POLITICS-SERBIA: Now a Welcome Stands in the Way

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jun 9 2003 (IPS) - Twelve years after the bloody war of disintegration of former Yugoslavia began in Croatia, Serbs can travel freely to a country that was once a part of their own.

"Besides our wish to improve neighbourly relations, we were under pressure from the EU (European Union) to step up cooperation in the region," Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan announced last week.

The Foreign Ministry of Serbia and Montenegro expressed "profound satisfaction" over the decision, "which will stimulate broader relations between our countries." Belgrade abolished visas for Croats two years ago.

The smooth diplomatic vocabulary and the polite phrases come after years of negotiations between the two neighbours.

Negotiations became possible only after the two men who started the war in 1991 were gone. Croatian nationalist president Franjo Tudjman died in 1999, while his Serbian counterpart Slobodan Milosevic fell from power in 2000.

The war waged by the two cost more than 20,000 lives.

The Croatian decision now comes in the face of opposition from conservative and nationalist circles. "The wounds of war are still present," Dubravka Suica, Mayor of Dubrovnik told local media in Croatia. "The government should have taken into account the opinion of those who were victims of Serb aggression."

Croats had introduced visas for Serbs in response to the war waged by Milosevic. Under Milosevic, the army had tried to block the independence drive led by Tudjman. Bloody traces of atrocities against Croats remain all over the country.

But for many ordinary Serbs who took no part in the war, Croatia and its Adriatic coast remain a happy memory of childhood and youth.

"I’d certainly like to visit Dubrovnik or Split, the favourite spots of my youth," says Zagorka Milic (55), a Belgrade teacher. "Only I don’t know if I would be welcome. There must be many bitter memories of war among the people."

Croatian Tourism Minister Pave Zupan Ruskovic told Serbian media that it was too late for Serbs to think about the Croatian coast this year, because "most of the hotels are already booked." She said "there are private facilities that can be rented to the guests."

But a survey by the Croatian polling agency Media Metar found that only half the owners of apartments are willing to rent them to Serbs, even though tourism brings billions of dollars into the country.

Serbs who owned more than 22,000 summer houses on the coast hardly knew what hit them when they had to leave. Croatia cut telephone lines with Serbia in 1991. They were restored only after Tudjman’s death in 1999.

Abolition of visas might bring particular hope to Croatian Serbs from Krajina who fled their homes in 1995.

The Croatian army overran the self-proclaimed Serb Krajina Republic comprising areas traditionally inhabited by Serbs. The Serb move had been backed by Milosevic.

More than 200,000 Croatian Serbs fled to Serbia proper in a single week as the Croatian army moved in. Thousands of Serb homes were later burnt by revengeful Croats. The Tudjman regime offered areas in Krajina to Croat immigrants.

Krajina Serbs have had to wait weeks for visas to visit their old homes. Hundreds of them had to queue daily outside the gates of the Croatian embassy in Belgrade.

The queues are now gone, but suspicion and fear remain.

"I don’t know if I’d like to go to see my home in Obrovac," says Kosara Vlasic (45), a market vendor in Belgrade. "I know a Croat family lives there. They lost their home somewhere else and moved in. What could I tell them?"

The business communities on both sides welcomed the abolition of visas.

"Besides the free flow of capital and goods between the two countries, there has to be a free flow of people," president of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce Nadan Vidosevic told media in Belgrade.

"Our economies were compatible for 70 years, until the common homeland fell apart," economist Nebojsa Savic from Belgrade told IPS. "Trade can bridge gaps between the people and that is a good way to start."