Despite the severest commendation of the announced eviction and undertaking of all available legal activities, and the international action of solidarity with Mevljuda Kurtesi and her family, she and her six minor children were forcibly evicted from the flat in 4 Ljeska Street in Banovo Brdo in Belgrade on 25 October 2011. This is another in the series of illegal forced evictions in the territory of the City of Belgrade, which turned Mevljuda and her children, internally displaced persons from Kosovo, into homeless people and deprived them of the possibility to have a decent life. The eviction was followed by racial comments of the neighbours, which culminated with unabashed joy when Mevljuda was evicted in the street.

To remind, Belgrade Land Development Public Agency, which previously gave Mevljuda the flat for use and now requires the eviction, did not offer the alternative accommodation or the explanation for the eviction. The Municipality of Cukarica rejected written requirements from several non-governmental organizations to suspend the eviction since it was contrary to international standards to which our country committed itself by ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which refer to the eviction process and provision of an alternative accommodation.

Since we refuse to be accomplices in this inhuman and illegal eviction of Mevljuda and her children, we decided to support by our presence her decision to remain in the apartment she lives in. On that occasion, two activists of the Regional Centre for Minorities, who did not want to move from the entrance to Mevljuda’s apartment, were taken to police station Cukarica where they were interrogated in the presence of the legal representative from YUCOM. Criminal charges were pressed against them for the criminal act of “justice disturbance” based on the Article 336 b of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia. We consider this as a pressure made on human rights defenders, with an intention to intimidate and give up from the consistent and unreserved struggle for full respect of human rights.

We demand that the competent city institutions immediately provide an adequate alternative accommodation for Mevljuda, who is temporarily accommodated in the cardboard barrack at her mother’s in the informal Roma settlement Belvil. At the same time, we point to the state institutions, which want to criminalize solidarity and distract us from such commitment, that we will continue uncompromisingly  defend human rights and stand by those whose rights are violated, who are poor and deprived.


Women in Black
Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights – YUCOM
Youth Initiative for Human Rights – YIHR
Praxis
Minority Rights Centre
Regional Centre for Minorities