For nearly two decades, Alban thought he was the only man who experienced sexual violence during the war in Kosovo.
When the Kosovo authorities passed a law that enabled the official recognition of those raped in the war, he realized that he was not alone.
Alban (name changed) was 17 years old when he fled with his family from a village in Kosovo.
They hid with relatives, but there was not enough food for everyone, so he returned to the house to get a sack of wheat.
When he entered the courtyard, he was stopped, as he says, by a group of men in Serbian police uniforms.
They forced him into the house.
“At first I didn’t understand what was happening,” says Alban, who is now forty years old.
“I felt pain and thought they were stabbing me in the back.”
“Then I realized that they undressed me and were doing the worst to me.” I lost consciousness,” he says, while his voice trembles and memories come flooding back.
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Dryton (name changed) understands Alban’s story all too well.
The two have never met, but Drayton, now in his mid-60s, shares a similar secret.
He survived multiple sexual abuses, including gang rape in 1999, while he spent 30 days in detention in Kosovo.
The detention center was managed by a Serbian paramilitary formation, he believes.
Although he knew that there were other men who had experienced the same violence, for years he did not talk about what he went through with anyone, except his wife.
It is estimated that, during the war in Kosovo alone, between 10,000 and 20,000 people experienced sexual violence, although until now there has been no research that would determine the number more precisely.
Serbia responded to Kosovo’s aspirations for independence by sending military and paramilitary forces. Both sides are accused of war crimes, such as the rape of civilians.
In 2018, Kosovo passed a law that allowed survivors of sexual abuse during the war to receive civilian victim status and financial assistance.
The decision encouraged Alban and Drayton to break two decades of silence and speak out about one of the last taboos of war.
About 2,000 people have applied, and 1,650 have received the status of civilian victims of war so far.
Among them are 84 men, according to data from the Kosovo Commission for the Recognition and Verification of the Status of Civilian Victims of War, which BBC journalists had access to.
The Kosovo government initially set February 2023 as the application deadline, but it was later extended to May 2025.
A well-kept secret
Alban still lives in the modest family house where he was raped.
“It’s terrible, but I never had the means to move,” he says, looking away.
The hallway where he was attacked connects a small kitchen, a bathroom and two bedrooms, where he lives with his wife and children.
The wife does business around the house, the children play, and family life goes on without any of them knowing what happened in their home.
“I don’t want my family to find out, because even today there are moments when I wish I didn’t exist at all.”
“They destroyed my morale, sometimes I still worry about whether I’m man enough – it’s a heavy burden,” says Alban in a flat tone.
Before requesting the status of a civilian victim of war, Alban spoke only once about his own suffering.
A few days after he was raped, he shared the secret with his father.
“He was devastated, but happy that I survived, because he said that they could have killed me,” Alban remembers, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Dryton considered telling his father, but didn’t.
“He was old and sick, I was afraid that the stress would kill him,” he says.
“However, my father saw that something was wrong, he told me that I had to keep something inside me.”
Dryton plucked up the courage to tell his wife, who gave birth to their third child a week after he was released from custody.
“She accepted that what happened was not my fault,” he adds, clutching his face with both hands.
Point to long-term silence
The organization Human Rights Watch assessed that rape during the war in Kosovo was an “instrument of systematic ethnic cleansing” by the regime of the then president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic.
For many years, rape was taboo even among Kosovo Albanian women, says Feride Rushiti, a doctor and human rights activist from Pristina.
Rushiti began recording cases of war rape during the conflict, working in refugee camps in the north of Albania.
“Stigma was omnipresent – men prevented women from speaking publicly about what had happened to them, because they thought it showed how they had failed to protect them,” he says.
When the war ended, Rushiti founded the Kosovo Center for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims (KRCT), an NGO for psychological and legal support for survivors of sexual violence.
While women have been among the beneficiaries of KRCT from the very beginning, men only started to apply in 2014, when the Kosovo parliament first discussed a law that allowed rape survivors to acquire the official status of civilian victims of war, says .
“The traditional expectation is that men should protect the family and not be in the position of a victim,” Rushiti points out.
Specialized non-governmental organizations, such as KRCT, cooperate with Kosovo institutions to verify rape survivors in order to grant them the status of civilian victims of war.
Once they obtain the status, they are entitled to a lifetime allowance of around 230 euros per month, roughly a third of the average salary in Kosovo.
Alban heard about this decision in the news. The decision to put an end to two decades of silence was not easy at all.
He says he tried to knock on the door of KRCT twice, but his heart would start pounding, his hands would shake and his palms would sweat.
Both times he changed his mind.
The KRCT threshold was crossed in the spring of 2019.
Drayton also heard about the new law in the news, but says he was under so much stress when he decided to report that he doesn’t even remember what it was like.
“I really wanted to tell what happened to me, but I felt like I had nowhere to go.”
“When I finally spoke, I felt a huge sense of relief,” he recalls.
Both had been taking antidepressants and tranquilizers prescribed by doctors for years after the war for symptoms such as nightmares, mood swings and palpitations.
Only when they reported to KRCT, with the help of experts, did they begin to deal with the root of the problem.
“They told me it was not my fault,” says Alban.
“I was just a helpless civilian, and the criminals who did this to me are to blame,” he adds.
Reflecting on his years of silence, Drayton says he struggled for a long time with “who to report.”
“I still feel like a ruined man.”
“But it wasn’t until I told what happened that I was able to find a way to deal with that burden a little better.”
When he watches the news about the conflicts in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, he often thinks that similar things are happening in other parts of the world.
“Report – that’s my message to everyone who has gone through what I’ve gone through.”
“It’s not a shame.”
Waiting for justice
KRCT is also working to collect evidence that would bring the perpetrators to justice.
“Many survivors show their willingness to testify in court, but most of the time they do not know the identity of the perpetrators,” says Selvi Izeti, KRCT psychologist.
“We rarely get names or information about what the perpetrators looked like, as some wore masks.”
Drayton remembers sharing custody with “five or six” other men who suffered similar abuse, but is not in contact with any of them.
“I’d like to find them and exchange information on the perpetrators, but I’m not sure where to look.”
“I’m afraid I’m knocking on the wrong door,” he says.
In a ruling from 2021, which is considered historic, former police officer Zoran Vukotić from Kosovo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping women and participating in the expulsion of Albanian civilians during the war.
It was the first verdict for sexual abuse during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo. year, and Izeti describes it as a “turning point”.
“She gave hope to those who survived rape, that the perpetrators could be punished many years later,” he says.
Certain countries in the Balkans, such as Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, have similar laws.
However, in Serbia, the law does not recognize people who have survived sexual violence as civilian victims of war.
Until now, there were officially no men from the Serbian community in Kosovo who would speak publicly about the experience of rape during the war.
The BBC contacted the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Social Affairs and Veterans’ Affairs, but no response was received by the time the text was published.
Sixteen years after the declaration of independence, Kosovo has been recognized by around 100 countries. However, the exact number is not known.
Pristina cites a figure of 117 countries, and in Belgrade they say that there are far fewer.
Among the countries of the European Union that have not recognized Kosovo are Spain, Slovakia, Cyprus, Greece and Romania, and when it comes to world powers, they are Russia, China, Brazil and India.
Since 2008, Kosovo has become a member of several international organizations, such as the IMF, the World Bank and FIFA, but not the United Nations.
