MONUMENT " HEROINAT "

The monument of "Heroines" (Memoriali Heroinat, Spomenik Heroine) is dedicated to the sacrifice of Albanian Kosovar women during the 1998-1999 war and especially to those who were victims of rape. This work, inaugurated in June 2015, was designed by the designer from Albania Ilir Blakçori. It is composed of 20,145 metal medallions of 3.5 cm in diameter decorated with the same woman's face. These are placed on rods of different lengths. The medallions, tightly packed together, are arranged in such a way as to reproduce the face of the same woman in large format (5.5 x 4.5 m) and in relief (2 m deep). According to the designer, the medallions represent the 20,145 Kosovo Albanian women raped by Serbian and Yugoslav forces during the eighteen-month conflict. The result is very beautiful and allows to highlight a sensitive subject in a society still marked by the domination of men towards women.

Plagiarism and controversy. However, the work poses several problems. First of all, as local journalists have pointed out, it is a plagiarism. The process of the rods drawing a face in relief was developed by British designer Asif Khan for his MegaFaces installation on the pavilion of the Russian telephone operator Megafon during the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February 2014. Second, it is the 20,145 figure that is questionable. None of the major NGOs, such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, give precise figures. Only an estimate of 10,000 to 20,000 rapes committed during the conflict is given. It is impossible to know the exact number of victims of this type of mass crime.

Minorities and impunity. Another very disturbing fact is that the work ignores all other categories of victims besides Albanian women. The NGOs report a very large number of cases of children and men raped and sexually assaulted during the Kosovo war. They also point out that all minorities in the country were affected, especially Serbian and Roma women, who were systematically raped by members of the KLA. The last detail that shocks with this monument financed by the Kosovar state and European aid is its location, very close to the Kosovar Ministry of Justice and the offices of the European mission Eulex in charge of justice issues. Since 1999, none of the men suspected of rape during the conflict has been convicted by national or international justice.