We’ve just heard that the Belvil Romani settlement in Belgrade will be evicted soon. Four of the families have received eviction notices, although they don’t know when they will be evicted. Everyone living there is really worried about what is going to happen to them.

Just over a year ago the Romani settlement next to Belvil – at Blok 67 – was forcibly evicted to build an access road for the Student Games. Although the Roma living there knew they would be evicted, when the day actually came they were given no warning, and their houses were just bulldozed to the ground. It was the same with the Roma evicted from under the Gazela Bridge last August. That was supposed to be a proper resettlement, not a forced eviction, but in less than three hours, almost 200 houses were bulldozed to the ground.

We need to act fast. The government must stop the city authorities from forcibly evicting Smiljana, and Boro and Arif and all the other families we met in February. They know they will have to move, they know their settlement is on the way of a new road – which is part of a project to build a bridge across the river Sava. But if they are going to be evicted, then we’ll try to make sure it happens in line with all the relevant international human rights standards, and that their rights are respected. This would mean that people are properly resettled, rather than forcibly evicted.

The Deputy Mayor told the press at the end of March that the settlement would be evicted some time at the end of April or the beginning of May, but no-one has been able to establish when this will happen. The city authorities are supposed to consult the community about the eviction, and what their options are, and they are supposed to give them adequate notice, so that they have time to make sure that their possessions don’t get destroyed, as they were at Blok 67 and at Gazela. The city should also have told them where they are going to live after the eviction; some of them have heard that they will be resettled in metal containers, just like the Gazela residents, but no one has officially talked to them about this or told them where they will be moving to.

We’re sending a letter to the Serbian government now, asking them to urge the City authorities not to go ahead with the eviction before all the safeguards and procedures to protect the human rights of the community are in place. If that doesn’t work, we’ll be putting out an urgent action.