January 23 marks the 81st anniversary of the raids. As every year, the commemoration is held at the Quay of the victims of the raids, in Novi Sad.

That bloody January in 1942 some of the main streets of Novi Sad, Orthodox cemeteries and courtyards of family houses were also places where executions were carried out.

Official figures say around 1,400 civilians were killed in Novi Sad during the three-day raids between January 21 and 23, 1942, but many claim the death toll was higher, up to 4,000 in just three days. In addition to Serbs, Jews and Roma, others, including Hungarians, who opposed the regime were killed in the raids.

The violence in Novi Sad, however, was not an isolated incident, but only one of a series of raids on towns and villages in the Bačka region, during which civilians were executed.

The raids began on January 4, 1942, in the village of Churug, about 40 kilometers from Novi Sad, and then spread to other nearby towns and villages - Žabalj, Gjurdjevo, Gospođinci, Gardinovci, Vilovo, Lok, Moshorin, Shaykashi, Kisac , Srbobran, Temerin and Bechey.

The pattern was almost always the same: the Hungarian army, police and gendarmerie arrested, tortured and killed civilians in warehouses or schools, then threw them into the frozen rivers Danube and Tisza. In some places, the victims were executed on the banks of the rivers.

The Roma language has been spoken in Kosovo since the 14th century. It is kept from generation to generation, and recently it has also been noted in literature. During the last two decades, the Roma from Prizren constantly demanded that the Romani language be recognized and introduced into official use in the municipality of Prizren.

Although there have been several attempts, so far this request has not been adopted. Six months ago, a coalition of civil society organizations was formed, which submitted a request to the municipality of Prizren to use the Romany language in traditional usage.

This network hired an expert to prepare a document with arguments for the recognition of the Romani language in official use, which was signed by 10 Romani intellectuals, and this request was also supported by organizations from the non-Roma community working in the municipality of Prizren.

In September 2022, the network of civil society organizations held a media conference where it informed about the submission of the request to the municipality of Prizren and information about the next steps. Osman Osmani, the director of the organization Nevo Concepts, who led the project for advocacy in the institutions for the adoption of the Romani language in official use in the municipality of Prizren, a project supported by the Council of Europe within the ROMACTED project, spoke about this.

Link: https://www.newipe.net/2022/11/22/romski-jezik-priznat-kao-sluzbeni-u-opstini-prizren/