Click here to sign up . In a border town in the former Yugoslavia, thousands of displaced Roma prepare for an indefinite exile.
Heat comes from unvented woodstoves.
For almost a year after the first displaced persons arrived in June 1999, the Kursumlija shelter had no toilets or running water, said Slavica Parlic, who manages a program here for homeless Roma, funded by the Italian Consortium for Solidarity. Two toilets arrived last June, but there are still no proper containers for garbage, she says. More than 650,000 people, mostly ethnic Serbs, have fled to Serbia since 1991, when a series of fratricidal wars ruptured the former Yugoslavia. Sheltering and feeding them is proving a crippling burden for Serbia, still struggling to recover from years of economic sanctions and months of NATO bombardment. But of all Serbia's displaced people, among the worst off are the thousands of homeless Roma, members of a linguistically and culturally distinct minority who have for centuries been discriminated against, and sometimes persecuted , across Eastern Europe.