In Kosovo's camps, a story waits for an ending

International Herald Tribune ^ | January 12, 2005 | Marek Antoni Nowicki

[Jane_N]

The Roma

PRISTINA, Kosovo As my car entered the camp in Zitkovac, a town in northern Kosovo, a taxi followed, with a coffin tied precariously across the roof. The camp was supposed to serve as interim housing for some of Kosovo's Roma, or Gypsies, displaced from their settlement in the nearby city of Mitrovica. But since 1999, it has become the birth place and final resting place for many.

For more than five years, wind, rain, sun and snow have beaten down on the flimsy makeshift dwellings - made of nothing more than tin and clap-board, insulated by plastic sheets - that shelter 1,000 people in four Roma sites in northern Kosovo.

The only water flowing in the camps spills out from broken valves. Showers and temporary toilets are shared by everyone - when they function. Putrid water muddies the dirt walkways between shacks and seeps inside the fragile households of nearly every family.

Inhabitants of the camps openly complain about the unsafe and unsanitary conditions in which their children play. The Roma camp at Zitkovac lies in the shadow of poisonous metal waste left over from the Trepca mines, which were among the largest in Europe, supplying lead, zinc and gold. Forty-one Roma children have been diagnosed with blood disorders as a result.

[Jane_N]

From the article:

"If these Roma can no longer live in Fabricka Mahalla, then this is nothing else but the de facto completion of the ethnic cleansing that started in 1999."

[malia]

Where is the media?

[SkyPilot]

Where is the media?

They are very busy, you know. ABC, NBC, and CNN have over 50 reporters assigned full-time to investigate the charge that GW Bush had an overdue library book charge from Moody AFB in 1970 that was never paid.

[ehoxha]

bmp