UNMIK on AIR

IDP SQUATTERS FACE UNCERTAIN FUTURE

23 JULY 2003

(By Andrea Saula)

SLUG: Thousands of IDPs and refugees in Serbia face eviction from illegal camps.

Hello and welcome to UNMIK on AIR.

Life for refugees is always hard, especially if the camps they live in don’t officially exist.

According to UNHCR around 3500 refugees and IDPs in Serbia live in unregistered camps, and face eviction at any time.

Goran Pitulic: It’ s hard, what to say else. 94 families live in these factories. They were abandoned. For ten years nobody lived in them. We heard about those factories, asked around, walked around the city, we were searching.

Goran Pitulic and his family spent the last three and a half years in a run-down warehouse behind a railroad near Belgrade. The Pitulic family is from a village near Istok in Kosovo, but fled like many others in June 1999. The first couple of months they spent with relatives. But when the welcome ran out Goran, his wife Stanka and 4- year-old son Misa were pushed to find their own place.

First they moved to a refugee camp in the center of Belgrade, which Goran describes as like a concentration camp. Security at the gate stopped anyone from coming inside.

So they moved to the factory. Goran says the family was offered places in camps in other parts of Serbia such as Bor but life there would be even worse.

Goran Pitulic: None of us came to Belgrade because of Belgrade itself. Survival is the question; here one can find some job, to get some daily wage. If you dig holes today, you get a wage. Around 25 to 30 DM is the wage in Belgrade, but in Bor one couldn’t get even 5 euros. There is no job. That’s a ghost town.

The Commissariat for Refugees gives them a meal and loaf of bread every day. But living in warehouses that belong to private businesses, albeit bankrupt ones, it could be only a matter of time before they’re on the street. Goran says that Commissariat is not ready to give the camps legal status.

Goran Pitulic: There is nothing. I can’t see any solution. They don’t see it as well. We tried to legalize this lodging, to be accepted by Commissariat. We didn’t succeed in it.

And it’s not just the uncertainty of whether there’ll be a roof overhead. The Pitulic family has problems with integrating into their new environment. It’s especially hard for their young son, Misa. His mother Stanka talks about his experience in school with tears in her eyes.

Stanka: His friends told him you are a pauper and you are living in the factory and he cried. I went to his teacher and she told him she is a refugee also, to make him feel better.

The Pitulic family is thinking about returning to Kosovo. They say all they need are minimal conditions to stay there. Security is the most important thing, Goran stresses. He has been back to visit his home in Istok municipality, with an UNMIK Go and See program. But what he saw was not encouraging.

Goran Pitulic: We found only three intact Serbian houses. Only three. All the others were burned, destroyed. That’s ugly. I needed some 30 seconds to recognize the place where I was born and grew up. Everything was demolished. Even the fruit trees were chopped down.

But Goran still thinks it’s possible to return using the model of Osojane, a nearby Serb village where a number of families returned at once. Meanwhile there are moves afoot to begin closing up to 100 legal refugee camps in Serbia, meaning yet more displacement and heartache for the residents.

That’s all for today from UNMIK on Air, thanks for listening and stay tuned for more.