Roma

Kosovo's Justice Minister Albulena Haxhiu said on Sunday that she has written to her Serbian counterpart Maja Popovic asking for Nezir Mehmetaj and Petrit Dula, who have both been charged with war crimes by Serbia, to be sent back to Kosovo, despite the lack of legal cooperation between the two countries.

The trial of Nezir Mehmetaj, a Kosovo Albanian accused of participation in war crimes against civilians in the village of Rudice in the Klina municipality in June and July 1999, opened in Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday.

Mehmetaj is accused of involvement in killing seven people and burning and looting houses in Rudice as a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

In a message on the occasion of International Roma Day, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban says that the current government is a supporter of the social inclusion and social, cultural and economic empowerment of the Roma communities and that, to this effect, it is preparing a new national strategic framework for the next five years, the measures of which will be adjusted to the specific needs of the

Intolerance has become the norm, Roma activists in the Balkans say.

Roma children at a camp in Mitrovica, north Kosovo, near the Trepca mine complex. Photo: EPA/ Valdrin Xhemaj.

The head of "25 May" a centre for troubled youngsters in Skopje, Macedonia, resigned on Monday "for moral reasons" over a scandal involving the possible sexual abuse of a 13-year-old in the care of his institution.

This case hit the public last Thursday when an international Roma rights organization, the European Roma Rights Centre, ERRC urged the authorities to react.

A second person has died from measles in Greece this year. It was revealed that a 17-year-old boy died at the University Hospital in Rio, near the western port city of Patra, last Friday.

The youngster suffered a brain inflammation after contracting the disease from members of his family.

He had not been vaccinated.

Go-go dancers performed during the weekend at an event held in the yard of the Gymnasium high school in Prokuplje, Beta reported on Monday.

At the same time, the yard of an elementary school in this southern town hosted a Roma wedding party.

A man died Friday and others were feared dead or injured after the roof of a derelict building collapsed in the old harbor of the western port city of Patra.

The man, whose identity was not immediately disclosed, was, according to local website bestnews.gr, a refugee who had sought shelter in the building, which also served as a makeshift shelter for members of the Roma community.

The latest report of the UN Human Rights Committee has criticized Serbia for not naming a War Crimes Prosecutor, for allowing suppression of freedom of expression and for inaction over persistent hate crimes.