UNMIK ON AIR

March 1^st 2004

Serb family returns to Pristina

By Zoran Culafic

As with most birthday celebrations, the mood is festive here in the Mitrovica family apartment- but after the singing is over, Vukica Mitrovic who just turned 67 years old speaks with mixed emotions.

Hello and welcome to UNMIK on Air.

With a cup of black coffee, a glass of the home made Serbian brandy – rakija-- and a slice of homemade birthday cake, Vukica celebrated her birthday for the first time in her newly renovated flat after five long years wandering from refugee camp to refugee camp in Serbia with her 70 year old husband, Dragan.

The Mitrovic couple are just two of the tens of thousands of refugees who are officially identified as internally displaced people, or IDP’s, from Kosovo.

Mixed emotions, happiness and sorrow marked her 67^th birthday party.

Vukica Mitrovic: I feel sorry for everyone with what happened here innocent people are suffering the most. The politicians did this to us ours and theirs and look, now we, in our old age had to deal with it we lived a modest life here, then suddenly you loose everything resettle in Serbia, then come back again –chaos- you miss many things you dare not go down the street and our four children were born here, they all grew up here and graduated at University and to tell you frankly, I feel sorry seeing Pristina like this, it’s not the same town.

It is not only Vukica, who feels this way that the character of Pristina has changed in the years following the armed conflict.

Fatmira is a Kosovo-Albanian girl from Pristina who works as a saleswoman in a small market. Pristina is not the same, she says, as many people moved to the city from villages after the war:

Fatmire: It has changed a lot in general some new people settled in every housing block, at least two or three families, so when you go out you rarely can see someone you know. Mainly there are people walking whom you don’t know, it really has changed a lot.

When Vukica and her husband left Pristina in 1999 she says she lost all hope of ever returning to her former home in Pristina. Even so, she filed the available paperwork in an effort to regain her property.

After nearly three years, she was granted her former apartment in Pristina.

Being a Serbian refugee or internally displaced person in Serbia nothing to boast about, says Vukica. She and her husband now live on humanitarian aid and the only regular income is Dragan’s pension from Serbia of some 9.000 dinars per month, or the equivalent of 130 euros. When the Mitrovic couple decided to return to Pristina, they said many in Serbia were worried for their safety.

Vukica’s birthday party started early in the morning with several phone calls from Serbia.

Vukica Mitrovic: The children worry about us, they do; my daughter is now in Vrnjacka Banja and she almost went mad worrying about us, but we had to come back to receive the keys. People from the Danish Council told us – if you don’t come now, someone else could settle into your house and then we would not be able to do anything. So I decided we must come back, and it was like that.

Before the conflict in 1999, many Serbs lived near the Mitrovic family, but today she doubts that many would return as much of the property has already been sold.

Dobrila Milic is 70 years old and staying temporarily in Vukica’s house, while waiting for her own apartment in Dardania to be prepared. Dobrila lost her husband and her only son a few years before the conflict, and prospect of living in Serbia made little sense for her - now she just wants to be close to the graves.

Dobrila told us that she believes a huge number of internally displaced people in Serbia want to return to Kosovo:.

Dobrila Miic: I think that in town of Kraljevo, where I was living some time as an internally displaced person, that 90 percent of people wish to return. They do wish, and the essential thing for them is freedom of movement. Now, you cannot compare me with the younger people, I’m a 70 year old woman and I’m not afraid at all being here, life means nothing for me I came here just to enter my apartment and to die here to be buried near my son and near my husband.

For Vukica and her husband Dragan, their current day-to-day life in Pristina rarely differs people come to their home to visit, but they do not often venture out to visit friends.

Vukica Mitrovic: We get up in the morning and have a coffee, then breakfast then I knead the dough and cook something for the launch all day you have something to do in your home this or that to wash something by hands in the bathroom because we don’t have a washing machine, nor refrigerator. They gave to us these sofa and kitchen table the stove and fire wood we’re very thankful for that.

Dobrila Milic believes the wish to return to former homes in Kosovo is natural, adding that the living conditions are poor for internally displaced people in Serbia. Dobrila also says that Serbs in Kosovo feel much closer to Kosovo-Albanians than to Serbs in Serbia:

Dobrila Milic: We were accustomed to living with Albanians as they were with us too. They were very nice to me, just to give you an example, if someone sees me on the street carrying something from the market, then they would stop immediately to help me and take the bags up to my apartment. The market was at the ground floor of my building and always when I buy something more the owner would tell me – please Ma’am, go home and someone will carry it for you. And after my son died, they were so polite to me, I could not believe. Say, the market is full of customers but when I enter they make a way for me to go first, before all the others.

Dragan is saddened that most press coverage does not educate the younger generation in Kosovo about any of the co-existence which they once experienced in their long lives in Kosovo.”:

Dragan: People are equal no matter what their ethnic origin is and there should be a tolerance and cooperation, everyone to respect each other and it should be like that in the future … and this evil what has happened here should never happen again anywhere in the world, particularly here, because here because everyone suffered; Albanians, Serbs, Romas, Goranies, Bosniacks, Turks let it never happen again.

Dragan acknowledges that his family has been much more fortunate than many Serb and Albanian families in Kosovo during the conflict. Even so, Dragan urges each of the communities to strive for a better future, to work through the pain of the atrocities which took place:

Dragan: We lived together for centuries in tolerance sometimes there were problems, but there is a black sheep in every flock, we consider it isolated cases. But the future is ahead of all of us and we all, with the help of international community, should overcome this crisis and join the European community to live like humans, like all the normal world does.

And that was all for this edition of UNMIK on Air- thank you for listening, stay tuned for more.