RIGHTS-SLOVENIA: New EU Member Says No to Minorities

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, Apr 5 2004 (IPS) - People in the tiny Alpine republic of Slovenia that will become a full EU member May 1, voted overwhelmingly Sunday against restoration of basic rights to non-Slovenes.

Head of the Electoral Commission Marko Golobic told journalists that the turnout in the referendum was 30.1 percent in an electorate of 1.6 million. Some 95 percent of that number said ‘no’ to the technical bill that would restore rights to the "erased", Golobic said.

The "erased" are up to 130,000 people of non-Slovene origin, such as Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and ethnic Albanians who were living in Slovenia when it gained independence from the former Yugoslav federation back in 1991.

Most of them were not familiar with a deadline set by authorities of Feb. 26, 1992 to apply for Slovene citizenship in order to remain in the newly established state. Most thought it would come automatically. Authorities did not bother to advertise the requirement.

Once they missed that single opportunity, they were simply erased from all records, and so became the "erased". Most found that they did not officially exist when they tried to extend their driving licences or identity cards, or when they asked for passports.

Their old documents were taken away at police stations and destroyed. Without proper documents, they lost jobs, pensions and healthcare. And with them their families too were "erased". Just driving a car became impossible.

"We were turned into non-persons, deprived of human dignity," head of the Association of the Erased Aleksandar Todorovic told IPS. "Most of us went underground, as we feared expulsion."

Mass expulsions did not take place, attorney for the Association Matevz Krivic told IPS. "The authorities knew they did something illegal when they erased those people, and refrained from attracting attention of the West."

Over the years, many of the "erased" managed to obtain legal status, but dozens of thousands remained illegal in a country many were born in.

But Slovenia successfully went through the evaluation process to join the EU, as the most Westernised and most developed of the new countries to emerge from former Yugoslavia.

A series of Supreme Court decisions enabled some of the "erased" to be re- introduced into the records, but a final bill to give them rights never came into force, and was rejected in the referendum Sunday.

The referendum was held on the demand of rightist parties who insist there is no place for non-Slovenes in this prosperous country.

"We achieved our goal," Janez Jansa, head of the right-wing Democratic Party said Sunday night. "We cancelled the law that would make non-Slovenes equal to the Slovenes."

Human rights groups called the verdict a shame. "It’s a smear on Slovenia’s face," Neva Miklavcic Predan, head of the Helsinki Monitor human rights group told IPS. "Slovenian authorities deceived all the EU bodies in the evaluation process."

The erasure of non-Slovenes from records "was a planned, systematic and mass administrative ethnic cleansing executed by the authorities," she said. "After the referendum, they can continue to do that in future."

She warned of further dangers. "They can be deported from Slovenia due to the Schengen border status that will be introduced when Slovenia joins the EU," Miklavcic said.

The Schengen border agreement imposes visa restrictions on citizens of non- EU countries. It presents a major barrier for free travel into the EU from non-EU countries.

"The only hope for the ‘erased’ now will remain the Constitutional Court," Krivic said. The court has acted in favour of some of them in the past, but the authorities were extremely slow in taking follow-up action. Only 4,000 people were re-introduced into the records in the past year after decisions of the Supreme Court.

Western and EU diplomats are reluctant to comment on the "erased". Many say they heard about it only just ahead of the referendum.

"I’m positive about the fact that the issue of the erased was never on the agenda of the EU," said an EU ambassador who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This certainly does not look good for Slovenia now, but I’m certain that with the level of democracy they achieved, they will be able to overcome the problem."

For many of the "erased", the results of the referendum came as no surprise.

"I knew how they (the Slovenes) felt about us all the time," Tamara Janjic (32), a Serb born in Slovenia told IPS. "They simply think that it’s wrong that we came here in the first place. The most frequent comment I hear is – go to Serbia, you have a country of your own. But what could I do in Serbia when I’ve never been there?"

Like thousands of others, she is preparing to fight for her rights, with hope of support from the Association and the Constitutional Court.