Engl 135 Advanced Composition

Running Head RAPE VICTIMS IN KOSOVO DURING fight ravishment Victims in Kosovo during War Manjola Cuka ENGL 135 Advanced Composition Catherine Davis April 20, 2009 DeVry University, We all told argon a state of state of w argon of the suffering that war brings in sights lives. War means losing everything you hold dear. War means losing your childhood home, war means losing your husband, wife, child, br other(a), and sister. During the war in Kosovo there were a image of bestial actions performed towards the Kosovo population physically and emotionally.The Serbs knew exactly what these f put aside valued the virtually in their lives. That is honor. Among other inhu creation and degrading acts executed towards the Kosovo people during the war, the Serbs used bodge as a tool to eradicate non hardly the women as individuals but also their families to the core. check to McKinsey (1993), there were an estimated twenty thousand females dishonor during the war in Kosovo. That i s a large number considering that population of Kosovo is a little over two million people. The Kosovo population had been trying to kick upstairs their independence for al some a decade.They were precisely asking for their honorables the freedom of speech, the right to send the children to schools where they bottom learn their own language, the freedom of media, and the freedom of sprightliness sentence in their own country with erupt upkeep. This is their country and they were only asking for what was theirs. According to the U. S State Department continue (1999), the Serbs started an ethnic cleansing travail that was meant to remove all the non Serb population out of the country. The most grue approximately acts towards these people started to give worse after NATO troops bombed the Serb military points on display 24, 1999.Serbs decided to punish the people by forcing them out of their homes, burning their houses, torturous them, raping them, and killing them. Rape wa s the main weapon used against the Kosovo women to terrorize and alter the entire population. Shenon (1999), reputations on these gruesome activities that were taking place in Kosovo The departments report state that refugee accounts suggested that Serbian forces had executed more than 4,000 Kosovars, and that surveillance photographs downn every by satellites or airplanes had identified s sluice possible sites of mass graves.The report said that profanes of Albanian women were cosmos account in increasing numbers, with self-opinionated mass irreverences apparently carried out in the cities of Djakovica and Pec. To understand the consequences that impair has in the lives of the Kosovo people, we have to understand how they are raised and the beliefs that are engraved in them throughout the years. The people of Kosovo value family and country more than their own lives. The new-fangled girls are raised to believe that their role in the cosmea is to get married, have childr en, and take care of the chores around the house. in that location is a distinguished difference of opinion the way these people lived their lives. Men were the bread winners and women were there to raise the children and take care of the house. If there was male comp any(prenominal) in the house, the females would only serve up them and go to their rooms until the company left. One of Dr. Alakija (2000) reports explains how a team of males was greeted only by Kosovo males, and when a team of females went to investigate they were greeted by females. It is not clutch for strange males to discuss with the Kosovo females even to get their testimony.Another important part of these peoples lives is marriage. Dating outside marriage is prohibited in their finale and the girl should not lose their virginity until she gets married. The girls that had pre marital relationships are called unfit for any man to marry. So after knowing these facts we can only imagine, what rape means to these people. The women lose their purity after universe touched by another man even though it is not their fault. No man would come pie-eyed to them for the rest of their lives. They would live the rest of their days hating themselves and regard they were gone.The Kosovo women were outrage and gouged systematically in breast of their loved ones drop them physically and emotionally for the rest of their lives. There are statements of pregnant women who were assail and beaten by either gunpoint or by be tortured. The physical suffer these women endured can never be compared with the emotional and cordial damage they went through. There is not a bigger discomposure than being assault in front of your father, your mother, your brother, your uncle, and your children. How can someone be the similar after going through something like that?These women were attack in front of their children, no matter what age. It is heartbreaking and infuriating at the same judgment of convict ion how these individuals would put children and mothers in these inhuman situations. One of the many rape victims explained how disoriented she was when being held down by multiple individuals tour another was raping her. This is how she describes her queer I could not resist, I could not fight against them, the witness, a adult female identified as N. S. , testified. I could not resist because the others were holding me while my children were watching (Sullivan, 2000).Another horrific fact during the war was that the Serbs raped these women with the intention to plant them pregnant. There are two reasons the Serbs impregnated the Kosovo women one was to dishonor them and their families for life and split second one to increase the Serb population with their children. According to BBC News (2000), only the month of January of 2000, there were one hundred rape babies born. That is a large number for this small community. How were these women able to live every day knowing tha t deep down them was the child of the enemy.The enemy that killed their man, the enemy that kicked them out of their own homes, the enemy that raped them in front of their loved ones. As Both (2001), noted The bound genocidal rape is both emotionally and politically loaded, but is does seem to accurately reflect the realities felt by some if not all raped women in the conflict. As we saw above, some raped Muslim women inform that their attackers claimed that they were intending to impregnate them to create Serbian babies, and that some women were held captive for a degree of weeks to ensure that they did not abort the child they had conceived in rape (p. 4). watch over is the most valuable virtue in the Kosovo society. Serbs knew they would humiliate and degrade not only the Kosovo women but their families and their loved ones. After being raped these women would never speak of the ordeal they went through and would hide it from everyone if they could. These women would rather be dead past share their torment with someone else especially if it was someone they did not know. They would rather keep the pain to themselves if that was an option. It was not enough they suffered rom the torture that was used against them, but they had to live in fear of losing everything they held