06/hanging-remember-kosova.html

5,000 Hanging Skirts: How Women Remember War Rape in Kosova
Jun. 15, 2015
By Frances Trix | (Informed Comment) | – –

On 12 June, 5,000 skirts and dresses were hung on 45 clotheslines in the football stadium in Prishtina, capital of Kosova. “The laundry is washed clean, like the women who are clean and pure—they carry no stain,” asserted artist Alketa Xhafa-Mripa, the Kosovar originator of the art installation. The football stadium was chosen as the place of installation for the contrast with its masculine association, its centrality in Prishtina, and for the clear visibility of the skirts and dresses on the field.

In the 1998-1999 war in Kosova, an estimated 20,000 Albanian women and girls were raped by Serbian soldiers and especially Serbian paramilitary. Until now, there was no effective way of remembering this. Albanian culture is traditional and such matters could not be mentioned for fear of the social stigma. Almost all Albanians in Kosova are Muslim and this adds to the social conservatism.

The International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague was particularly ineffective in dealing with rape in Kosova. Kosovar women who had been raped by Serbian forces and who had been convinced to testify as anonymous witnesses found that while their identities were protected while at the Tribunal in the Hague, they were revealed back in Kosova by Milošević’ team. They felt betrayed by the Tribunal, and some reportedly threatened to commit suicide rather than return to Kosova.

Sevdije Ahmeti, who had convinced the women to testify, said she would never again counsel women to testify under such circumstances. “If the Tribunal had understood the importance of family honor in Kosova, it would never have requested them to testify, or at the very least, it would have worked harder to maintain anonymity.” Sevidje Ahmeti later explained that only women with no close living male relative would even consider reporting a rape (Trix, F. “Underwhelmed”— Kosovar Albanians’ Reactions to the Milošević Trial,” in Timothy Waters (ed.) The Milošević Trial: An Autopsy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, 229-248).