Feride Rushiti, Director of the Kosovo Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims (QKRMT) and a Nobel Prize nominee, has stated that sexual violence during the war in Kosovo was long ignored in parliamentary discourse.
“There was no space or social discourse on sexual violence. When we first started working with parliamentarians, we could not speak as openly as we do today. The language used was painful. Discussions included gynecological verification and debates over numbers… at one point, we had to turn off the television,” Rushiti recalled, referring to parliamentary sessions in 2014.
She shared her first encounters with survivors in March 1998 in Kukës, describing the harrowing stories that motivated her to establish a safe space for survivors in Kosovo.
The courage of Vasfije Krasniqi in publicly speaking about her experience, Rushiti emphasized, played a pivotal role in breaking stigma and prejudice in society.
