The Ashkalis, People With No Homeland

AIM Pristina, November 20, 2000

"We are not Romanies, we have nothing in common with them, we are the Ashkalis", repeated Naser Adiqi in the attempt to convince the journalists by his words and expressive gestures in the Ashkali camp in Plemetina village, municipality of Obilic, six kilometres from Pristina. Known in his camp as the "leader", he asked the media not to put an equation mark between the inhabitants of this camp and the Romanies or any other ethnic group in Kosovo. He addressed this request to the journalists just two days after four of his former "inmates" were found murdered in the village of Srbica, in the central region of Kosovo. They were murdered just three days after they had returned with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to their village in order to restart their lives. The highest officials in Kosovo accompanied by representatives of the two biggest political parties, having seen the lifeless bodies of four Ashkalis, among them the body of a 16-year old boy, concluded that this was a Barbarian murder. It all happened very quickly, and the condemnation of the murder by international officials seemed rather like an attempt to shirk responsibility for this crime. Head of the Commissariat for Refugees, Eric Morris, said that five Ashkalis accommodated in the camp in Kosovo Polje had asked to be returned to their village. That is why the officials of this organisation talked with municipal authorities and inhabitants of the villages which had "honoured this request, and even welcomed the returnees". Encouraged by this stand of the local Albanian population, the Ashkalis did not even accept the offered protection of the peace forces, but put up their tents in the vicinity of the ruins of their homes set on fire during the war in Kosovo. They had returned on Monday, it was said, and on Thursday morning their bodies were found riddled with bullets from close range.

Representatives of Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo (DSK) and Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo (DPK) sharply condemned this murder. The latter declared that "all those who had claimed that the local elections in Kosovo on October 28 would be accompanied by violence were disappointed, so they have now decided to kill the citizens of Kosovo", but they did not say who were actually the ones who had proclaimed that and it is not clear whether they were pointing their fingers at someone in Kosovo or to some "external enemies of Kosovo". Bernard Kouchner and Carlo Cabidioso, representatives of UNHCR and OSCE, together with the representatives of DSK and DPK immediately held a press conference where they sharply denounced this multiple murder. A representative of international police promised that the culprits would be found, perhaps not in a week or a month, because sometimes years were necessary for that, but they would be found, he said. He even asked the media not to "make the investigation more difficult" with their writing (!?)...

After only two days, a 13-year old Ashkali was murdered in Urosevac. His family started the search for him after he had failed to return home. His brother found his burnt body in a deserted house. The initial results of the investigation launched by international police showed that he had been murdered and then his body was "thrown into the fire"... The few local independent analysts who dared say anything about the murder of Kosovo Ashkalis believe that this is in fact a reaction to representatives of the international community and those who seem to be interested in initiation of the return of members of other ethnic communities to places where they used to live, in other words that this will become possible only if those who do not approve of multiethnic Kosovo allow it. A text published in ZERI is interesting in this sense in which a representative of local authorities in Srbica (where the four Ashkalis were murdered) claims that nobody has talked to them about their return and that they learnt "about such talks only after the murders had been committed". This is contrary to the statement of the representative of UNHCR and the Ashkalis themselves. An important question arises - were the actions of UNHCR and the local authorities in Srbica irresponsible when the murdered Ashkalis are concerned, especially when it is an established fact that there is, although not big, but a sufficient number of those who would like to see Kosovo with a different ethnic "composition". They are obviously not prevented in their intent even by the fact that the Ashkalis speak only Albanian, that their children have always attended schools in Albanian, that they have the same customs as the Albanians... Especially when one knows that among extremist circles in Kosovo they are "believed to be Romanies who during NATO intervention participated in criminal acts against the Albanians"...

In any case, representatives of the Ashkalis set a few conditions which had to be met, or they would not, as they said, "bury their dead". Among the conditions is the organisation of a round table discussion of political parties and an one-hour show on public TV of Kosovo in which the mutilated bodies of the members of their ethnic group would be shown. They persistently demanded that all media report that the murdered were Ashkalis, not Romanies...

Such aspirations towards ethnic divisions seem to have their origin in the impotence of the Romany community to influence the reality around it. At present in Kosovo there are communities which identify themselves as Egyptians, Romanies, and Ashkalis, and this has even become part of "official language" used in political statements. This "fashion" was conceived a long time ago, back at the time of the latest census of the population of Kosovo in 1981. "Defined" in the official documents of former communist Yugoslavia as "an ethnic minority with the same rights", the Romanies have never tasted the "fruits of Tito's socialist revolution". The only period when they could "breathe freely" (perhaps even then more theoretically than factually) were the eighties when "equality of the peoples and ethnic groups" was tested in Kosovo. At the time the Romanies even got a few shows on radio and one on TV and a few other "privileges". The state preserved the right to dictate everything

• from agency news to "correct use" of numerous dialects in which there were certain formulations which "offended persons or the social system". However, this did not bring about a big change in their lives. Even in the "most ardent" speeches of the time, the Romanies were mostly mentioned as "others". They were still mostly crowding the pavements with their "stalls" selling trifles or cleaning shoes...

