Shutka, Suto Orizari, Macedonia - Sleek black Audis skirt past children playing in the streets and carts pulled by elaborately dressed horses clop around potholed streets. The stainless steel spires of Macedonia’s biggest mosque pierce the skyline. This is Suto Orizari- Shutka, Macedonia’s only Roma-run municipality, located on the outskirts of the capital Skopje.
Roma, or Romani people, are a once-nomadic group of people who are believed to have arrived in Europe from northern India one thousand years ago. In Europe, there are 12 million Roma - making them the continent’s largest minority - over half of which live in the European Union. Some 200,000 are in Macedonia, according to the Council of Europe.
Eighty percent of Suto Orizari’s population is Roma. The municipality is the only local administrative unit in the world to have adopted Romani as an official language. It has several TV channels in the Roma language and a colourful flag featuring the Roma wheel - an Indian chakra, which refers to the origin of the Roma people.
The streets - named after Walt Disney, Che Guevara and Garcia Lorca - are bustling. At the centre is a sprawling bazaar where vendors hawk tracksuits, sneakers, and home goods mostly imported from Turkey and China.
Those who don’t have stalls lay out tarps selling electronics or just bits and bobs. Buses ferrying residents and customers arrive regularly from the centre of Skopje, about 15 minutes away. Somewhere, a band plays the fast-paced music of trumpets, accordions and drums that the Balkan Roma are known for.
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