(The) erasure - mass human rights violation and denial of responsibility: The case of independent Slovenia

Human Rights Review

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 93-108

  Jalušič, Vlasta ^a   Dedić, Jasminka ^a  

^a Mirovni in titut   (Slovenia)

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EID: 57749133514     PISSN: 15248879     EISSN: 18746306     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12142-007-0031-5     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. The three largest ethnic minorities constituted Croats (52,876 or 2,76% of total population), Muslims (26,577 or 1,39%), and Serbs (47,401 or 2,48%). Source: Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, Census of the Population, Households and Housing, Slovenia, 31 March 2002, at http://www.stat.si/popis2002/en/default.htm.
2. The label "Muslim" indicates a category of ethnic and not of religious affiliation, which was replaced in 1994 by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian authorities with "Bosniak."
3. Some authors characterized the erasure as 'administrative ethnic cleansing' or 'civic death.' See, for example, Jasminka Dedić, "The Erasure: Administrative Ethnic Cleansing," in Roma Rights Quarterly, no. 3 (2003), pp. 17-25
4. Jim Fussel, The Izbrisani (Erased Residents) Issue in Slovenia, 26 February 2004, at http://www.preventgenocide.org/europe/slovenia/.
5. English translation of the officially revised text available at http://www.mnz.gov.si/fileadmin/mnz.gov.si/pageuploads/EN/enDUNZ/ZDRS-Eng.doc.
6. The discriminatory arrangement of article 40 'logically' entails a distinction between the erased who had the opportunity but did not acquire Slovene citizenship for various reasons and all other citizens of former Yugoslavia who had not even an opportunity to apply for Slovene citizenship.
7. See Alenka Mesojedec-Pervišek, Regulations on Citizens and Aliens (Predpisi o državlanih in tujcih; Ljubljana: Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, 1997).
8. 'Republican citizenship' in the former SFRY existed as an additional status to the Yugoslav citizenship and had been introduced by the 1974 SFRY Constitution. Although the dualistic system - i.e., of federal and republican citizenship - did not have any legal consequences before independence, the record about Slovenian citizenship became the major criterion to decide over who was obliged to apply for the newly formed state's citizenship and who was granted Slovenian citizenship automatically.
9. Ministry of Interior, Tujski in državljanski statusi - tiskovna konferenca (Alien and Citizen Statuses - A Press Conference), 19 June 2002.
10. Published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, no. 1/91.
11. International Helsinki Federation, 2001 Annual Report (2001), p. 271. Available at http://www.ihf-hr.org/documents/doc_summary.php?sec_id=3&d_id=1783.
12. Ministry of Interior, Administrative procedures relating to aliens issues: A reply to the National Council of the RS, document no. 0012/1-252/62-96, 4 March 1996.
13. This figure was finally accepted by the Constitutional Court decision in 2003 (no. U-I-246/02, 3 April 2003).
14. Matevž Krivic, "Post Scriptum," in Dedić, Jalušič, and Zorn (eds.), The Erased [note], pp. 158-159.
15. Zorn in Dedić, Jalušič, and Zorn (eds.), The Erased, p. 101.
16. Nevertheless, there were also ethnic Slovenes who were the victims of the erasure - primarily because they had not known that they were not registered in the Slovenian republican citizenship registrar, which was a precondition for automatic conferral of Slovenian citizenship. This fact reveals that the responsibility entirely lies on the authorities, which had failed to inform all Slovenian residents about their procedures and the consequences - about who would automatically obtain Slovenian citizenship and who needed to apply.
17. See Dedić, Jalušič, and Zorn (eds.), The Erased, p. 125 ff. 1
18. See ibid., pp. 147-148.
19. On the consequences of the erasure on erased Roma, see Dedić, pp. 17-25.
20. From the Serbian, Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija.
21. There are no reliable data how many persons are still without legal status living in Slovenia, how many 'voluntarily' left or were forcibly removed from the country. This vagueness was largely created by Slovenian authorities, particularly the Ministry of Interior, which authorized the police to expel the erased persons without any formal decision.
22. See Večer (Maribor), 25 February 2004, p. 3.
23. According to Matevž Krivic, former Constitutional Judge and a legal representative of many of the erased, the Constitutional Court decided on this issue only after the change of the Court's composition in 1998. The conclusion may be drawn that the Court was either unwilling or unable to decide on this issue in its former composition.
