This is a national shame. The same country - nay, the same politicians! - who formed the Council for Human Rights in 1988, stripped almost one percent of population of their basic human rights. Adding to that the ruling of Slovene constitutional court which long time ago ruled that the “erasure” was unconstitutional, you can safely say that this or any other previous government doesn’t give a sh** about it. Someone should be tried and convicted for it!

     by pengovsky on February 28, 2007 at 9:07 am

It is almost as if those responsible for the treatment these people are receiving have learned a lesson or two too much, from our enemies during WWII…
Also: If things like these will repeat because there is nothing that can be done about it, the general assumption it is OK to treat others like a piece of s..t will become a normal fact of life. Anxious people and atrocities are often only two parts of the same medal, aren’t they.

     by alcessa on February 28, 2007 at 9:18 am

AFAIK, the Slovenian government didn’t request them to apply for citizenship, it requested that they apply for permanent residency in Slovenia. The ones that did neither, were erased (or erased, if you please).

     by historix on February 28, 2007 at 10:24 am

Indeed. I just don’t understand why on earth was it necesary? There are other perfectly disgusting ways to trample human rights - like Ambrus, etc… What kind of a sick mind goes and removes all traces of peoples’ existence?

     by pengovsky on February 28, 2007 at 10:24 am

I read somewhere that these 18 000 were people that went back to their original republics at the time of the war but later returned and demanded citizenship. Anyone know anything about that?

     by Peter Zrinski on February 28, 2007 at 10:26 am

Hello everyone! Michael, I love your blog - I read it every day. Never had the need to share my story so much as today. So here’s mine.

I’m half Serb - my mother is a Serb. Before the war for independence she worked in a high place of the customs office. Slovenia became her home, and she knew, she was never to return to Serbia. To say the truth, I don’t think she believed Slovenia would win, but did everything she could to support the Slovene side. For that, she got a lot of trouble, and had to leave soon after the war. By the way, her boss - also a Serb, was on the Serb side, and still has a job, isn’t erased (although he should be in my opinion), and receives a very high paycheck every month. Behind every erased story (and sometimes even nonerased) is a anti-slovene story.

All those who support the erased ones, should know that, everyone was given the chance to become Slovene. Of course, some didn’t want to, and now that they do, it’s TOO LATE. Sorry, and good-bye. Plus, if you’re Slovene supporting erased ones, ask yourself, whose side am I actually on. Slovene or Serb.

People cannot think about things they don’t know, but sometimes they should try.

     by Mojca on February 28, 2007 at 10:58 am

These political oportunists had another two (!!!) chances to gain citizenship (one under minister Bohinc, I don’t remember the other). Obviously, they decided for money instead.

     by Anonymous on February 28, 2007 at 10:59 am

@P. Zrinski: Some, but not all of them. These people are not a coherent group but rather a loose mass of individuals of different backgrounds who have happened to land in the same doo-doo

@Mojca: I refuse to take sides… This is not a question of being Slovene or Serb. It is a matter of being human and humane. It is a question of whether a state can strip a person of its basic human rights or nor. It is a question of whether the government and the parliament respect rulings of the constitutional court. It is - in short - a question of wehther there is rule of the law and due process in Slovenia or whether the state can arbitrarily decide to whom it will “grant” existence and whose existence will deny.

@Anonymous: Indeed - it is highly opportunistic to be noone’s citizen, without pension benefits and social security and without identity. It is really a great investement in the future. (please note the overdose of sarcasm here)

     by pengovsky on February 28, 2007 at 11:26 am

Mojca: I also know one of the erased — in this case, someone who didn’t take Slovenia’s indepedence seriously at the time and got hammered for it later on.

The real rub is if people like this, who made a mistake judging which way the wind was blowing, should be punished or not… and by how much. I honestly feel conflicted about the issue. Clearly there are some very unlucky people who got caught up in this, and clearly there are some people who unwisely rejected Slovenia and were then, logically, rejected in turn. It’s really a mess. Incidentally, thanks for commenting and thanks for the nice words.

I also sometimes wonder if it’s fair to be compensated for being screwed over by municipal authorities, since screwing people is what they’re there for. That’s why we pay them. I spent a year trying to get a visa to work and live here and by the end I felt like I’d been fucked by a train. At no point did any of them know what I needed, and on numerous occasions I was asked to perform impossible tasks. (Like give them my EMÅ O number when applying for an EMÅ O number.)

I imagine that things were exponentially worse in 1992.

Colin mentions that a Slovenian newspaper published a story with evidence that the government willfully did this, though, which is a whole new dimension. Does anyone know what he’s referring to?

     by Michael M. on February 28, 2007 at 12:11 pm

Yes… There is documented evidence that then interior minister (or someone directly under his authority) issued an instruction that every person who does not apply for citizenship until 27. February 1992 has to be erased (hence the term “the Erased”) from database(s).

