‘Erased’ seek justice

Thousands struck off administrative records after 1991 sue Slovenian state

French President Nicolas Sarkozy (l) greets Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa in Paris. Jansa said his country could play a key role in the dispute between Serbia and Kosovo when it takes over the EU presidency on January 1. Slovenia has experience of Balkan politics and personalities, he told Reuters, dismissing doubts that Slovenia might be influenced by strong business ties to Serbia. ‘We know the situation very well, also the details which are not easily understandable for countries that are far away,’ he said.

LJUBLJANA (AFP) – Thousands of former Yugoslavs who lost their legal status overnight in Slovenia after the country gained independence in 1991 are still seeking compensation today for being administratively “erased” from society for over a decade.

“I ceased to exist legally for eight years. Look at the result,” says Sulejman Sabljakovic, 66, pointing to several of his teeth that are missing and to the scrap of paper which guarantees his monthly 240-euro ($347) welfare allowance.

The former construction equipment operator, who had worked and lived in Slovenia since 1962, saw all his papers suddenly invalidated in 1993 during a routine administrative procedure.

After Slovenia declared its independence on June 25, 1991, residents from other parts of the former Yugoslovia were given six months to legalize their status in the new country.

But some 18,305 individuals, or about 1 percent of Slovenia’s population, missed the deadline or fell through the cracks and were immediately struck off administrative records.

“In a matter of minutes, I lost my driver’s license, passport, residence permit, access to my bank account and, of course, my job and access to healthcare,” Sabljakovic says, recalling the years of living in semi-legality and the fear that followed.

His daughter Sejana, who was born in Slovenia in 1978, was expelled from school and was never able to regain those eight lost years of schooling. She now works as a sales girl in Ljubljana.

“We want acknowledgment that our rights were violated and compensation for the psychological and material damage endured,” insists Sabljakovic, who, like hundreds of other “erased” Yugoslavs, is suing the state for compensation.

Some 14,000 people, including Sabljakovic’s family in 2000, regained their legal status again in Slovenia after the country’s constitutional court invalidated the “erasures” in 1999 and 2003.

“But despite the court’s demands, nothing has been done to provide financial and moral compensation for years of ‘civil eradication,’” says Alexandar Todorovic, president of the Association of the Erased.

Ljubljana has drawn criticism on this issue from the Council of Europe, several branches of the United Nations as well as human rights organization Amnesty International, which has called for real compensation.

Slovenian Ombudswoman Zdenka Cebasek Travnik, who has been given hundreds of cases to handle, admits she has not been able to close a single one since she took the post in 2007. “There is clearly a political blockage,” she said.

But Interior Minister Dragutin Mate told AFP that the center-right government saw the matter as closed and did not deem it “fitting to apply the (constitutional) court’s ruling” in this case.

But former Ljubljana University Chancellor Jose Menciger said the failure to do justice to the “erased” was “a disgrace for Slovenia and one of the country’s biggest mistakes in the independence process.”

“It is especially saddening as Slovenia will take over the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union on January 1,” Menciger added.