The forgotten pogrom – The Roma tragedy in Kosovo in 1999 (Part 1): Serbs and Roma become targets again in one century

Written for Kosovo Online by: Zeljko Sajn

The Roma are the world’s largest stateless nation, scattered across the globe, and according to historian Xavier Riou, they constitute “the longest-lasting diaspora in human history.” Their origins and historical migration routes are surrounded by myths and interpretations, yet it is indisputable that for centuries, they have been an integral part of Europe’s cultural and demographic landscape.

For generations, the Roma have faced marginalization, discrimination, and persecution across Europe. Their history, often reduced to footnotes in major conflicts, bears deep scars of violence and suffering, yet rarely occupies a recognized place in collective memory. After enduring inquisitorial persecution and enslavement in Southeast Europe, the Roma people faced their darkest chapter during World War II, suffering through the hell of concentration camps where 500,000 Roma perished—nearly without the right to have their suffering properly named: genocide. This atrocity, known as the “Porajmos” (“the Devouring”), remains insufficiently acknowledged or documented, with its memory still pushed to the margins of European historical awareness—much like their suffering in modern conflicts remains invisible.

At the end of the 20th century, in Kosovo and Metohija, the Roma community faced mass violence, expulsion, and the erasure of their identity—living under fear and the revival of ideological patterns reminiscent of revised Nazism, and principles akin to the Nuremberg Laws on “racial purity.” A systematic form of cultural genocide was carried out against Roma identity and heritage. This suffering is rarely discussed, and the voice of the Roma is scarcely heard by the international public.

The goal of this article is to shed light on this forgotten chapter of history—the suffering of the Roma during the 1999 Kosovo conflict—and to contribute to an understanding of the continuous violence aimed not only at their physical destruction but also at the cultural erasure of one of Europe's most vulnerable peoples. It also serves as a warning to the media and international institutions whose neglect has contributed to the cultural genocide of the Roma through informational silence and social indifference.

The historical pattern of Roma discrimination culminated in Kosovo and Metohija during and after the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by 19 member states. At that time, many Roma were labeled as alleged collaborators with the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, which served as justification for violence, ethnically motivated attacks, and mass expulsion by extremists from the Albanian community. Hundreds of Roma homes were burned, their settlements destroyed, and entire communities displaced—often with no possibility of return.

But the violence against the Roma went beyond the physical—it struck at the heart of their cultural and symbolic identity. Cultural genocide, though not formally codified in law, involves the systematic destruction of a people’s linguistic, educational, religious, and identity-based fabric. In Kosovo, this form of violence was particularly evident in 1999, when the Roma editorial office of Radio Television Pristina—Anglunipe—the first of its kind in the world within a public service broadcaster, was shut down. Founded in 1985, this office produced news, cultural, and educational programming in the Romani language, serving as a pillar for preserving and affirming Roma identity in the Balkans. Its dissolution, along with the expulsion of its journalists, marked an attempt to systematically erase the Roma presence from Kosovo’s media, cultural, and public life.

The testimony of Sejdi Hiseni about the disbandment of the Roma editorial office, the persecution of Roma journalists, and the silence of the international community is just one example of a broader strategy to erase collective memory. His refugee fate and struggle to preserve identity in exile highlight the loss of an entire generation of Roma elites—journalists, teachers, artists—who could have led a cultural revival of Roma life in the Balkans.

In public and diplomatic circles, however, the question of accountability for these events is often left unspoken. During my first interview with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for Politika, where I was a special correspondent, in January 2018, I reminded him of his childhood in Belgrade, which he warmly recalled:
“I still have fond memories of my childhood in Belgrade. I’ve maintained close ties with this country.”

However, in the following interview eighteen months later, I raised the perspective of Western journalists—Serge Halimi and Pierre Rimbert—who had stated in Le Monde that NATO bombed Yugoslavia based on unfounded reports of a humanitarian catastrophe. Stoltenberg’s reply was:

“When NATO launched Operation Allied Force in March 1999, the main motivation behind this difficult decision was to stop the humanitarian catastrophe then unfolding in Kosovo. By the end of 1998, President Milosevic’s policies had forced more than 300,000 Kosovars from their homes. Ceasefire agreements were violated, and negotiations had collapsed.

