In its latest press release, the organization Rom e.V. (Cologne) commemorates the Roma’s displacement from Kosovo and bemoans that the Roma’s claims are ignored in ongoing negotiations on the province’s future status. According to Rom e.V., the German policy on Kosovo has been complicit in the crimes against the Roma people, since the UCK was “actively supported” already in its early set-up phase, and after the war the German authorities’ were “complacent in their inactivity.”

 

“To date, the NATO-occupying forces do not provide sufficient protection for Serbs and other minorities who stayed in Kosovo”, the July 27 press release states. Neither restitution of the property, houses, or estates of better-off Roma; compensation for assaults on life and limb; nor displacement can be enforced so far.

Rom e.V. questions whether an independent Kosovo would provide protection to “disenfranchised minorities”: “Who would successfully pursue lawsuits on stolen property that has been occupied by Albanian neighbors? What should atonement for expulsion, injury and murder by UCK terrorists look like? How are the Roma to exist in a country that does not even provide jobs, social service, or health care for the Albanian majority?"

 

Rom e.V. claims a seat for Roma representatives in the negotiations on the Kosovo’s status, as well as compensation for the 1999 displacements. Also, Kosovo Roma living in Germany should be unconditionally granted the right to stay: “Deporting these people is nothing less than our ministers of the interior’s attempts to hide or otherwise dispose of the living witnesses to their irresponsible policy on Kosovo.”