In the nineties, after the autonomy of Kosovo had been abolished, the Romanies were used as a "bargaining counter". The authorities fully controlled by Belgrade remembered that they existed only when they needed them as the "evidence of equality and co-existence of the peoples and ethnic groups", as the evidence of "violence of the Albanians against other minorities" or when their votes were needed to fill the almost empty ballot boxes.

Extremely poor, in majority of cases to the extent of utmost misery, they queued for humanitarian aid they received from the "generous state" and with packages of oil, sugar and flour they could be heard or seen standing in front of cameras of state TV chanting "praises to the Serbian state which takes care of everybody with no discrimination". However, even in that world of "the equal ones" some were "more equal than the others". In fact, the Romanies had just a few public figures without true power. They lived equally badly like their Albanian neighbours in Kosovo. They often showed solidarity with their misery and even participated in secret votes for the "Republic of Kosovo". And then the war changed everything. Milosevic's regime sought representatives of the Romanies and Egyptians to talk to them about Kosovo and even "invited" some of them to the negotiating table in Rambouillet. At the time of NATO intervention, numerous members of this community could be seen in trains in which the Albanians were deported, and numerous others were in "collective centres in Serbia where they had found refuge". A part of them remained in Kosovo even during the bombing, keeping the trade of cigarettes and certain food stuffs alive, literally fighting to survive. They were those who used to say to the few Albanians who were queueing for bread "Let NATO give you bread" or who were seen, together with the police, "emptying shops owned by the Albanians". Others even carried out the "job" of the Yugoslav army and police. During the war those who had remained in Kosovo could see members of the Romany community dressed in uniforms and armed with Kalashnykov machine-guns "defending nobody's cause"...

This put them into an almost hopeless situation at the end of the war. Many of them decided to leave. In UNHCR they claim that about 30 thousand members of the Romany community have left Kosovo since June 12 last year for fear of "revenge" of the Albanians who returned home after 78 days of NATO's bombing of Serb targets, and just a few thousand remained in various parts of Kosovo. A part of them found refuge in Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, while the rest of them chose the hard road of illegal emigrants in the countries of Western Europe. The largest movement of refugees was registered immediately after the entrance of KFOR. Many Romanies joined the columns of the Serbs who were leaving Kosovo together with the almost untouched Milosevic's troops. Their houses were occupied by the newly arrived Albanian refugees who had found their own homes looted and burnt to the ground. Many of them used the houses of the Romanies as "salvation" so they would not have to return to their rural zones. Many houses and huts were set on fire in the campaign of revenge because, as claimed, of "participation of the Romanies in systematic violence of Serb authorities".

Not even the representatives of these communities denied the possibilities that some of the Romanies, and many believe that there were Ashkalis among them, were called-up and used in the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo during bombing. However, they demanded and got the promise of Albanian leaders that collective guilt would not be imputed on them. Moreover, the latter responded to the calls for reconciliation which, it is evident, is very slow and has almost just symbolic effects.

Nevertheless, representatives of the Ashkalis and some of the Romanies participated in local elections and in some places they even won some seats in municipal assemblies.

However, this has not changed their position much. They still live in "ghettoes" where they are making desperate attempts to survive only thanks to humanitarian aid. The community of the Ashkalis is still striving to distinguish itself especially from the Romanies. Probably for fear for their lives, they "wish" to show their great ethnic closeness with the Albanians. The leader of the "ghetto" in Plemetini Naser Adiqi says that he wishes, together with "the brethren, the Albanians, to protest in the centre of Pristina for liberation of imprisoned Albanians in Serbian prisons". However, he stresses that they do not have even the fundamental guarantees of safety to do it. "Why am I in danger - just because of the colour of my skin?", wonders the "leader" as called by members of his ethnic community... "Don't the Albanians know that we are innocent just as their prisoners in Serbia are innocent?"... And while he speaks, shabbily dressed children, obviously hungry, carry banners in their hands on which it is written "we have no other homeland"... However, if something does not radically change, it seems that they will remain, as they have practically always been treated, people with no homeland...

AIM Pristina

Arbnora BERISHA