The United Nations and the Contact Group made intense efforts to contribute to a peaceful resolution, but in the end, international diplomatic attempts failed to resolve the conflict. The UN Security Council repeatedly expressed concern over the humanitarian situation in Kosovo and the increasing number of refugees being driven from their homes, seeing it as a threat to international peace and security. Given the escalating crisis, the use of force by NATO was not taken lightly. It never is. But history has shown that it was both necessary and legitimate—it stopped the violence, and the refugees were able to return home. The NATO mission KFOR, under a UN mandate, helped create a safe and secure environment for all in Kosovo, including the Serbian communities.”

He emphasized:

“That campaign was never directed against the Serbian people. On the contrary, the goal was to protect civilians in the wider region by stopping the actions of Milosevic’s regime, which the international community had condemned.”

Throughout the interview, Stoltenberg consistently stated that NATO bombed Yugoslavia, ignoring the fact that the military intervention was actually carried out by 19 individual NATO member states—not as a collective organ of the North Atlantic Alliance, but via NATO’s command structure.

Although he referenced the United Nations, Stoltenberg omitted the crucial fact that the UN Security Council never authorized military action against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Instead, he claimed that “the international community condemned Milosevic’s policies,” when in fact this primarily referred to regional actors—NATO and EU member states—who acted without a UN mandate. No consent from the Security Council was ever requested.

He further justified the intervention by giving it “historical legitimacy”:

“History has shown that the action was both necessary and legitimate.”

Yet at no point did he refute the claim that the bombing was based on false information.

As a reminder, the key trigger for the military intervention was the Racak incident, whose interpretation was shaped by William Walker, a former CIA operative and U.S. diplomat, then serving as an OSCE representative. His unilateral and selective interpretation—highly sympathetic to the Albanian side and hostile toward official Belgrade—paved the way for military mobilization by the U.S., UK, France, and Germany. Instead of a formal declaration of war, the narrative of “preventing a humanitarian catastrophe” was used, framing the aggression outside the institutional framework of international law.

The question remains: why did the Western administrations of the time—victors of World War II and permanent members of the UN Security Council, except for Russia and China—allow such a precedent and knowingly bypass international legal norms? Who bears responsibility for the consequences that followed?

And the consequences were deeply felt by the Roma—people with no role in politics or the military, but who became collateral damage in history. Their tragedy is rarely addressed in international forums and even more rarely receives the institutional attention it deserves.

I had the opportunity to meet with the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Both consistently emphasize the importance of respecting the UN Charter as the cornerstone of international law and the development of modern society. Lavrov specifically noted that during the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, Germany, Japan, and Italy were the only countries that refused to vote in favor of a resolution condemning the spread of Nazism. According to him, this further underscored the double standards in regard to universal values.

In this context, Russian officials stress that NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia was both illegal and non-institutional, as it was conducted without UN Security Council authorization. They believe such actions can only be prevented through consistent adherence to international law and the UN Charter—as the foundation of a new, more just world order.

As someone who lived in Kosovo and Metohija from 1985 to 1991, I was familiar with communities that later suffered immense losses. During the 1999 bombing, numerous civilians perished, including many Roma. Their settlements were destroyed, families displaced and torn apart, and many lost their lives—often simply because they were Roma.

There are numerous testimonies stating that in areas inhabited by Roma, certain local collaborators from the Albanian side directed NATO forces toward specific targets, marking locations deemed suitable for attack. According to these accounts, they contributed to the targeted destruction of the Roma community—an act that, in historical terms, echoes the crimes of the Second World War.

What makes this even more painful is the fact that the bombs falling on civilian areas also came from German planes. Thus, for the second time in a single century, Serbs and Roma—peoples who were once subject to the Nazi racial laws of Munich, which targeted Roma, Jews, Serbs, and Slavs in general as “undesirable” under the ideology of racial purity—once again became targets.

Coming tomorrow: The forgotten pogrom – The Roma tragedy in Kosovo in 1999 (Part 2): Why did we, as a civilization, remain silent as the Roma burned in the flames of history?