Kosovo Special Prosecutor: ‘Wartime Rape Victims Must Speak Out’

On Monday, Kosovo's Pristina Basic Court sentenced a former Kosovo Serb policeman, Zoran Vukotic, to ten years in prison for rape and for participating in the expulsion of ethnic Albanian civilians during the war in Kosovo in 1999.

The ruling was called historic because it the first time someone had been convicted in Kosovo of sexual abuse during the 1998-9 war.

In an interview on Tuesday with BIRN Kosovo's 'Kallxo Pernime' television programme, the head of Kosovo's Special Prosecution, Drita Hajdari, urged more people to report charges of rape during the war, pledging to deal with their cases in person.

Hajdari personally dealt with the Vukotic case after his victim appeared at the Special Prosecution offices and insisted on meeting her. "It was a random day at work, I was in my office and the security team informed me that a woman wanted to meet me," Hajdari recalled.

"She confessed … a bitter story she experienced during the war in Kosovo, about rape," Hajdari added.

"The enemy used it [rape] as a strategy of war, by hitting the pillar of our society, the woman," she said, adding that no punishment is enough compensation for such suffering.

There were numerous cases of sexual abuse during the Kosovo war but only three women have told their stories publicly so far.

The first, Marte Tunaj, who died in 2016, was the first Kosovo Albanian to testify about being raped in the war, in her case by a Serbian paramilitary, Milos Jokic. Jokic was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2013 by the EU rule-of-law mission, EULEX.

The second survivor to testify, Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman, told her story in 2018, followed by Shyhrete Tahiri-Sylejmani a year later. But in 2014, Kosovo's Supreme Court acquitted two former Serb...