dear even though this was not their fault. The raped Kosovo women would not share these ordeals with their own families for the fear of bringing shame to their entire family. The husband would leave the wife if they shew out she was raped. Here is one ex adeninele of a husband that suspects his juvenile wife was raped Mr. Thaqi says his wife, who did not want her name published, denies the rape because she doesnt hold up tell that kind of story. If she admitted it to him, he said, I would ask for a disjoint &8212 even if I had 20 children. As his wife listened, silent and shamefaced, in a corner of their empty home, looted of all furniture and possessions by the Serbs, Mr. Thaq i added I dont hate her, but the story is before my eyes. I detect very cold toward her. Kissing her, he said, is like kissing a dead body (Bumiller, 1999). It is not hard enough that they were raped and gloomy but they have to live with the shame for the rest of their lives. Most of these women lock themselves in their parents homes until they die either by choice or they are forced.It is heartbreaking how the community and their families expect them to commit suicide for something that was not their fault. Serbs knew that by raping the women they would destroy their families. What other method could be better then destroy a country to its core? These women live the rest of their lives excluded from the outside area wishing they were dead. The husbands live the rest of their lives wishing their wives were dead. Their parents live their lives wishing their missy was dead. In the Kosovo culture rape carries a very strong neighborly taboo and shame keeps victims silent.The women and men of Kosovo are not as afeard(predicate) of death as they are of rape. Rape is a deeply spiritualist subject in ethnic Albanian Kosovo, a Muslim and mostly traditional society, where a sexual assault can permanently stag a woman, shaming her family and ruining her marriage or prospects of marriage. Gathering first-hand accounts of rape has proved very difficult for war crimes investigators, and the scale of sexual assaults here may never be fully known (Finn, 1999). They cannot tolerate the thought of their women being touched by another man.This degrading act not only humiliates the women but it demoralizes the men that are engagement in the mountains. That was one of the biggest war strategies the Serbs used to defeat the Kosovo people. And this was one more reason the women keep the rape secret. They want their husbands, their fathers, and their brothers to fight for their country instead of carrying the family shame in their shoulders. The world came together to hel p the rape victims with everything they needed. The biggest issue the humanitarian organizationswere facingwas the non cooperation from the victims and their families.Under no circumstances they would admit they were raped unless there were witnesses to testify to that. Even then it would be very difficult to treat these patients. Knowing the consequences of admitting they were raped, what mother would seek losing her children to get medical treatment? How can they put their own rise being before their children? They considered themselves dead anyway. They would rather live in pain for the rest of their lives with their children around them, then medically treated and have confused their families.They would shut down and most of the time they would deny they were raped. There are a large number of cases that are not officially reported as we have seen in different reports Rape There are numerous accounts indicating that the organized and individual rape of Kosovar Albanian women by Serbian forces was widespread. For ex axerophtholle, Serbian forces systematically raped women in Djakovica and Pec, and in some cases locomote up women and took them to hotels where they were raped by troops under encouragement of their commanders.Rape is most likely an underreported atrocity because of the stigma attached to the victims in traditional Kosovar Albanian society (U. S State Department Report, 1999) It is unthinkable in some cultures to comprehend how these families treat the rape victims, particularly these women that were forced into these acts and had no other choice. Instead of embracing them and try to help them get through these concentrated times, they throw them in the streets and also blame them for the shame they bring to the family. There is no mercy for the raped victims.What can be worse than having your own parents, the ones that gave you life, the ones that raised and nurtured you, wish you were dead? These rape victims find their way out by shutt ing down or by going in the mountains and join the man in the fight for their freedom. They have no life next to their own family. They choose to leave and fight to get by from the staring eyes of their neighbors and everyone else that gets in contact with them. The biggest reason is to take their humiliation with them and spare their family the shame and embarrassment.Here are the words of a father of a rape victim I have given her to the KLA so she can do to the Serbs what they have done to us, Haxhi Lokaj said of his daughter, who has been sent to fight with the rebels of the Kosovo expelling Army. She willing probably be killed, but that would be for the best, the 40-year-old father said with more resignation than sorrow. She would have no future anyway after what they did to her he continued (Williams, 1999). There are different approaches the enemy uses to destroy a population to the core in the time of war.Serbs used the most degrading act to ruin the Kosovo families for l ife. That was rape. Death does not come close to the pain and the outcome that rape brings in these peoples lives. If the women and men died protecting their country, fighting for their rights, or protecting themselves from being abused, they would be praised. In contrary if the women were raped but survived, for no fault of their own, they were the humiliation of their family and the whole community. Compassion for the rape victims does not exist.It will take a long time and a few generations for these people to start living a full life. It will not be easy for these memories to be erased from their minds. References Alakija, P (2000). The ravages of war. Retrieved April 21, 2009 from http//www. cmaj. ca/cgi/ heart/full/163/9/1148 BBC News. (2000). Women scarred by Kosovo atrocities. Retrieved April 17, 2009 from http//news. bbc. co. uk/2/hi/ europium/716701. stmBooth, K (2001). The Kosovo tragedy the human rights dimensions. (1st Ed. ) Oxford Routledge, member of the Taylor & anti ophthalmic factoramp Francis Group.Retrieved April 15, 2009 from http//books. google. com/books? id=777jPodhCYYC&ampdq=The+Kosovo+tragedy+the+human+rights+dimensions. &ampprintsec=frontcover&ampsource=bn&amphl=en&ampei=8HLuSaSYMYuqtgeEgMHMDw&ampsa=X&ampoi=book_result&ampct=result&ampresnum=4Bumiller, E. (1999). Crisis in the Balkans Crimes Deny Rape or Be Hated Kosovo Victims Choice. Retrieved April 15, 2009 from http//www. nytimes. com/1999/06/22/world/crisis-in-the-balkans-crimes-deny-rape-or-be-hated-kosovo-victims-choice. html? n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjec