Sawt Falasteen - Male victim breaks 'suffocating' silence on Kosovo war rapes

The father-of-three was raped by a Serbian policeman during the bloody conflict between Albanian guerillas and Serbian armed forces in 1998 and 1999 that eventually saw Kosovo break away from Belgrade.

Officials estimate Serbian forces raped up to 20,000 women during the war in which 13,000 people -- mostly ethnic Albanian civilians -- died.

Human Rights Watch said Albanian fighters also raped Serbian, Albanian and Roma women in a 2000 report documenting widespread abuse by the combatants.

But the precise number is buried by "a deeply entrenched social stigma, which still overshadows wartime rapes", said Bekim Blakaj of Kosovo's Humanitarian Law Center.

Nishori told AFP that he hopes his own "difficult" journey -- which at times left him suicidal -- will help others find the strength to cast a light into the darkest corners of the war's atrocities.

The 48-year-old said he would not have been able to come forward without his family's support. "It has given me strength. It has played a very, very big role," he said.

- 'I walked and cried at night' -

But he knows that the war, which only ended when NATO bombed the Serbian forces into submission, has left many more struggling alone.

"I was suffocating. I would leave the house at night. I would feel like screaming. I would walk and cry," he told AFP.

The Kosovo government acknowledged the suffering of the victims of wartime rapes by paying them a pension of 270 euros ($313) a month.

But 11 years after it was set up, only a few hundred women get the payment. Nishori will be the first man to receive it.

Activists say many survivors will never come forward due to the shame attached to rape in Albanian society.

"Rape is perceived by our society more as a violation of family honour," said Veprore Shehu from Medica Kosova, which has given psychological support to some 600 female survivors.

Nishori's nightmare began when he was pulled from a refugee column in September 1998. He was taken for interrogation to a police station in Drenas -- about 23 kilometres (14 miles) west of Pristina.

"When it was my turn to be interrogated, around midnight, two policemen took me to the toilet, where one of them raped me," he said, taking deep breaths as he slowly recounted his ordeal.

"When another policeman wanted to do the same, a third policeman came, and perhaps because of my screams, snatched me away from them and returned me to a cell."

- 'Weapon of war' -

Blakaj said the vast majority of sexual abuse was perpetrated by Serbian forces on ethnic Albanian women.

By the end of the conflict, it had become "a weapon of war" used to create terror among civilians, he said.

"Rape by police, paramilitaries and armed forces became widespread and almost routine," a 2017 Amnesty International report into the war concluded.

A Serbian army deserter quoted in the report described sexual violence as "normal like taking a shower and having breakfast".

On Tuesday, a Pristina court sentenced a Kosovo Serb to 15 years prison for rape during the conflict after a closed trial.

It is just the second prosecution for rape during the Kosovo war, a mark of how slow the road to justice has been for victims of crimes now decades old.

When Nishori finally revealed his abuse to his family, his oldest daughter, Flutura, urged him to go public.

"Dad's story needed to be revealed to show that it wasn't just women who were victims of sexual violence, but men too," the 23-year-old theatre student said.

"Nothing has changed in the family since the secret was revealed," she told AFP.

"He was and remains our father. He remains the same figure. Maybe even stronger."

M.AlAhmad--SF-PST