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BACKGROUND: THE PLIGHT OF THE KOSOVO ROMA REFUGEES

Macedonia is currently hosting some 2,500 Roma refugees from Kosovo.³ Most of them either stayed in Kosovo during the March-June 1999 NATO bombing campaign or returned to their homes after having fled the country during the bombardment. In July 1999, however, local Albanian extremists forced them to leave their homes and, soon afterwards, Kosovo. Many Kosovo Albanians believe that local Roma collaborated with the regime of the former Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, and blame some of them for complicity in war crimes during the 1998-99 armed conflict between government forces and Albanian rebels in the province.

While an estimated 50,000 Kosovo Roma found refuge in Serbia and Montenegro,⁴ some 6,000 initially went to Macedonia.⁵ The number has dwindled to 2,500 because some Roma were resettled to third countries or relocated to Serbia and Montenegro, and a small number voluntarily repatriated to Kosovo.⁶

The Roma entered Macedonia in September 1999, after spending two months as internally displaced persons in Kosovo. From September to December 1999, they stayed in a refugee camp in the village of Stenkovac. In December, they dispersed: some went to Shuto Orizari, a suburb of the Macedonian capital, Skopje, and found accommodation in private houses owned by local Roma; others moved to small camps near Skopje; a third group went to refugee camps in southern Macedonia. The second group eventually moved into the former military barracks near Katlanovo; in June 2000, the third group moved to a collective center built by the Macedonian government in Shuto Orizari, where ninety percent of the inhabitants are Macedonians or Kosovars of Romani ethnicity.⁷

Some seven hundred of the Kosovo Roma lived in the Shuto Orizari refugee camp before its closure earlier this year. Between three and four hundred refugees currently live in the camp near Katlanovo,⁸ and the remainder (some 1,500 people) took up private accommodation in Shuto Orizari or other municipalities in Macedonia.

The Macedonian government granted the Kosovo Roma refugees Temporary Humanitarian Assisted Person (THAP) status. Individuals with THAP status were not eligible to apply for asylum according to Macedonian law, and their status was subject to review by the government approximately every six months. Roma refugees with THAP status were not permitted to work and as a result were wholly dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Because of the poor health and sanitary conditions in the Shuto Orizaricamp, the government and UNHCR decided at the beginning of 2003 to close it down. In the early months of 2003, according to Roma refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch and the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), UNHCR had progressively withdrawn a number of basic services from the camp, including food aid and schooling.⁹ The UNHCR office in Skopje claims, however, that there was no reduction of assistance before the closing of the camp.¹⁰ In any event, in the weeks preceding the closure of the camp, UNHCR officials advised the Roma—to no avail—to move out of the collective center into private accommodation, and offered financial and logistical assistance to those who would accept this option.¹¹ UNHCR claims that the reason the Roma rejected the UNHCR offer of private accommodation assistance was that they harbored “unrealistic” expectations of resettling in third countries.¹²

While acknowledging that they were hoping for resettlement, the Roma interviewed by Human Rights Watch enumerated a series of other reasons why they could not accept the private accommodation alternative. They said that UNHCR-provided financial aid would not suffice for finding a decent and long-term housing solution. They knew that the well-being and prospects of those Roma refugees who had lived in private accommodation were, if anything, inferior to that of the refugees in the Shuto Orizari camp. If dispersed to private homes, the former camp residents were afraid that they would become easier to deport should the Macedonian government decide to send them back to Kosovo. Most importantly, the four-year experience of living as refugees in Macedonia led them to believe that they had no future in the country. Moving into private accommodation only looked like a continuation of an unacceptable status quo.

The refugees continued to live in the Shuto Orizari camp until mid-May 2003, although the camp had been officially closed on March 31. From that date, they did not have any address at which they formally resided. As a consequence, they could not extend their formal THAP status and their residence in the country became illegal under Macedonian law.¹³

On May 19, approximately 700 Kosovo Roma—including around 350 children—traveled from the Shuto Orizari camp to the Medzitlija border crossing, some 210 kilometers south of Skopje.¹⁴

Upon arrival to Medzitlija, the Roma set up a tent settlement a hundred meters away from the Macedonian border post. They informed the border police that they intended to leave Macedonia and request asylum in Western countries. Macedonian border officials did not permit the Roma to cross the border because the Roma had no visas to enter Greece.

On May 27, the government of Macedonia advised the Roma to return to Skopje to re-register and undertook to accept their individual applications for refugee status in the country, in anticipation of the enactment into law of the then draft Law on Asylum.¹⁵ On June 3, a press release by the then-Greek Presidency of the European Union (E.U.) “strongly encouraged” the Roma to accept the offer from the Macedonian government.¹⁶ At a June 12 meeting with twenty-two refugees, representatives of the E.U. Presidency, the Office of the E.U. Special Representative, the European Commission Delegation to Macedonia, the OSCE, and UNHCR all stated that admission to Greece and the E.U. would not be allowed.¹⁷

For almost three months some 700 Roma refugees lingered at the border crossing, exposed to an average temperature far exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), and hoping in vain that Western governments would take their grievances seriously. At the end of July, when Human Rights Watch visited Medzitlija, the health of several refugees had seriously deteriorated as a result of exhaustion and unhygienic conditions.¹⁸ A team of doctors from the nearby city of Bitola was permanently present at the site, but one of them complained to Human Right Watch that the conditions for work in a narrow tent were extremely poor.¹⁹