Non-governmental organization Praxis believes that today’s forced eviction of 23 Roma families from the abandoned Factory Borac in Novi Beograd, conducted without providing the alternative accommodation, without the prior notice on the date of eviction and with no adequate support of social services, is yet another in the series of the most severe violations of human rights, which occur during the forced evictions of informal Roma settlements. The families evicted today are left in the street, while the evictions itself was conducted despite extremely bad weather conditions.
To remind, many of 23 families evicted today had been previously evicted from the informal settlement Belvil, when they had been provided with a one-way ticket to the place in Serbia where they had their permanent residence registered, and immediate cash assistance in the amount of a few dozens of thousands of dinars. Most of remaining families had been previously evicted from the informal Roma settlement in Block 72 and other locations. The eviction initially scheduled for Monday, 17 September 2012, was postponed until early this morning when the court bailiffs, accompanied by social workers and about thirty members of the Ministry of Interior in anti-riot equipment, stormed in the abandoned factory without a prior notice and began the eviction. The members of the Ministry of Interior did not allow the representatives of non-governmental organizations and United Nations to approach the place of eviction, despite the fact that according to the international human rights standards, the state is obliged to allow the monitoring of the eviction process. In addition, the access was also forbidden to journalists who were forced to interview the residents over the fence of the Factory.
Despite the fact that the eviction of illegal occupants of the private company’s premises is justified, it is still worrying that competent state bodies do not consider the fact that conducting forced evictions of informal Roma settlements and work on integration of the residents of respective settlements are much more complex than pure immediate cash assistance provided to persons evicted from Belvil to cities and municipalities in the south of Serbia. In addition, those who were not provided with the alternative accommodation will be again relocated to other informal settlements where they will face yet another forced eviction.
The question is us how many more forced evictions and violations of human rights of the Roma are needed to occur for the Republic of Serbia and the City of Belgrade to finally realize that the solution of the Roma housing problem cannot be found in forced evictions, which have been conducted contrary to human rights standards.
Non-governmental organization Praxis calls on the competent authorities to urgently suspend all forced evictions, to review the existing illegal and unsustainable eviction model, and to start elaborating the legal framework which would regulate the acting of the administration body in cases of forced evictions, with full respect of human rights.
Download (Serbian only):Statement of the Ombudsperson on the Eviction of Roma
