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Šuto Orizari Municipality

Coordinates: 42°02′31″N 21°25′19″E / 42.04194°N 21.42194°E / 42.04194; 21.42194
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Šuto Orizari
Шуто Оризари
Shuto Orizari
Shutkë
City municipality
Flag of Šuto Orizari
Flag
Coat of arms of Šuto Orizari
Coat of arms
Location of Šuto Orizari
Coordinates: 42°02′31″N 21°25′19″E / 42.04194°N 21.42194°E / 42.04194; 21.42194
Country North Macedonia
Region Skopje
Municipal seatSkopje
Government
 • MayorKurto Duduš (Independent\OZP)
Area
 • Total7.48 km2 (2.89 sq mi)
Population
 • Total25,726
 • Density3,439/km2 (8,910/sq mi)
Time zoneUTC+1 (CET)
 • Summer (DST)UTC+2 (CEST)
Area code+389 044
Car platesSK
Websitehttp://www.SutoOrizari.gov.mk

Šuto Orizari (Macedonian: Шуто Оризариⓘ; Balkan Romani: Shuto Orizari; Albanian: Shutkë), often shortened as Šutka (Шутка), is one of the ten municipalities that make up the City of Skopje, the capital of the Republic of North Macedonia.[1] Šuto Orizari is also the name of the urban neighbourhood where the municipal seat is located. It consists of a council and mayor.[1]

Šuto Orizari covers 7.48 km² and had 17,357 inhabitants in 2002. It is the second smallest municipality of Skopje behind Čair and the least populated. Created ex-nihilo after the 1963 Skopje earthquake to relocate Romani people in North Macedonia who had lost their house, Šuto Orizari remains the only municipality in North Macedonia with a Muslim Romani people majority. In 2002, they represented almost 80% of the population, which also included small numbers of Albanians in North Macedonia and ethnic Macedonians. Šuto Orizari is the only local administrative unit in the world to have adopted Balkan Romani as an official language.

History

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For much of its history, Šuto Orizari was a small village in the country, as were neighbouring Butel and Vizbegovo. Its name derives from orizar (оризар), the Macedonian word for paddy field. It is only after the 1963 Skopje earthquake that the area became urbanised. Through the 20th century, Skopje had greatly expanded: while it had only 41,000 inhabitants in 1921, it had reached 166,870 in 1961. As a result, the area around Šuto Orizari was slowly becoming part of the city.

Before the earthquake, most of Skopje's Romani people in North Macedonia community lived in areas close to the Old Bazaar. The largest one is Topaana, located close to the fortress and home to Roma people since at least the 14th century. Built in cheap materials, Topaana and the other Roma settlements were severely damaged by the earthquake which destroyed around 80% of the whole city.[2]

Thanks to international aid, the reconstruction started quickly after the earthquake. Local authorities took the opportunity to rebuild Skopje as a functional and modern city, privileging large blocks of flats and dividing Skopje into areas dedicated to specific uses. As they also had to build new accommodation for the large Roma minority, they first considered the reconstruction as a way to assimilate them and resolve unemployment and sanitary problems that concerned that population.[3]

Most of the Muslim Roma population refused to live in the new buildings and authorities eventually decided to give them a specific neighbourhood where they could build the houses they wished.[3] The first buildings to appear were iron shacks donated by the United States. They were planned for temporary use, but some still remain more than 40 years after the earthquake. Most of the Muslim Romani community of Šutka is still facing unemployment and hard living conditions, although some of them manage to build large houses with the money they get as seasonal workers in Western Europe. The Roma houses in Šutka are built with solid materials and have fenced gardens. The area does not give the same impression of marginality as do older Romani neighbourhoods such as Topaana.[2]

Šuto Orizari became a distinct municipality in 1996.[2]

Geography

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Šuto Orizari

Šuto Orizari is located to the North of central Skopje, at approximately 5 km of Macedonia Square. The municipality is at the northern edge of the urban unit[1] and comprises some agricultural land. To the south, Šuto Orizari is bordered by Butel, another municipality of Skopje. To the north, it is bordered by Čučer-Sandevo, a rural municipality.

The municipality comprises three distinct settlements: Šuto Orizari proper, Dolno Orizari and Gorno Orizari. The first is an urban neighbourhood forming part of the urban unit and located inside the Skopje bypass. The second is a small village which comprised only 454 inhabitants in 2002. It is located north of the bypass. Gorno Orizari is located between Šuto Orizari proper and the rest of the city. The municipality is separated from the rest of Skopje by the Serava, a small river tributary to the Vardar, by Slovenia boulevard and by the Skopje-Pristina railway. The nearest train station is Skopje-Sever ("Skopje-North"), located in Butel. To the west Šuto Orizari is bordered by the village of Vizbegovo, and to the east by the Butel cemetery, the largest in Skopje.

