Roma living like ping-pong balls in the schizophrenia of Kosovska Mitrovica

Heavy rain is drumming on my already-soaked umbrella as we look out over a plain dotted with the ruins of what was a small Roma town. A brick two-story construction looms toward us through the falling fog, and the dogs behind the wooden stakes that outline the private land never stop barking. No one can be seen anywhere, the cloudburst has driven the residents inside. After another 100 meters, modern apartment buildings appear along with some miniature row houses. At the center of it all are roughly five shops and the single-story building of the local clinic. A rusted sign displaying countless international logos tells us we are in the Roma mahala of Mitrovica.

Walking to Albania

Ashkalija and Roma people have lived on the territory of what is today a reconstructed mahala in Mitrovica since time immemorial. Before the war in Kosovo, it was home to about 8 000 people. In 1999 a wave of violence was committed by Serbian military units against the Albanian population, who were expelled from their homes that year. Dozens of them did not survive the attacks.

"I remember as a small boy heading with a friend for the market in town and then changing my mind and turning back. By the time I made it home, grenades had started falling from helicopters onto the crowds of people. There was a lot of blood everywhere. I will never forget it," says Astrit, a 23-year-old Albanian man from Mitrovica who saw the start of the war in his hometown. "I will also never forget the moment when people came and burned down our house. We walked for five days and five nights to reach the border with Albania. On foot. I was 11," he recalls.

After the NATO invasion that year, the Kosovo Albanians began returning to their homes. The harms they had suffered led some of them to take revenge on the civilian population of the enemy. This time it was the Serbs who were expelled from their homes. They were also murdered en masse. The Roma settlement on the south side of town was not spared. Albanians considered the Roma collaborators with the Serbian regime because they attended Serbian schools, worked in Serbian state enterprises, and served in the Serbian Army. The Roma mahala, home to almost 8 000 people, was burned to the ground.

Until 2004, several hundred Ashkalija and Roma people were being housed in three camps in north Mitrovica. The others fled to Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia or Western Europe.

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