Minorities must participate in Kosovo talks!

Today, Thursday, the talks on the future of Kosovo are being resumed and the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) regrets the fact that only the Serb and Albanian conflict parties, but not the various discriminated and disadvantaged minorities are included in the negotiations with the „Kosovo troika”. „This disregard for the smaller ethnic groups contradicts the claim of the international community, which has not been in the least fulfilled, to create a multi-cultural situation committed to the protection of the minorities”, said the president of the GfbV International, Tilman Zülch. The human rights worker called upon the international community to recognize a genuine representation, independent of the Albanian and Serb authorities, of the minorities as a permanent third partner with equal right of consultation.

While the non-Serb minorities – the Ashkali, Roma and „Kosovo Egyptians”, the Slav-Muslim ethnic groups of the Gorani, Torbesh/Pomaks and Bosniaks as well as the Turks and the tiny minority of the Circassians made up until the invasion of the Nato in 1999 with some 240,000 people about twelve percent of the population, their share has now shrunk to about five percent. The reason for this is the continuing discrimination or – as in the case of the Roma and Ashkali – the active persecution by extremists from the Albanian majority. Protection against attack and assistance in reconstruction have hardly, if at all, been given, criticised Zülch. So of the 14,500 houses which were destroyed mainly by Albanians only 400 have been rebuilt.

Severe violations of human rights and daily threats against communities and individuals of the Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians, Gorani, Torbesh, Bosniaks, Turks, Croats or Jews are as a rule not followed up by the police and thus document the tragic failure of the international interim administration of the Kosovo (UNMIK) towards the minorities needing protection. The freedom of movement of many in the minorities is to the present day very restricted. There still exist the refugee camps for Roma, Ashkali and Kosovo Egyptians, some of which were erected on land in the vicinity of waste deposits contaminated with lead. The property rights of people from the minorities have in countless cases not been recognized. To the present day people from the smaller ethnic groups in Kosovo face strong prejudice or have been totally disregarded.