24. See Dedić, "The Erasure" [note 3], p. 22.
25. In its ruling, the Constitutional Court said, "Neither should competent authorities have effected the transfer of these persons from the existing register of permanent population to the record of foreigners ex officio, without any decision or notification addressed to the person concerned When the Government found that in practice the Aliens Act could not be applied in practice also to citizens of other republics, it should have proposed to the legislator to regulate their legal position, and should not have interfered with legislative power by a resolution" (no. U-I-284/94, B.-I., paragraph 14). In addition, the Constitutional Court prohibited the deportations of the erased persons living in Slovenia.
26. Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, no. 61/99, 64/01, 36/03 - CC decision U-I-246/02.
27. The conditions set in the ARLSC were the following: An application had to be lodged within a 3-month period and the applicants had to live continuously in Slovenia since the given dates and must not besentenced to imprisonment or convicted of certain criminal offenses.
28. CC decision no. U-I-246/02 from 3 April 2003.
29. The turnout of voters was 31%, and 94.7% voted against the issuing the supplementary decisions to the erased. Source: Republican Electoral Commission, at http://www.rvk.si.
30. For even greater irony, after the 'technical bill' was voted down at the referendum, the then Minister of Interior Rado Bohinc decided to issue supplementary decisions directly on the ground of the Constitutional Court decision, for which the opposition leader, Janez Janša (present Slovenian prime minister), threatened him with criminal charges.
31. The most frequent targets were the members of the Association of the Erased Persons of Slovenia, which was established at the 10th anniversary of the erasure in February 2002, Slovenian Helsinki Monitor and even the Amnesty International.
32. Although the Constitutional Court decision constituted a legal ground for the issuance of supplementing decisions with retroactive effect, the legal experts defended the position that the implementation law should be adopted. The so-called technical bill covered those who succeeded to regulate their status and could prove their uninterrupted living in Slovenia (between 4,000-5,000 persons).
33. See Mladina (Ljubljana), 26 November 2003, at http://www.mladina.si/dnevnik/39281/.
34. The 'systemic bill' regulated the acquisition of permanent residence for those who had no settled status (approximately 4,300 persons) or held temporary residence permit in Slovenia. Although the 'systemic bill' was quite restrictive and based on a case-by-case examination, the opposition initiated several referendum initiatives against the bill, all of which were rejected by the Constitutional Court. However, the opposition was successfully blocking the legislative procedure until the elections and the parliament's dissolution.
35. The Slovenian Democrats (SDS) won the elections with a considerable help of their attitude against the erased after the Constitutional Court judgment, and especially with fuelling ethnonational and xenophobic sentiments along the referendum and later election campaign in 2004.
36. Published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, no. 1/91. The purpose of the constitutional bill is to change article 13 of the Constitutional Act Implementing the Basic Constitutional Charter on the Independence and Sovereignty of the Republic of Slovenia, which stipulates that "[t]he citizens from other republics who on the day of the plebiscite on the independence and autonomy of the Republic of Slovenia, 23 December 1990, were permanent residents in the Republic of Slovenia and actually live in Slovenia shall, until they obtain citizenship of the Republic of Slovenia of Slovenia under Article 40 of the Law on Citizenship in the Republic of Slovenia, or until the expiry of the terms determined in Article 81 of the Law on Foreign Persons, have the same rights and obligations as the citizens of the Republic of Slovenia, except in cases specified under Article 16 of this law."
37. This article shows the importance of the state as a political (and not ethnic) institution only too vital to the guarantee of legal and political equality and, thus, to the protection of all rights, including the basic one: the "right to have rights."
38. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: André Deutsch, 1986), p. 298.
39. Published in Večer (Maribor), 25 February 2004, p. 3.
40. See also Borut Mekina, "The Erased, First Half-Time: Resolute Victory of the Right" (Izbrisani, prvi polčas: Odločna zmaga desnice), in Tomaž Trplan, Sabina Autor, and Roman Kuhar (eds.), Intolerance Monitor Report 3 (2004) (Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2004), pp. 56-69.
41. For more about this, see in Vlasta Jalušič "Organized Innocence and Exclusion ('Nation-states' in the Aftermath of War and Collective Crime," under review for publishing in Social Research.
42. No. U-I-266/95, 20 November 1995.
43. See Dedić, Jalušič, Zorn, pp. 57, 108.
44. Hannah Arendt attributed this sort of irresponsibility to the fact that under the greater bureaucratization of public life, one can start behaving as if being a part of an anonymous administrative apparatus without agency.
