Unheard Voices: Roma and the Kosovo War
Abstract
The Kosovo conflict is usually seen – and remembered – as a conflict between ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians. It was the escalating armed conflict between these two ethnic groups following the revoking of Kosovo’s autonomy by the MiloÅ¡eviÄ regime in Bel-grade in 1989 which led to NATO’s military intervention in the spring of 1999. However, this focus on the Serbi-an-Albanian confrontation meant that the fate of the Ro-ma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities in this conflict has been largely overlooked. Both within Kosovo and outside, their experiences and memories remain widely unconnected to the wider narrative and collective memory of the conflict, even though the Roma consti-tuted a significant proportion of the overall population and one upon whom the conflict had an enormous im-pact.References
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[19] Malcolm, Noel. Kosovo: A Short History. New Edition. London: Pan Books, 2002.
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[21] The Position of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian Communities in Kosovo: Baseline Survey. Prishtinë, Kosovë: Kosovo Founda-tion for Open Society, 2009.
[22] Reading, Anna. “Identity, Memory and Cosmopolitanism: The Otherness of the Past and a Right to Memory.†European Jour-nal of Cultural Studies 14:4 (2011): 379-94.
[23] Reading, Anna. “The European Roma: An Unsettled Right to Memory.†In Public Memory, Public Media and the Politics of Justice, edited by Philip Lee and Pradip N. Thomas. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012: 121-40
[24] Reading, Anna. “Globalisation and Digital Memory: Globital Memory’s Six Dynamics.†In On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age, edited by Motti Neiger, Oren Meyers and Eyal Zandberg. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011: 241-52
[25] Richardson, Joanna. The Gypsy Debate: Can Discourse Control? Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006.
[26] Roma and the Kosovo Conflict (= Roma Rights: Newsletter of the European Roma Rights Centre, No. 2, July 15, 1999). [Online]. Available: http://www.errc.org/article/roma-rights-2-1999-roma-and-the-kosovo-conflict/800.
[27] Schulze, Rainer. “The Roma IDP Camps in Northern Mitrovica, Kosovo: Many Troubling Questions and Far Too Few An-swers.†The Holocaust in History and Memory 3 (2010): 119-38.
[28] Schulze, Rainer. “Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under the National Socialist Regime.†The Holocaust in History and Memory 5 (2012): 209-10.
[29] Sigona Nando, in conversation with Avdula (Dai) Mustafa and Gazmen Salijevic. “Being Roma Activists in Post-Independence Kosovo.†In Romani Politics in Contemporary Europe: Poverty, Ethnic Mobilization and the Neoliberal Order, edited by Nan-do Sigona and Nidhi Trehan. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Pal-grave Macmillan, 2009: 209-25.
[30] Sigona, Nando and Nidhi Trehan. “Conclusion: A ‘People’s Eu-rope’ for Romani Citizens?†In Romani Politics in Contempo-rary Europe: Poverty, Ethnic Mobilization, and the Neoliberal Order, edited by Nando Sigona and Nidhi Trehan. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009: 294-9.
[31] Wagenaar, Aad. Settela. Nottingham: Five Leaves, 2005.
[32] Weller, Marc. Contested Statehood: Kosovo's Struggle for In-dependence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
[2] Barany, Zoltan. The East European Gypsies: Regime Change, Marginality, and Ethnopolitics. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 2002.
[3] Bauerdick, Rolf. Zigeuner: Begegnungen mit einem un-geliebten Volk. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2013.
[4] Bhopal, Kalwant and Martin Myers. Insider, Outsiders and Others: Gypsies and Identity. Hatfield: University of Hertford-shire, 2008.
[5] Bogdahl, Klaus-Michael. Europa erfindet die Zigeuner: Eine Geschichte von Faszination und Verachtung. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011.
[6] Cahn, Claude. “Justice for Kosovo.†Roma Rights Quarterly, 2005: No. 3-4: 3-9.
[7] Crowe, David M. A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995.
[8] Djurić, Rajko; Becken, Jörg; Bengsch, Andreas B. Ohne Heim – ohne Grab: Die Geschichte der Sinti und Roma. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1996.
[9] Eliot, Janna. “Het meisje heft haar naam terug (The girl has got her name back).†The Holocaust in History and Memory 3 (2010): 31-40.
