Displaced Kosovo Romanies refuse proposed return over housing, security
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - August 5, 2005, Friday

Text of report by Serbia-Montenegrin radio Kontakt Plus on 4 August

[Announcer] Romanies [living in the Serb-populated northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica] do not wish to return to Romska mahala [district] in the southern [Albanian-populated] part of Kosovska Mitrovica in which around 8,000 of them used to live until 1999, one of the representatives of the Roma community, Skender Gushani, said today. He explained that Romanies did not want to return to the southern part of Kosovska Mitrovica where Kosovo Protection Corps [TMK in Albanian], working together with Kfor [NATO-led Kosovo Force], had begun clearing the rubble where Roma houses once had stood, because there was no security there.

[Gushani] This is because we have no security there. We would not return to where we once used to live, to the place we had, but they want us to return to some totally collective residential buildings, let me call them that, and we will lose the district we once used to occupy.

[Announcer] If they were to build the houses in which we once used to live, not residential buildings, and if our elementary human rights were respected, we would return immediately to our homes, Gushani told Kontakt Plus radio.

[Gushani] Yes, in [word indistinct] we had protection and everything which belongs to a man, the freedom of movement, the right to exercise his religion, the right to education, and the right to have access to municipality administration.

[Announcer] Romska mahala in the southern part of Kosovska Mitrovica was the biggest Roma settlement in former Yugoslavia. It was razed to the ground recently, after the arrival of UNMIK [UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo] and Kfor to Kosovo-Metohija in 1999.

SOURCE: Kontakt Plus, Kosovska Mitrovica, in Serbian 14:00 GMT, 4 Aug 05

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