45. See Hannah Arendt, On Violence (San Diego, New York, London: A Harvest Book), p. 81.
46. Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 289.
47. See Dedić, Jalušič, and Zorn, The Erased, p. 48.
48. See Krivic, "Post Scriptum" [note 14], p 159.
49. Thus, the loss of permanent residence also encroached on the voting rights of those erased who could not regain their residence status, as the aliens with permanent residence were conferred the right to vote on municipality level in 2002.
50. See Jelka Zorn, "Ethnic Citizenship in the Slovenian State," Citizenship Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 135-152, May 2005
51. Brad K. Blitz, "Statelessness and the Social (De)Construction of Citizenship: Political Restructuring and Ethnic Discrimination in Slovenia," Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 5, No. 4 (October-December 2006), p. 454.
52. See Arendt, The Origins of Totalitariansim, p. 278, 296, 301
53. An excellent work exploring the issue of racism in contemporary Slovenia is a book of Tonči Kuzmanić, Hate-Speech in Slovenia: Slovenian Racism, Chauvinism and Sexism, translated from Slovenian by Olga Vuković (Ljubljana: Open Society Institute-Slovenia, 1999).
54. Quoted in Mekina, "The Erased" [note 33], p. 58.
55. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers. Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 5.
56. This Other was constructed already through the so-called Slovenian spring.
57. See Vlasta Jalušič "Troubles with Democracy," in Jill Benderly and Evan Kraft (eds.), Independent Slovenia. Origins, Movements, Prospects (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), pp. 135-157.
58. See Omer Bartov, "Defining Enemies, Making Victims: Germans, Jews, and the Holocaust," American Historical Review, Vol. 103, No. 3 (June 1998), pp. 771-816
59. see also Vlasta Jalušič, "Post-Totalitarian Elements and Eichmann's Mentality in the Yugoslav Wars and Mass Killings," in Dan Stone and Richard H. King (eds.), Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History. Imperialism, Nation, Race, and Genocide (London: Berghahn Books, 2007).
60. This is the allusion to Hannah Arendt's organized guilt.
61. See Hannah Arendt, "Organized Guilt and Collective Responsibility," in Jerome Kohn (ed.), Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, exile, and totalitarianism (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), pp. 121-132.
62. See Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
63. Milica Bakic-Hayden, "Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia," in Slavic Review, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Winter 1995), pp. 917-931.
64. Fortunately, a 10-day war ended shortly with a relatively low number of casualties. Altogether, 61 persons were killed, and 335 persons were wounded during the Slovenian independence war.
65. Source: Delo - Sobotna priloga (Ljubljana), 24 June 2006, p. 9.
66. The belief in Slovene "natural goodness" echoed strongly in Milan Kučan's speech at the proclamation of Slovenian independence on 26 June 1991. On that occasion, he stressed that "[w]e have been capable of accomplishing the task because our faith was firm and because there were no evil thoughts in our actions." Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana, 26 June 1991, at http://www2.gov.si/up-rs/uprs_ang.nsf/4f0e6b3d16bb4c8dc125678c003a80ab/b423eb5960971ca3c125678c003a4c46?OpenDocument.
67. Jeffrey C. Alexander, "Citizen and Enemy as Symbolic Classification. On the Polarizing Discourse of Civil Society," in: M. Founier and M. Lamont (ed.), Where Culture Talks, Exclusion and the making of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 289-308, 291.
68. In the Aliens Act legislative procedure in 1991, such an amendment was proposed by Metka Mencin, then a parliamentary deputy, which provided that "the SFRY nationals who are nationals of some other republic and do not apply for Slovenian citizenship but have a registered permanent residence in Slovenia, or have a job in Slovenia, are issued permanent residence status." The reasons for amendment rejection were, as Metka Mencin later recalled, obviously politically motivated: "In the then Demos (first government coalition in independent Slovenia, authors' remark), the fear of foreigners was quite effectual and in this respect Demos's operation was quite harmonized."
69. Dedić, Jalušič, Zorn, pp. 47-48.
70. See also Večer, 26. November 2002, p. 5.
71. Dedić, Jalušič, and Zorn (eds.), The Erased, p. 121
72. For easier identification of these persons, a list known as "the list of 800 dangerous persons" (seznam 800 nevarnih), was compiled jointly by the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defence.
