Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman

Congressman Colin Allred said on Tuesday that he has introduced a resolution urging justice for wartime rape survivor Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman and calling for "all those responsible for sexual violence during the Kosovo war" to be investigated and prosecuted.

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.

He used to be a police reservist in Vushtrri/Vucitrn, and was also a prison guard during the war, when he took part in the illegal detention of a large number of ethnic Albanian civilians at the nearby Smrekovnica detention centre from May to early June 1999.

Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman told a special session of the Kosovo Assembly dedicated to raising public awareness about survivors of wartime sexual violence on Monday that victims needed protection and support but instead have been stigmatised by society for more than two decades.

"Our country, our society stigmatises us," Krasniqi Goodman said.

The exhibition of images of women who were victims of sexual violence during the Kosovo war, created by architect turned politician Eliza Hoxha, opened on Tuesday in the basement of the Grand Hotel in Pristina.

The basement, where women were raped and ethnic Albanians killed during the conflict, has been closed to the public for the past 20 years since the war ended.

Kosovo’s Special Prosecution has relaunched investigations into the case of Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman, who recently became the first woman in the country to speak openly about being a wartime rape victim.