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Published: Thursday, 24 March 2011 03:29

Human Rights, Theosophy, and Gypsy Children of Kosovo

Kathleen F. Hall – Canada

“Among these gypsies one may find traces of ancient avatars, whose souls were gods long ago in India.” (Walter Starkie, In Sara's Tents. London: John Murray, 1953, p. 1)

In July 2010, my fifteen-year-old son and I traveled to Kosovo, in the Balkans, to work with marginalized children of a people known as Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptians (RAE), also called Gypsies, whose ancestors were ultimately from north India. Working with these children in a summer arts program sponsored by a local nongovernmental organization gave me insight into some of the great challenges within the lives of the RAE of Kosovo.

Devastation in Kosovo in 2011 still visible

In 2008, Kosovo became a republic independent of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. This newly found independence was not easily won; it followed a horrific 1999 war, which was marked by ethnic cleansing and mass destruction of properties belonging to Serbians, Albanians, and the RAE. During that war, NATO displaced many threatened RAE families into neighboring countries for protection. When the war ended, some returning RAE had no homes to go to and, being considered as Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), were housed in camps or IDP designated housing projects.

Living conditions in the IDP areas is dismissal. Many are run down and lack consistent water, electricity, and municipal services such as garbage pickup. Mitrovica, an IDP camp in northern Kosovo has extreme levels of lead poisoning, the cause of serious health issues, particularly in children living there. Plemetina, a community outside Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, has an IDP housing project that is situated next to “Kosovo B,” a huge coal-burning power plant that pollutes the surrounding area with mountains of coal ash.

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