A fourth attack on two Roma families has occurred in Belgrade’s suburb ’Vidikovac’, where a group of thugs with axes and baseball bats demolished a hut in which they have been living since 2009.
Text taken from the portal of Radio Free Europe.
According to the testimony of Vesna Sandić, a group of fifteen people, led by the construction investor, who, for a while, was trying to make them move out of that building, smashed their door at about 8 o’clock. Others, she said, were demolishing the roof of their shack at the same time.
“I was in the kitchen, and my husband went to the toilet when they kicked down the door. I said I’d go out, and that would move out of there if they had with them a legally valid document for eviction , but one of them started to drag me. I begged them not to break the furniture, but they continued regardless of my pleas,” says VesnaSandić.
Once all of them were thrown out of the barracks, VesnaSandić and her husband ran to the nearby police station, but they were told that the incident had already been reported.
“Two police cars were already there when we came back, they really came quickly. They arrested five of them, and the others fled. We gave a statement to the police, ” VesnaSandic said. The barrack, in which had lived with five small children and another family with four children, was completely demolished and all the things had been destroyed.
The previous attack, which was identical to this one, took place on July 8 this year. And even then the police came to the scene, barracks residents gave statements, and the human rights organization “Equality” has so far submitted more criminal charges to which ,as they claim, the public prosecutor hasn’t responded.
After the previous attack, an action of solidarity called “For the roof over our head” was organized, during which civic activists repaired a collapsed roof and enabled these families to return to their home.