Demographics

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Entrance to the town market

Šuto Orizari is the only municipality in the country where Arlije a subgroup of Muslim Romani people make up a majority of the population. Out of a total population of 17,357 in the 2002 census, 13,311 people (76.6%) were of Arlije ethnicity. Other significant ethnic groups include Albanians (2,594 or 14.9%) and Macedonians (962 or 5.5%).[4] During the recent conflict in Kosovo many Romani refugees found shelter here. The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants are Muslims.[5]

Most of the Arlije Muslim Romani population originates from the relocation of families after the 1963 Skopje earthquake. They were later followed by many other families coming from Skopje and other towns in North Macedonia. Romani language is spoken in a large number of dialects and several ones coexist in Skopje. They usually correspond to a single area (Topaanli, Barutči, Gilanska, Prištivačija, etc.) but as the Romani population in Šutka came in recent times and from many neighbourhoods, several dialects are used there and tend to assemble.[6]

According to the 2021 North Macedonia census, the exact number of the population was 25,726.[7]

2002 2021
Number % Number %
TOTAL 22,017 100 25,726 100
Roma 13,342 60.6 11,267 43.8
Albanians 6,675 30.32 8,828 34.32
Macedonians 1438 6.53 906 3.52
Bosniaks 177 0.8 99 0.38
Turks 56 0.25 73 0.28
Serbs 67 0.30 22 0.09
Others / Undeclared / Unknown 262 1.2 46 0.18
Persons for whom data are taken from administrative sources 4,485 17.43

Inhabited Places

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Šuto Orizari settlement:

Year Macedonian Albanian Turks Romani Vlachs Serbs Bosniaks Others Persons for whom data are taken from admin. sources Total
2002 481 1,205 49 13,201 ... 34 138 245 n/a 15,353
2021 451 8,824 73 11,221 ... 9 99 45 4,464 25,186

Gorno Orizari village:

Year Macedonian Albanian Turks Romani Vlachs Serbs Bosniaks Others Persons for whom data are taken from admin. sources Total
2002 444 ... ... ... ... 9 ... 1 n/a 454
2021 455 4 ... 46 ... 13 .. 1 21 540

Politics

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A political party office in Šuto Orizari

The municipality of Šuto Orizari was founded in 1996 following a law on local administration. The creation of a Romani municipality was a move to further emancipate and empower Romani people in the Republic of North Macedonia. At first, many of its inhabitants were skeptical of the project, as they feared the local budget would be too low to run the municipality properly. The first mayor, Nezdet Mustafa, was elected together with his council in autumn 1996 and the municipality became effective in January 1997.[8]

As anywhere in the Republic of North Macedonia, Macedonian is the official language. As an ethnic minority forms more than 20% of the population, its language is also official in the municipality, thus both Balkan Romani and Macedonian are official languages in Šuto Orizari. Albanian is also spoken, but is not an official language. The mayor of the municipality, Kurto Dudush, is Muslim Roma.

In 2009, the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia took further measures to enlarge inclusion of Romani in the education process. The cornerstone of a government-funded secondary school for Šuto Orizari was laid on 10 February 2009, an investment worth 1.6 million euros.[9]

Culture

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As it is the largest Romani settlement in North Macedonia, Šuto Orizari is home to several cultural institutions dedicated to Muslim Roma people. There are for instance a cinema and an amateur theatre company, Theater Roma. It was also home to the Phralipe theatre company, founded in 1970 and a pioneer in Romani theatre, before it moved to Germany in 1990.[10]

Šuto Orizari is the set of two films: Time of the Gypsies by Emir Kusturica (1988) and The Shutka Book of Records by Aleksandar Manic (2005).

References

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  1. ^ a b c Ragaru, Nadege (2008). "The Political Uses and Social Lives of "National Heroes": Controversies over Skanderbeg's Statue in Skopje". Südosteuropa. 56 (4): 542–543. "Skopje encompasses ten municipalities (Aerodrom, Butel, Čair, Centar, Gazi Baba, Gjorče Petrov, Karpoš, Kisela Voda, Saraj, Šuto Orizari), which all have a mayor, a municipal council and the same prerogatives as other municipalities in the country."
  2. ^ a b c Jasna Stevanovska. "Revisiting Topaana: touring a neighborhood where the other 1% lives" (PDF).
  3. ^ a b Robert Homes. "Reconstructing Skopje, Macedonia, after the 1963 earthquake: The Master Plan forty years on" (PDF). Anglia Ruskin University.
  4. ^ "Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Macedonia, Book X, table 2, page 65" (PDF). State Statistical Office of the Republic of Macedonia. 2002.
  5. ^ "Factsheets on Roma". romafacts.uni-graz.at.
  6. ^ Victor A. Friedman. "The Romani Language in North Macedonia in the Third Millennium: Progress and Problems" (PDF).
  7. ^ "Попис на населението, домаќинствата и становите во Република Северна Македонија, 2021 - прв сет на податоци" (PDF). stat.gov.mk. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  8. ^ Martin Demirovski. "Nezdet Mustafa". ERRC.
  9. ^ "Изградбата на Коридорот 8 може да почне во 2014 година". vlada.mk. 16 March 2012.
  10. ^ Christina Bratt Paulston and Donald Peckham, ed. (1998). Linguistic Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. Multilingual Matters. p. 62. ISBN 9781853594168.
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