At the initiative of the Kosovo-born artist Alketa Xhafaand New York producer Anna Di Lellio and with the backing of my office, we collected five thousands skirts displayed in the football stadium of Pristina in honor of the thousands of survivors of wartime rape.

Those skirts came from the people of Kosovo. For a month, women and men throughout the country donated skirts in solidarity with the survivors. 

Many people, including survivors, shared dresses they wore on special occasions.

A skirt worn at a brother’s wedding.

A dress a Member of Parliament wore the day she signed the independence declaration. 

There were also dresses of sad occasions: a gown of a marriage that fell apart because of the rape. A skirt worn on the day of the rape with an inscription: “This skirt conceals a horrific story.” It also bears the date of the rape.

They were hung on the capital’s football stadium to show the magnitude of this form of torture and to recognize that the shame did not fall upon the victims but the perpetrators of this horrendous crime. 

They also symbolically blurred the line. Rape could have happened to any of us during the war.

Former fighters, singers, members of the parliament, ministers and thousands of ordinary people joined to symbolically tell them that they were not alone.