Poverty

In a desolate corner on the outskirts of Pristina, Kosovo, two men sit on the bare ground, mending a bicycle that is a lifeline for their families.

Without their bicycles they could not earn the money they need to keep their large families alive. And what they earn is little enough because their days are spent sifting through the city’s garbage for what others throw away.

“We work in the garbage containers, collecting tin cans, copper, scrap metal, aluminium, whatever we can find,” Besnik Hasanik says with a sad, gap-toothed smile. “Sometimes I can’t find anything because I’m not the only one who’s looking,” he adds.

A marginalized life

Mr. Hasanik is one of at least 30,000 people who identify themselves as belonging to the Roma, Ashkali or Egyptian ethnic groups – Kosovo’s most impoverished communities. They live on the fringes of society, often without the identity papers that would entitle them to the benefits available to other citizens: social welfare, unemployment, even schooling.

The community of Pata Rat

The inhabitants of the small community of Pata Rat are mostly unemployed and make a living by doing small jobs and recycling waste. The only source of water is a single pump in the street, AFP reports.

Face blackened by 35 years spent on a rubbish dump on the outskirts of Cluj, Marin Varga waits for a local recycling company to peruse the few valuable objects he found that morning in the trash. "Things couldn't be worse," says this 47-year-old man, who looks at least 10 years older, with a sigh.

In his cart, attached to an emaciated horse, are his day's finds: a few broken computers, springs from an old couch and tangled cables, all thrown into a pile.

"We live one day at a time," says Varga, who shares a rundown shack with three generations of his family -- 13 people in total -- in the middle of the Pata-Rat dump in this northwestern Romanian town.

His children do not go to school. "They have to help us dig in the rubbish," he says.

Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) highlights today’s article in “Eleftheros Typos” focused on a Greek Romani doctor who speaks with harsh words for the living conditions of Roma in Greece.

The Roma of Aghia Varvara [a Greater Athens municipality, with a substantial presence of Roma] call him “the example of the race”. He grew up and attended the local school, completed his studies at the Medical Faculty of Athens and his medical specialty at the “Sotiria” hospital. He opened his own medical practice and some time ago was appointed in a regional branch of IKA [the main Greek Social Security Fund that also has regional clinics]. The 42 year-old lung specialist Mr. Christos Vassileiou feels proud that he tore down the “wall” of illiteracy and wants to become a role-model for the new generation of Gypsies. “For the standards of my race, it is revolutionary to be working in the medical field”

PROKUPLJE, Serbia (AFP) — Little Skurta huddles in her uncle's arms in a riverside Roma slum of this Serbian town, murmuring that she does not want to go to school for fear of getting a beating.

"What can I do?" asks her mother Scribana, feeling powerless when faced with a resolute 11-year-old girl.

While her younger sister Mevlida cannot wait to go to class, Skurta "does not want to hear about school, so it's better if she stays here," Scribana says.

Uncle Resat, who abandoned textbooks while still at elementary school, seems to understand his niece. "Studying is not for us... because we are Roma."

In this poverty-stricken Roma family, no one has a regular job and only some have temporary work.

A fire that broke out on Wednesday morning destroyed completely 11 houses built of cardboard, old tires and wood in the Roma slum situated under the Gazella bridge in the centre of Serbia's capital Belgrade.

The slum, estimated to house between 900 and 2,000 people, is slightly up from the riverbank of the Sava river, very near the city's expensive hotel and business district. The single-storey dwellings can best be desrcibed as huts made of cardboard and aluminum sheeting, held down by tires, rocks and bits of plastic.

Location

Serb Roma Lose Homes In Belgrade Slum FireBelgrade

Serbia

44° 47' 36.7116" N, 20° 28' 42.6576" E