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Lack of Access to Medical Services
The lack of safety for Roma in traveling to the two main hospitals in Prishtina and Mitrovice is often cited as one of the many barriers they face in accessing medical services and medicines.
Another barrier is that the administration of hospitals in Kosovo is exclusively controlled by ethnic Albanians. Most of the doctors and medical staff are Albanians who often deny Roma medical treatment, especially in a time where medical supplies are limited. Along with the current climate of ethnic chauvinism, discrimination is even more acute given the widespread Albanian perception that Roma were Serb collaborators. Romani patients and their families often have justifiable fears for their safety while in the hospital and are therefore reluctant to avail themselves of public health services outside of their enclaves. The incidents of disappearances from a Prishtina hospital which occurred in June and July of 1999 serve to reinforce fears, as the following case from the OSCE/UNHCR report illustrates:
In an incident in early December (1999) a male Roma from Gjakove accompanying his uncle to the Prishtina hospital was abducted by unknown uniformed men. The victim reported that he was beaten and interrogated at length about the identities of Roma believed to have committed crimes against the Kosovo Albanian population. He was shot in the back and left for dead on the outskirts of Lipjan but survived and was spotted by KFOR who took him to hospital.
The report also indicates that:
Hospitals themselves may restrict admission or discriminate in the treatment of some minority patients. UNHCR recently attended to the cases of two Roma patients in need of medical and psychiatric care. Although Kosovo hospitals in general may have limited capacity to deal with psychiatric patients, the manner in which these two patients were treated - left in a room without nursing service, one without even a bed, and surrounded by rubbish and human waste - suggested discrimination on ethnic grounds. Other cases noted by UNHCR and OSCE have raised similar questions as to the willingness of hospitals and medical staff to admit and treat Serbo-Croatian-speaking minority patients.7
Houses Destroyed and Not Rebuilt
A great deal of the analysis section below addresses the housing crisis for Roma that is the result of the destruction or occupation by force on the part of some ethnic Albanians of a large percentage of the homes previously inhabited by the Roma. Additionally, it is evident in reviewing the data, that of the over 12,500 Romani homes severely damaged or destroyed, an infinitesimally small number (less than 1%) have been repaired or new ones rebuilt in their place. It is little wonder that in the two-year period between Summer 1999 and Summer 2001, of the over 100,000 displaced or missing Roma of Kosovo, only 4,000 have returned. Many of those who have returned are in inadequate cramped quarters with as many as 15-20 people in a small house or apartment. Without the bare minimum of security in the form of a roof over their heads and some sense of permanency, the Roma cannot hope to re-establish their former communities in Kosovo. Those international and foreign aid organizations and private developers who are financing the construction of new homes in Kosovo are neither building homes for Roma, nor are they concerned about Romani claims and former property rights. The companies constructing new homes also have excluded Roma from the labor crews in the towns and cities where they are hiring local (primarily Albanian) workers.
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7 Ibid
