In Kosovo, the “Multicultural” festival was held with numerous activities, which aims to raise awareness about the prejudices and discrimination that exist around the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities.
Handicrafts, traditional foods cooked by the women of this community are part of the fair that this year is also being held in the center of Pristina.
The organizers say that the festival aims to show the similarities of all communities living in Kosovo.
“For that reason, we have chosen through this festival in the first place to promote those positive models or stories, to show the majority community and our society who the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians actually are, what are those values and customs of theirs and how in the end they do not differ much from the general ones that our society has”, said the director of the organization “Voice of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians”, Isak Skenderi.
This year the festival is being held in several cities of Kosovo. Young people from Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities emphasize that employment and education remained the main challenges among them.
“Well, I feel a very bad feeling that those people of our community are not educated and do not have a name, unfortunately they are discriminated against and we have many cases, but I believe this bad phenomenon will disappear because we have many people who support us from the majority, but always as an activist and the circle that we have, we will try to give the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities great importance in the commitment to education and to be equal and live equally in the state of Kosovo”, said Egzon Qabrati from the Egyptian community.
“We must always continue our education because we also lose our rights as some people from the communities are considered who are not given rights such as for employment, so we must continue our education to have equal rights as all citizens” , said Enisa Rrustemi from the Ashkalinj community.
“We have many community members who have graduated and are still not employed. Take for example the municipality of Gjakova, we have a very large number of communities who have degrees and unfortunately are still not employed. This is a problem that in the future should be addressed as much as possible to our political representatives and together we try to influence that as many members of the communities are employed in institutions”, said Ergi Cili from the city of Gjakova.
Medinë Dauti from the Center for Information, Criticism and Action says that these communities face discrimination in Kosovo while calling for the institutions to take steps to change the situation.
“Racial discrimination happens in all state institutions and it is very painful to say that this can happen because the institutions are not divided according to race or gender or anything else but they are institutions that should serve every citizen of Kosovo”, he said Medina Dauti.
She says the most serious situation is with women from the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities who are oppressed and do not have real access to education, health and employment.
“During our work we have noticed that apart from being denied the general dignified right and not being treated as human beings above all the conditions for living are very difficult and I consider this then creates segregation and contributes to much greater segregation in our society” , she said.
The director of the “Voice of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians” organization, Isak Skenderi, says that the lack of access of these communities to public services, education, employment, health and in all other spheres of life remained a major problem.
“My message to society is that we must accept that there is an inequality in our society which is caused by unfair, racial behavior towards a specific community because of their skin color, specific language or country they came from and in the moment we accept that this is a problem then we can address the problem”, he said.
International organizations have constantly called for the improvement of the condition of these communities which, as they say, face severe living conditions and lack of integration in the society of Kosovo.