Lack of witnesses or documents, victims of sexual violence rejected by commission

About two thousand people have so far applied for recognition of the status of the victim of sexual violence. Over 1300 of them who witnessed before the Government Commission the painful history of 1998-99 have begun to take on the election. On the other side are 244 women and men who have been rejected by the commission, but that number is considered high.

Many of the survivors find it difficult to testify to what has happened to them when witnesses or medical records are required. The latter were annihilated for fear of being discovered by the family. This is presenting a double challenge for survivors of sexual rape.

The director of the Kosovar Centre for the rehabilitation of Torture Survivors (QKRMT), Feride Rushiti for KosovaPress, says a large number of victims after the return to review are managing to obtain the status of the victim of sexual violence.

Until now, the total number of applications runs until 1800, which speaks about two thousand people somewhere they have applied. Those who enjoy the election are 1345, while rejections are 244, which is a very disturbing number for us and we are working in this direction on cases that are refused by the commission that are entitled through administrative procedures to follow the subject further, are reviewed by the court, back to the commission. We have cases that were rejected by the commission, followed judicial ways, returned to the commission and earned the right to be a survivor of sexual violence”, Rushiti claims.

In cases of rejection, women and men are failing to convince commission members that they are victims of sexual violence. Many of these people have begun to forget exactly the story, some are not offering enough evidence.

The war doctor in Shala's operating zone, Shukri Gerjaliu, had treated dozens of women raped between 1999 and 2014. He even has many writings of women preserved, which at times found it impossible to complete their confession before him.

Gerjaliu had helped these women until 2014, while there are already more than 130 women and sexually violated men in the last war in Kosovo.

In the months before NATO enters Kosovo, there have been three four women who have experienced sexual violence to be treated to me and someone close to them. I've handled them under those conditions, under those very serious circumstances. And after the war they've told each other and then started their arrival and came out confidentially, I have secretly given you that spiritual, human help, psychologically, but also tried through others materially when they needed to help you. Of course, I have also often wanted to communicate with their mates who, rather than dealing with the problem, because they had no fault at all, are often driven away with children and left at the mercy of the time”, he tells Kosovas Prees.

The situation of women who experienced sexual assault by police forces, Gerjaliu shows, was very serious. Most of the survivors went for treatment without family knowledge because of the stigma.

They had emotions, they had anxiety, they were afraid, they were overloaded, and I wasn't a psychiatrist. Because I finished the faculty in Pristina, family medicine was completed in Pristina. But because there were no psychiatrists in Vushtrri, I had to play their part, and so I joined them. They have spoken, talked, and have emptied their emotions, their loads and in that respect they have felt cheaper. The conversations have often been so excited that neither the patient nor I have been able to complete the conversation. I have often stopped the conversation, and I have asked him what they want to tell me now to be brought to me in writing at night. That's how they did it, and I have several autochtons that gave me”, the war doctor adds.

QKMT Director Feride Rushiti shows that by now more than two decades, women and men must share the turquoise under as detailed circumstances as possible.
Government Commission members require descriptions of the event by the survivor, the witness, but in cases health, psychological, or judicial processes.

If they testify that they had witnesses present, the commission has the right to seek the testimony of family members, whether family members or a foreign person or even victims of sexual violence. Sometimes these family members or other people who have seen it or witnessed rape refuse to give evidence, which represents a kind of fluctuation to the commission why I'm not bringing it. If the wife reports that she has visited the doctor, medical records are constantly required. This health documentation is not easy to obtain. Maybe it went to 2002, 2005, 2006. We know what health documentation system we have in Kosovo. It's not like with a click there, you get a record out and you get it. Furthermore, women have gone to it and have not said they are victims of assault”, Rushiti declares for Kosovo Press.

Many of the women who survived sexual rape have been eliminated by these health records.

“Most of them have been forced to eliminate even the few documents they had. And they don't possess those documents that they can support, and this is a kind of challenge for the Government Commission how to base or link the traumatic events of the person who has explained with all the possible psychological consequences with additional documents that could have reinforced that traumatic event”, he adds.

The Council for Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms, Behgjet Shala, stresses that it is difficult and in some cases even impossible to document sexual violations during the recent war in Kosovo.

If a victim of sexual violence has preserved such a document and offers it voluntarily is something else, but if a victim of sexual violence who has experienced major trauma and was forced to abort because no one keeps the fruit of rape voluntarily, then it is a retraumatizing of the victim of sexual violence. And we consider it contrary to human rights”, Shala concludes.

Kosova Prerss had earlier reported that some 40 already no longer living victims of four different organisations have been recorded, but that number could be even higher.
The evidence, confessions of war crimes experiences, remains unprecedented.

The status of the victim of sexual violence has been recognised by law in 2014. The Government Commission for Recognition and Verification of the Status of Victims of Sex Violence has officially begun work in February 2018.