"I live here with too many other people": eight years after the fire in Štip, Macedonia
11 July 2000
Martin Demirovski1
In my capacity as local monitor in Macedonia for the ERRC, I visited Štip, a town in east-central Macedonia, on April 29, 2000, in order to follow up on the situation of Roma rendered homeless after a 1992 fire which destroyed a group of Romani houses there.
Burnt houses in Štip
On July 2, 1992, two rows of homes in Radanski Road, an area of Štip where both Romani and non-Romani families live, burned to the ground. Thirty-two Romani families, approximately 150-180 people, were rendered homeless by the fire. The cause of the fire remains unknown, although at the time and since there have been repeated allegations that the fire was deliberately set. Following the fire, Roma left without homes were housed in a student dormitory in the centre of Štip, but they were evicted approximately one and a half months later, when the school year began. The city neither rebuilt the houses nor provided alternate accommodation, and even whether the Roma would be legally permitted to rebuild on their own is unclear. The displaced families have either had to leave the area, move in with other family members, or occupy abandoned buildings around Štip. The case was described in A Pleasant Fiction: The Human Rights Situation of Roma in Macedonia, published by the ERRC in July 1998. Recently, six houses have been constructed on the site with foreign assistance, but Macedonian officials reportedly state that two of the houses must go to accommodate non-Roma.
I spoke with local Roma about the case. One of the people I interviewed was a Romani man named Mr Ramadan Amedov. Mr Amedov now lives with his wife and children in one room of a house close to the place where the burnt houses had been; his previous home was among those destroyed in the fire. He has been very involved in the promotion of Romani culture in Štip through preparing theatre performances. I found him cleaning his house and burning the garbage around the house. Mr Amedov was kind enough to provide the following testimony about the case:
At 1:15 AM, a group of drunk non-Romani boys came to the community and burned our homes with petrol. The fire could first be seen at the place where we had our shed made of wood and cardboard. We provided the police with this information. All of the people from the municipality were informed about our case. The response of the municipality was that they did not have the money to help build new houses for the Roma from Radanski Road. I don't think they ever arrested anyone for setting the fire. For a long time, no one in Macedonia was interested in our case. Between 1992 and 1994, the only step by the local municipality was to give us a letter of solidarity for our actions. They expected that with the letter, we could visit potential donors of money to rebuild our houses. We visited foreign embassies and private firms, but we were not successful in raising funds for new housing.
1994 was an election year. The candidates for the Macedonian Parliament were looking for local support. Mr Sande Davčev, one of the candidates, came to us saying that we Roma could start digging the basements for our new houses where the old ones had been. He also told us that an architectural plan had been prepared for the new houses. At the same time, the mayor of Štip, Mr Spasov, invited us to his office and told us that the Roma would not be required to pay taxes for property, water supply and that other expenses would be waived too. Mr Davčev was elected to the Macedonian Parliament, but he did not fulfil his promise to us. After one year, we Roma from the burnt houses organised a protest in Štip to ask why Mr Davčev did not fulfil his promises to us. Still nothing happened, so in 1998 we organised another protest in front of the building of the Macedonian government in Skopje. Some minutes into the protest, a man came out of the government building and told us: "I do not know what to tell you, I do not have an answer for you." I heard that one month later, Mayor Spasov received a letter from the Ministry for Urban Development explaining that they are not responsible for any expenses resulting from the fire.
The ERRC travelled around Štip to speak to some other families rendered homeless by the fire in 1992. Ms Bojana Džemailova was living in one of the houses burnt. Her son, Mr Džemail Džemaili was in Germany when the fire occurred, but since then has returned, and now he, his mother, his wife, their five children and a number of other people all live in very poor conditions in a single room. No water supply system is available close to them, and the area around them is used as a garbage dump. Džemail's main occupation is collecting iron and cardboard. He told the ERRC:
I spent some years in Germany, and I had to come back to Macedonia because I was deported by the German police. I returned to Štip in 1994. I went to live with my son-in-law for three years. After that, my son-in-law had to sell his house because of some private problems. Then I kicked down the door of an empty house on Vita Pop Jordanova Street and lived there for a while but the police came and told me that the house was going to be pulled down. A few days before the house was destroyed, I moved to this place on Karl Marx Street, where we are now. The owner of this house is Pelagonija, a construction firm.
I live here with too many other people. This house has two rooms and in these rooms live my family - my mother, my wife, my five children and I -, a family that is related to us - a man, his pregnant wife and their four children -, and a third family that is not related to us. They are a woman and two children; the husband is in prison. I do not have a job. I receive social welfare assistance, but this is only 4000 denars (approximately 90 euro), and must go to support my whole family. Sometimes the police come to tell us that this house will be pulled down, but we still stay here. Last time they came was in November 1999. I told them they could do whatever they wanted with the house, but that I did not have any other accommodation for my family. If this house is pulled down, I will set up a tent in the garden of the local municipality building.
Ms Bojana Džemaili, mother of Džemail Džemaili, told the ERRC:
I am 70 years old. I came to Macedonia when I married because my husband was from Macedonia, but he is dead now. I was born in Belgrade. I have some health problems and I do not know what will become of me. After the fire some people, I suppose they were from the local municipality, came to us and moved us to a dormitory. But we stayed there just one month, and then they told us to leave the dormitory, calling us "dirty Gypsies". After that my son came from Germany and now I live with him and his family. My other son is dead, he died on May 16, 1997; he had some problems with his heart. He was a young boy.
According to Mr Šenaj Osmanov of the Association for Human Rights Protection of Roma, a local Romani organisation in Štip, six new houses have been built on the place where the Roma houses were burned. The houses were reportedly constructed with financial help from donors in Bulgaria. Mr Osmanov told the ERRC that he had written a letter to the responsible local official of the Macedonian Ministry for Urban Development for permission to get involved in the coordination of these activities. He stated authorities from the Ministry had told him that two of the houses would have to be given to non-Romani families. Roma could "do whatever they want" with the other four.
Current situation
- As of April 29, 2000, Mr Ramadan Amedov lived with his family in one room, for which he paid 500 German marks. At the moment he makes a living by preparing and selling figures made of plaster.
- The local government of Štip reportedly wants to accommodate several families, including two non-Romani families, in the six new houses. The other Roma from the thirty-two families rendered homeless have not received any response from the local government about their housing problems.
- Many of the Roma from the burnt homes are now living in various places around Štip. Each family was required to fend for itself in order to find a solution to the problem of housing. Many of the displaced Romani families are very poor.
- There appears to be no strong coordinated approach on the part of local or national authorities in Macedonia to solving this problem.
Endnotes:
- Martin Demirovski is local monitor for the European Roma Rights Center in Macedonia.
