SOCIETY-BALKANS: Countdown Begins to New Lessons

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Feb 5 2004 (IPS) - Less than 100 days from now Slovenia becomes the first among the six former Yugoslav republics to join the EU.

Slovenians were promised European Union (EU) membership after independence June 1991. In the 70-year history of former Yugoslavia as one nation, Slovenia was by far the most developed and the most Westernised area.

The tiny Alpine country of two million situated between Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia has had a strong industry and economy, and differs profoundly from the rest of Yugoslavia – Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

But Slovenia has caught a virus common among other ex-Yugoslav nations that waged the ethnic war that left a quarter of a million people dead through the 1990s; it is swept by a fear of foreigners. At the receiving end are about 150,000 people of non-Slovene origin.

Local media are filled with messages from Brussels reminding the Slovenian leadership about tolerance, "a word Slovenes should learn", as researcher Niko Tos puts it.

"Intolerance is incompatible with EU standards," the prominent daily ‘Delo’ wrote. "The message from the EU is that xenophobia is on rise. Our country should deal seriously with the problem of the ‘erased’ and the minorities."

The warnings came as city authorities in capital Ljubljana debate holding a referendum whether the town of 270,000 should allow a mosque for its 10,000 Muslims. There are some 50,000 Muslims of Bosniak or ethnic Albanian origin in Slovenia. Most Slovenes are Catholics.

"If we allow building of the mosque, consciously or unconsciously we’ll add to the infrastructure of al-Qaeda," Andrej Umek from the Popular Party told journalists last week.

His party is campaigning against the mosque and calling for a referendum on it. He says the proposed 27-metre tall minaret of the mosque would also "destroy the harmony of Ljubljana’s skyline."

A recent survey carried out by Niko Tos and his team at the Faculty of Social Science in Ljubljana showed that 44 percent of residents share Umek’s view. A decision on a referendum will be taken by the end of February.

The research team ran into another question that other EU countries too will face; the rights of immigrants who can come into the country once it opens its borders to other EU countries.

"Our study showed that only half (49.6 percent) of Slovenes approve of the same rights for immigrants, compared to 81 percent of Norwegians and 86 percent of Swedes," Tos says. "Only 41 percent of Slovenes confirmed that they understood the word ‘tolerance’."

This came as no surprise to many, above all to the people that the EU officials have been referring to as the "erased".

These are the 29,000 Croats, Serbs, Bosniak Muslims, ethnic Albanians, Italians and Hungarians whose names were removed from all records in Slovenia in February 1992. This was done without their knowledge, and without any warning though most had been permanent residents for decades.

Their sin was that they did not apply for citizenship of the newly independent country by February 1992. Their choice was to stay illegally or leave. Most decided to stay and fight for their rights. Almost all lost their jobs, because they could not work without proper papers.

"People were confused at the time, convinced that the permanent residence status, marriages or jobs gave them all the rights," says journalist Svetlana Vasovic Mekina. A native of Belgrade, she married a Slovene and has lived in Ljubljana since the mid-1980s. She has specialised in the problems of the "erased" and worked on a BBC documentary on their fate.

"That was an unprecedented example of administrative ethnic cleansing," Mekina says. "The official number is put at 29,000. Humanitarian agencies estimate there were 130,000 erased. Many got frightened and left, they closed that chapter of their lives. That is why the official number stands at 29,000."

Following legal moves by several associations of the "erased" backed by human rights groups, the constitutional court ordered their names back into official records. Parliament adopted a bill to authorise this. But some nationalist parties are now asking for a referendum, hoping to overturn both decisions.

"The whole thing is not about what rights the Slovenian state should have given to those people," lawyer for the "erased" Matevz Kirvic told IPS. "It’s about the rights it deprived them of illegally in 1992."

In the meantime, some ceremonies to mark joining the EU May 1 have begun. Among them is the tearing down of a brick and iron fence in Nova Gorica town in western Slovenia.

The fence built in 1954 on the border between Italy and what was Yugoslavia then divided the Italian town of Gorizia in two.

Tearing down of the wall marks a symbolic end to the cold war era and to borders between EU and non-EU countries.

Hundreds of Italians gathered in Gorizia last week to cheer workers who started removing the bricks and the iron fence. On the other side a few Slovenes watched with apparent indifference.

"It’s the prevailing opinion that the small Slovene nation will lose its identity once it joins the EU," Ros says. "The benefits do not count. People here have always lived and continue to live better than people in the other countries that are joining the EU."