Displaced Kosovo Roma
10 September 1998
Armed conflicts between the Serbian police and the Kosovo Liberation Army in the Kosovo province of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have greatly affected the local Romani community. Roma began to flee Kosovo in large numbers following the escalation of clashes in early June. Shooting around Romani settlements, expulsion threats by Kosovo Albanians, and Romani houses set on fire were cited by displaced Roma as reasons for their flight. The Kosovo Information Center reported on May 5 that one Rom was killed and another wounded in an attack by the Serbian police on the village of Ponoševac. Four Roma were kidnapped in Kosovo, according to a July 31 statement of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and their fate was still unknown as of September 3.
The difficult situation of ten large Romani families (approximately sixty members), who came from the areas of Drenica and Dečani in Kosovo to seek refuge in central Serbia, was reported by the Kragujevac-based Committee for the Protection of Roma Rights in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on June 12. According to the Romska kongresna partija (Romani Congress Party), in the city of Novi Sad in Vojvodina province alone there were at least 1500 Romani refugees from Kosovo. Many of them are accommodated in Romani settlements, but several hundred live in tents in the fields. Some of the Roma who arrived in Novi Sad from Kosovo are refugees for a second time, having previously come from war-affected Croatia in 1991. Their Novi Sad hosts themselves are an impoverished group living under extremely harsh conditions - while Roma from Kosovo feel relieved having just escaped the havoc of armed conflict, the hosts appear to be very concerned about the future of both themselves and their new neighbours.
Displaced persons from Kosovo have no clear status anywhere in the Republic of Serbia. Serbian Commissioner for Refugees Ms Bratislava Morina was often quoted in the Serbian press stating that there are no refugees from Kosovo in Serbia, as the term "refugee" cannot be used with regard to persons who left the province, but are still within the borders of the same country. A more accurate description of those who fled Kosovo would be internally displaced persons (IDPs). At the same time, Mr Andreja Milosavljević, co-ordinator of the activities of Serbian state institutions in Kosovo and Metohija, said that a policy of the Republic of Serbia on IDPs is yet to be formulated. With their status unclear, the newcomers from Kosovo face serious problems in the enjoyment of their rights. Roma who were receiving meagre social benefits in Kosovo do not receive them at all in other parts of the country.
In mid-July, the ERRC met a sixteen-member Romani family from the Kosovo village of Obilić, then staying with a Novi Sad Romani family of seventeen. A small child of that family became ill during their trip to Vojvodina and was taken to a local hospital. The family was required to pay for a medical service which would would have been available for free back home. "Officially, they do not exist", an employee of the Novi Sad Secretariat for Social and Health Care said to the ERRC. Some Roma prefer not to reveal that the armed conflict in Kosovo is what drove them out of their homeland. The ERRC spoke with a middle-aged Rom who was evidently scared and who insisted that he came to Novi Sad in the very beginning of July from a Kosovo village simply to look for a job.
The political situation in Montenegro, and accordingly the situation of Kosovo displaced people, is very different from that of Serbia. The authorities of the Republic of Montenegro have been providing assist-ance to the displaced Kosovo Roma since the beginning of the refugee influx, as a consequence of which a larger number of refugees are now heading for Montenegro.
In the Republic of Montenegro, the number of Romani refugees from Kosovo, according to the local Red Cross organisation, was 2,142 on July 21, 1998. Most Roma from Kosovo fled to the municip-alities of Podgorica, Nikšic, Kolašin, Plav, Rožaj and Ulcinj. In mid-August, in the capital Podgorica alone there were around 1700 Roma IDPs in the Romani neighbourhoods of Konik and Ribnička Vrela. Also in Podgorica, about 410 Roma from Kosovo established a camp where they lived in tents provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), without running water, electricity or sanitation, only 500-800 meters from the dump site of the city. Lack of money to buy food was also a serious problem, and Roma children were seen searching through the trash in search for food.
Of the 265,000 displaced persons from Kosovo reported by the UNHCR on August 29, some have even gone to Bosnia, where, according to the Refugee Bureau of the Ministry of Civil Affairs and Communica-tions of Bosnia-Herzegovina, there are officially 500 refugee status applicants and about 3,000 other persons of various ethnic groups from Kosovo temporarily accommodated with their relatives. According to information from the local press, the Roma of Sarajevo have provided shelter to Kosovo Roma in local Romani settlements.
(Committee for the Protection of Roma Rights in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, ERRC, International Committee of the Red Cross, Kosovo Information Center, Red Cross of Montenegro, Refugee Bureau of the Ministry of Civil Affairs and Commun-ications of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romska kongresna partija, UNHCR)
