27TH
JAN. 2003
IDP’S IN SERBIA
(ZORAN CULAFIC)
One of the key issues,
which will determine real progress in establishing a democratic and multiethnic
society in Kosovo, is surely a question of return of internally displaced
persons to their homes. But three and a half years after the conflict, most
agree that returns is still one of the weakest points in Kosovo’s revival.
UNMIK has put the issue
of returns on the priority list for this year, but still there’s little or no
sign of cooperation between Belgrade and Pristina officials.
Meanwhile, there’s
something like 100-thousand Serbs living outside their homes in Kosovo, many of
them in cramped internally displaced people camps in Serbia.
Zvezdan Djuric has M.A.
degree in law and with his spouse and eight-month-old baby he is living in a 6
square meter room in an IDP camp in Lestani, a village near Belgrade. In June,
it will be four years of his exile, as well as for a few thousand others from
Kosovo who settled in Lestani and some other villages nearby Belgrade. Zvezdan
claims that Serbia’s officials, both the previous regime and the new democratic
authorities, do not care much, to say politely, about their future.
Zvezdan
Djuric: We’ve seen the previous regime, as well as the present
one. There are not any essential changes there. In the essence, our position is
the same. Simply, on the paper, we are the citizens of this country, but in
reality, we do not have the same rights. For this three and a half years Covic
visited us just once, and it was prior the elections. We asked, and, probably
he gave an approval, and we are getting now bread and one meal from the
Commissioner for refugees daily. Before, when the Church was helping us up to
last year, they supplied us with three meals a day. That’s what we get now from
our state.
Year
by year the hope for these people to return to their homes is fading away.
Having no stable income, many of them are forced to think about selling their
property, a clear sign they will never return to Kosovo. But people have to
find a way for normal living, be it in Kosovo or in Serbia proper, underlines
Zvezdan, and gives an example of how it looks like living in a camp.
Zvezdan Djuric: You
can see, it’s a conglomerate of very different people, where you have more than
80 % of rural population, and some half-villagers-half-workers. And there are
just a small number of urban populations. And it is very difficult to find
common language for all of them. You’ve had a children who did not know what a
bathroom is, there were a women who did not know what a washing machine is or
sanitary napkin. But we’ve managed to live with it.
The Pesic family is
from Klina and its 18 members are happy to have built a house in Lestani some
30 years ago, so at least they are sheltered, as they say. The head of the
family, Dobrivoje, says they were one of the richest Serb families in the Klina
region, owning a restaurant, shop and sawmill. Dobrivoje is hoping the tensions
will ease, but he underlines that Serbs were feeling many decades ago that
something would go wrong.
Dobrivoje Pesic: I hope the
reconciliation will take place to live together but, my God, it will be very
difficult. For, they (the Albanians) have had that plan maybe some 50 years
ago, and if they have not had that plan, maybe I would not build this house
here. I knew that we would have to leave Kosovo, but when, we did leave it when
I was expecting it the least.
The Pesic family
tried to establish a sawmill in on their land in Lestani, and not to wait in a
line for bread. But Serbia’s bureaucracy
reacted harshly – banning the building of the sawmill, threatening the Pesics
with criminal charges if they dared to continue the work. This is a stance the
family can’t understand.
Dobrivoje Pesic: There are no
conditions for us to work. We started something to do, but they are not
allowing us to work. I was running here and there, trying to find a solution,
but they brought a criminal charge against me when we made just a basement for
the sawmill. We owned a sawmill in Kosovo, with all the licenses, paying the
taxes and we wanted to work here and to earn money for the family, they stopped
us but no one came to see how we live here.
Aside from a lack of jobs, there is a huge list of problems facing idps in Serbia. The future of their children is one of them. Vesna and her husband Ilija are photographers from Gnjilane and they have managed to collect some money to build a small house in Lestani, still not furnished. They earn money by taking pictures of weddings and similar celebrations, but Vesna underlines they have all become ill, since they left Kosovo. And her main concern is the future of their three teenage-daughters.
Vesna: The time is
slowly healing the wounds, slowly but what my daughter went through when we
came here, it is really she was writing poems about her native town, about her
house the house yard, the school, about her friends … She told us that even the
air here is not like in Kosovo. Everything here is different. Now she is four
years older, but it was terrible when we came here. She was writing poems and
hiding it from us, and it is not that we haven’t food to eat … but the health.
After this four years we all got sicker than we would if we stayed in Gnjilane
for twenty years. The homesickness was so huge and I couldn’t even talk like
now, just weeping.
The desperate situation for most Serb IDP’s now settled in the villages
near Belgrade is obvious, as is the case with all the others throughout Serbia.
They can’t see their future in Kosovo, at least not as soon as it would have to
be, if someone is thinking of their return to happen. Zvezdan Djuric, again.
Zvezdan
Djuric: As days pass, the hope of return is fading away and
people who are in desperate situation are selling their real estate … and by
that we loose a percentage of Kosovo and Metohija. And there is not a policy or
a wizard who could manage later to return it back. That is what the state must
think about. What to do? We cannot help it by ourselves alone. Now we are faced
up with another winter here and the returns are planned to start in a spring.
What spring will be ours, I do not know, maybe, there won’t come any for us;
we’ll see
This
year will be the year of returns, according to UNMIK officials. Simon Haselock,
UNMIK’s Head of the Department of Public Information, stated recently that
UNMIK is prepared to start the process this spring, but what they need is a
partner from the other side, namely Belgrade. Let’s hope that everyone can work
together to help former neighbors come back and live in multiethnic Kosovo
society.
And
with this we end today’s program. Thanks for listening