In the crowded and depressing city Mitrovica in Kosovo, where Serbs and Albanians are divided by a river and ethnic emotions, Roma live in an even more humiliating way.
The Roma camps are situated in the outskirts of the northern (Serb) part of Mitrovica, close to the river, with the entrance near the French KFOR compound.

A small piece of polluted land abandoned by a mining corporation, limited by the railway Pristina-Mitrovica and on the brink of an abyss. Every morning and evening a train passes without reducing speed. Once a man was killed and because there is not any fence, it is a permanent dangerous situation for the children. Besides the Cesmin Lug camp(280 people) there are three other camps, Zitkovac(125 people), Leposavic(210) and Kablar (50). Most of the people living here are Ashkali’s. Elisabeta Bajrami lives with her mother, two brothers, two sisters, a sister-in-law and a two years old child in one room from 5×3 and a shed, meant as a kitchen. A barrack is too much to say. The shelter is built from demolition wood and iron plates. Yet this shelter is by far the best in the Cesmin Lug camp. Elisabeta(35) is working with the local government on Roma-affairs. She receives each month hundred euro. Her brother Artan, is a journalist working with the local radio station Contact Plus where he takes care for the information in Romany. So does his 34 years old sister Sehiba – both replace each other. They also earn a hundred euro and so the family realizes to survive in a pretty good way – compared with the rest of the population in the camp.

The situation in the camps is heartrending. There is no running water and only now and then electricity. There is one toilet for five families. Because the refuse dump of the town is also situated here, walls of waste with scabby dogs and cats are around. All the shelters in the camps are in a tragic situation. ‘This is not a place to live, this is not life,’ Artan Bajrami said. There is a permanent shortage on food. Fruit and vegetables are inaccessible for the people. Roma-representatives from the four communities complain that when the Red Cross distributes food to the poor Serbs in Mitrovica-town, Roma receive the outdated food that cannot be used any longer by the Serbs. Elisabeta Bajrami showed a two years old tin of powder milk meant for the baby of her sister in law. She also showed a three kilogram tin of marmalade covered with fungus, she received a week ago.

In the past, near the site where the Roma camp is situated, the Trepca mines supplied lead, zinc and gold. When the company finished, it left a poisonous metal waste. Now children are playing here. Last year a four year old Ashkali girl named Djenita died of lead poisoning. Her sister Nikolina(3) was brought to a hospital in Belgrade and is in a critical position. After tests the European Roma Rights Center found out that more than forty children have been diagnosed with blood disorders caused by lead. Lead is all over in the water. When the water is dried up, the wind blows dust filled with lead through the camp. According to the World Health Organisation lead poisoning attacks the brains of the children and their organs.

Hardly any humanitarian aid arrives in the Roma settlement. In 2002 Elisabeta Bajrami got a NGO registration certificate for her organization Roma mothers for Roma mothers, but until so far she only got some clothes from an Italian organization. The Bajrami family is an exception in the Roma community. The 54-years old mother remembers a happy childhood in Pristina, where her father had a big house and where the family lived carefree together. There was always enough food and warmth, she never was confronted with any sign of discrimination, she said. Later on she married and happiness went on. All the children visited the secondary school and Artan even became a teacher. Then the war came and Albanian feeling in Kosovo turned against Roma. Because Roma were accused collaborating with the Serbs, they had to leave Kosovo. Still the Bajrami’s are taken by surprise about the sudden turn: ‘We did not know what was happening, at once there was hate’, Mrs Barjani said. Together with her children she was banished to a refugee camp in Serbia and in 2000 she came to Mitrovica. Her husband was refused a kidney dialyses when he was 53 and died three years ago.

Together with the Bajarami’s, probably more than hunderdthousand Roma were driven away from Kosovo. The majority now live in refugee-camps in Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia and in different, by KFOR soldiers protected Serb-enclaves within Kosovo. Most of the Roma in the four slums near the former Trepca mines, originally come from the Fabricka Mahalla, once one of the oldest settled Roma communities in the Balkans, in the south of Mitrovica. Almost seven thousand people lived together in rather good circumstances, being part of the community. In 1999 during the war, together with the Serbs, they were forced to the north part of the city. Nearly all the houses were burned down. Last year on the 17th of march, when there was a new outbreak of violations, again Serbs and Roma were expelled from Kosovo. In the northern part of Mitrovica the number of refugees increased. And in the Roma slums fear is widespread. According to Berend Brock, a Dutch advisor working with the NGO Community Building Mitrovica’, the British office in Mitrovica intends to remove the Roma slums to rebuild new houses in the same place. But the municipality of the town considers it is a far better idea to eliminate the Roma people from the site, and build a swimming pool and sports accommodation.

Rudie van Meurs / POLDERPERS.NL
Herwijnen, April 5th 2005