An open letter to my rapist campaign

Historically, Albanian women have been marginalized. One of the most egregious examples of that treatment was during the Kosovo war. This war involved a jarring scene of crimes, especially rape, an issue still being remedied today. Thousands of women and girls in Kosovo were systematically raped during the 1998-99 war. One of the main driving forces behind Serb troops raping Albanian women was so they could harm their dignity, essentially “stealing” the women from their husbands, and demoralizing them. What is heartbreaking and inhuman, many scholars identified these victims as “simple women”, women who have been degraded, disgraced, and will carry this trauma like a bullet for the rest of their lives. Which is why it is so difficult to find statistics on rape crimes by numbers. For many years survivors of horrific sexual violence have been let down by the international community and successive governments. Many survivors knew those who committed the crimes by name.

Beat Sexism decided to start an online campaign called “An open letter to my rapist” with #SkaMoShuj (#NoMoreSilence) hashtag to bring and raise awareness as well as support and empower women who were raped during the war. Our main goal is for media and decision-makers to pay more attention to what has happened and give rape survivors a better feeling about speaking up and asking for reparations. We will beat the continuing stigma by talking about it.