[10] Fonseca, Isabel. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Jour-ney. New York: Vintage Books, 2010.
[11] Galjus, Orhan. “Roma of Kosovo: the Forgotten Victims.†The Patrin Web Journal: Romani Culture and History, April 7, 1999. [Online]. Available: http://www.reocities.com/Paris/5121/ kosovo.htm.
[12] Hancock, Ian. We are the Romani People / Ames am e Rromane džene. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2002.
[13] Humanitarian Law Center/Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo. The Kosovo Memory Book: Let People Remember People. Vol. 1: 1998. Belgrade: Publikum, 2011.
[14] Judah, Tim. Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven: Yale Uni-versity Press, 2000.
[15] Kenrick, Donald. “Former Yugoslavia: A Patchwork of Desti-nies.†In Between Past and Future: the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Will Guy. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2001: 405-25.
[16] Ker-Lindsay, James. Kosovo: The Path to Contested Statehood in the Balkans. London: I.B.Tauris, 2009.
[17] Levy, Daniel and Natan Sznaider. Human Rights and Memory. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.
[18] Liégeois, Jean-Pierre. Roma in Europe. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2007.
[19] Malcolm, Noel. Kosovo: A Short History. New Edition. London: Pan Books, 2002.
[20] Petrova, Dimitrina. “Who are the Roma? An Identity in the Making,†May 27, 2004. [Online]. Available: http://www.errc.org/ cikk.php?cikk=1844.
[21] The Position of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian Communities in Kosovo: Baseline Survey. Prishtinë, Kosovë: Kosovo Founda-tion for Open Society, 2009.
[22] Reading, Anna. “Identity, Memory and Cosmopolitanism: The Otherness of the Past and a Right to Memory.†European Jour-nal of Cultural Studies 14:4 (2011): 379-94.
[23] Reading, Anna. “The European Roma: An Unsettled Right to Memory.†In Public Memory, Public Media and the Politics of Justice, edited by Philip Lee and Pradip N. Thomas. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012: 121-40
[24] Reading, Anna. “Globalisation and Digital Memory: Globital Memory’s Six Dynamics.†In On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age, edited by Motti Neiger, Oren Meyers and Eyal Zandberg. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011: 241-52
[25] Richardson, Joanna. The Gypsy Debate: Can Discourse Control? Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006.
[26] Roma and the Kosovo Conflict (= Roma Rights: Newsletter of the European Roma Rights Centre, No. 2, July 15, 1999). [Online]. Available: http://www.errc.org/article/roma-rights-2-1999-roma-and-the-kosovo-conflict/800.
[27] Schulze, Rainer. “The Roma IDP Camps in Northern Mitrovica, Kosovo: Many Troubling Questions and Far Too Few An-swers.†The Holocaust in History and Memory 3 (2010): 119-38.
[28] Schulze, Rainer. “Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under the National Socialist Regime.†The Holocaust in History and Memory 5 (2012): 209-10.
[29] Sigona Nando, in conversation with Avdula (Dai) Mustafa and Gazmen Salijevic. “Being Roma Activists in Post-Independence Kosovo.†In Romani Politics in Contemporary Europe: Poverty, Ethnic Mobilization and the Neoliberal Order, edited by Nan-do Sigona and Nidhi Trehan. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Pal-grave Macmillan, 2009: 209-25.
[30] Sigona, Nando and Nidhi Trehan. “Conclusion: A ‘People’s Eu-rope’ for Romani Citizens?†In Romani Politics in Contempo-rary Europe: Poverty, Ethnic Mobilization, and the Neoliberal Order, edited by Nando Sigona and Nidhi Trehan. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009: 294-9.
[31] Wagenaar, Aad. Settela. Nottingham: Five Leaves, 2005.
[32] Weller, Marc. Contested Statehood: Kosovo's Struggle for In-dependence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
How to Cite
SCHULZE, Rainer.
Unheard Voices: Roma and the Kosovo War.
Култура/Culture, [S.l.], n. 5, p. 131-140, mar. 2014.
ISSN 1857-7725.
Available at: <http://journals.cultcenter.net/index.php/culture/article/view/70>. Date accessed: 11 feb. 2026.
Section
English Articles
Keywords
Kosovo, Roma, Holocaust, memory, human rights, Unit-ed Nations
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