73. See Dedić, Jalušič, and Zorn (eds.), The Erased, p. 62.
74. See also Mekina, "The Erased" [note 33], p. 60.
75. See Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 1994).
76. Jasminka Dedić, The Erasure: Eleven Years After, public lecture organized by the Association of the Erased Residents of Slovenia (Ljubljana, Faculty for Social Work), 27 February 2003.
77. Matevž Krivic, "Post Scriptum," in Dedić, Jalušič, Zorn, p. 157.
78. As a matter of fact, in comparison between Slovenia and other newly established states on the territory of former USSR, Czechoslovakia and SFRY with regard to the issue of nationality, Slovenia is unique in this respect. Although some newly established states set unreasonably high requirements with respect to the acquisition of a citizenship by ethnic minorities, such as exclusion of Russian speakers from Estonian citizenship and of the so-called Slovak Roma from the citizenship of Czech Republic, habitual residents belonging to these minorities were not deprived of their previous status as the erased were.
79. See Dedić, The Erasure: Eleven Years After.
80. See Mojca Pajnik (ed.), Xenophobia and Post-Socialism, translated from Slovene by (Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2002).
81. In 2005, for example, the General Secretary of the Amnesty International Slovenia urged the Slovenian authorities: "We urge the government to devote its attention to the issue of 'erased' immediately and to explicitly and publicly recognize the discriminatory nature of the removal from the population registry of the individuals concerned and to ensure that their status of permanent residents is retroactively restored." Cited in Report on the Situation of the Fundamental Human Rights in Slovenia in 2005, submitted by Arne Marjan Mavčič, EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, Reference CFR-CDF/SI/2005, p. 32.
82. See, in general, Dedić, Jalušič, and Zorn (eds.), The Erased [note 1].
83. As early as 1995, the human rights ombudsman wrote in his annual report: "Five years after Slovenia gained independence there are still many individuals who are encountering problems more or less closely connected to it. We believe it is high time that the state finally resolves these questions. The uncertainty and distress experienced by numerous individuals who cannot resolve one of the mentioned existential problems, need to be ended as soon as possible. In numerous procedures, facts referring to the period of gaining independence are still taken into account and negative legal consequences for the individual are based on these facts.'" Annual Report of the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Republic of Slovenia, 1995, p. 140. Similar conclusions could also be found in the ombudsman's following reports, and in 2004, the ombudsman published a special report on the erased.
84. In his 2003 report on Slovenia, the then Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner, urged the Slovenian authorities to "ensure that the situation of the persons erased from the list of permanent residents be regularised without delay in the manner prescribed by the Constitutional Court." Report by Mr. Alvaro Gil-Robles, Commissioner for Human Rights, On His Visit to Slovenia 11-14 May 2003 (Strasbourg), 15 October 2003, paragraph 86.
85. In his follow-up report, the human rights commissioner sharply criticized the government tricks concerning the erased, as he said: "As regards the enactment of the law regulating and reinstating the status of the remaining erased persons, the Commissioner urges the Slovenian government to definitely resolve the issue in good faith and in accordance with the decisions of the Constitutional Court. Whatever the appropriate legislative solution maybe, the current impasse reflects poorly on the respect for the rule of law and the Constitutional Court's judgments in Slovenia." Follow-Up Report on Slovenia (2003 - 2005): Assessment of the Progress Made in Implementing the Recommendations of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights (Strasbourg), 29 March 2006, paragraph 52.
86. There were several warning and opinions addressed at the Slovenian State, like the one from 2002, published at the visit of the Council of Europe Advisory Committee on the Supervision of the Implementation of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in Slovenia, 4-8 April 2005, where it was stated that "the State party should seek to resolve the legal status of all the citizens of the successor States that formed part of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia who are presently living in Slovenia, and should facilitate the acquisition of Slovenian citizenship by all such persons who wish to become citizens of the Republic of Slovenia." Report on the Situation of the Fundamental Human Rights in Slovenia in 2005, p. 32-33.
87. For example, see Constantin Sokoloff, Denial of Citizenship: A Challenge to Human Security, February 2005, at http://dev.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2/fs/?file_id=17068.
88. The European Commission, Regular Report from the Commission on Slovenia's Progress towards Accession, November 1998, p. 11, at http://www.ec.europa.eu/comm/enlargement/report_11_98/pdf/en/slovenia_en.pdf.
89. From this perspective, it becomes clear why the Slovenian authorities acted expeditiously in 1999 to implement the first Constitutional Court judgment. However, in 2003 and 2004, as the entrance to the European Union became a matter of course, the political consensus could not be reached any more.