Thus it was the government’s proaction rather than people’s inaction that caused the current situation. It might seem like semantics to most people but it is very important. Namely: the erasure was not a necesary and logical step required by the law, but was made at the governmen’t discretion, which is unlawful and unconstitutional. The constitutional court said as much (or at least something to that effect)

     by pengovsky on February 28, 2007 at 1:17 pm

Unfortunately, giving back your Slovenian citizenship will cost you more than 400 Euros. It would be nice if one could just go and tell the person responsible one has been paying all kinds of money necessary to be able to live somewhere in a foreign country for years and that this constitutes a perfect reason to be erased. For free.

     by anonimna on February 28, 2007 at 1:38 pm

It’s a long and complicated story, with its highlights of pure shame. It all started with a quite liberal law: according to the Citizenship Act of 1991, everybody that lived (had a permanent residency) in Slovenia on December 23rd, 1990, and had the Slovenian citizenship (that is, the so-called “Republican Citizenshipâ€?, of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia) was automatically given the new Slovenian citizenship. All other citizens of Yugoslavia, who had permanent residency in Slovenia, but not the “Republican Citizenshipâ€?, were given the choice between two options: either apply for Slovenian citizenship, or register as “foreignersâ€?, i.e. people with permanent residency but without citizenship. Under this provision, around 180.000 people from ex-Yugoslav republics got the Slovenian citizenship and a considerably smaller number maintained only the permanent residency. Some, however, did not comply with the law and did neither. If I’m correct, we are talking of about 18.000 individuals. So, not only were they not given the status of foreigner, which is kind of logic, but were cancelled from the register of permanent residents, too. Canceled! That means they bureaucratically ceased to exist, and there was no proof they actually had ever existed. This was done totally illegally, without any foundation in the law itself. The person who ordered this should be (in my opinion) persecuted for it (the minister at the time was Igor BavÄ?ar). This people could not even file a complaint: they were just canceled, not even a document was issued to them certifying the cancellation itself (and thus that they once were residents). That’s why it took the Constitutional Court so long to rule on the case: the victims of this bureaucratic arbitrariness couldn’t even complain to the court. Anyway, at the end of the 1990-s, the Court finally ruled that the “cancellationâ€? had been illegal. A law was passed that enabled this people to get back their residency status. About half of them, if I remember well, took this possibility. But in 2003 the Constitutional Court issued a second ruling that really complicated things and was highly disputed (both on political and legal basis). First, it declared not only the act of cancellation but the whole 1991 Law regulating this issue, unconstitutional. (Which some, among them authors of the Slovenian Constitution and former presidents of the Constitutional Court, maintained the Court had no right to do, since the 1991 Citizenship Act has itself the status of Constitutional Law and can thus not be unconstitutional). Second, it ordered that the situation prior to the cancellation be restored: that is, that all those who lost residency in 1992 be given it back, retroactively. This was, in the view of the then opposition (and now ruling party) an absurdity: according to this ruling, all those who left Slovenia after 1990 would get a document certifying they had lived in Slovenia for 13 years (with all the legal consequences) even though they hadn’t! So they proposed a solution that would bypass the Const. Court’s decision: a Constitutional Law that would enable all the real victims to get their status back, but would 1.) limit the sums of the indemnities, 2.) treat each case individually (i.e. establish if a person did in fact live in Slovenia all this time and then get the certification – the (in)famous odloÄ?be – only for the time he really lived in Slovenia) and 3.) exclude individuals that engaged in armed aggression against Slovenia in 1991. The then governmental parties (now opposition) stuck to the Const. Court’s ruling, so the then opposition blocked them with two consecutive referenda. And now the opposition is blocking the Government by refusing to solve the matter by a Constitutional Law (that would demand a two-third majority in the Parliament). And things remain as they were.

     by luka on February 28, 2007 at 1:57 pm

Luka: A great and highly accurate account. Well done!

     by pengovsky on February 28, 2007 at 2:38 pm

Mmm… I think they must have done smtg like that to me… after 1 yr of buro-crazy and 25 potrdilos, I went to obcina and they told me I don’t exist !

     by Disablez on February 28, 2007 at 3:47 pm

I join Pengovsky’s praise.

Mojca: I’m afraid I don’t understand your point. First you say that your mother’s boss who supported the Serbs during the war was in fact not erased (and not only this, he now also enjoys all the benefits of “our society”), but then you challenge those who support the erased to reconsider ther position on Slovenia vs. Serbia conflict. If the erasure was not based on whether one supported Slovenia or Serbia - as imply the first part of your post -, why should then our opinon on the Erased reflect our opinion on the conlict?

Besides the point, it goes often (in fact always) unnoticed how chess offers a true emancipating potential to the Erased. In Å entjur chess club there are three Erased who were strangely enough never removed from the sloveninan chess organization, their names remaining (with their nationality marked as Slovenian) in the chess rating and tournaments archives. They were, so to speak, reduced to chess-existence; but it’s an existence afterall. State should perhaps follow the path of wise, tolerant and all-inclusive FIDE: as says the motto of the world chess organization, gens una sumus.

     by Alexander Krakrarjev on February 28, 2007 at 4:03 pm

I think everything would have gone much more smoother had the government just made these people go through a much more strenuous re-application process (if they were in fact those that decided to wait it out and never reregistered when told to). Erasing their existence is quite extreme.

On the other hand as was stated in one of the linked articles. I’m not sure how/why anybody would relinquish their documents of proof (at least not the originals). Only way anybody will ever get my original documents (i.e. birth certificate, etc.) is if they pry them out of my dead hands!

On a personal, some-what related note…I just recently put in my application for my Slovene passport. From what I’ve been told by the M of I I’m still registered as a Slovene citizen. Looks like they didn’t erase me.

     by Michael N. on February 28, 2007 at 4:57 pm

Apparently people often went do to some bureauctratic chore to the obÄ?ina, oblivious to the fact that they were erased. And usually, after handing their ID card to the clerk, the latter checked their EMÅ O in the database, didn’t find a match and destroyed the document (per standard procedure).

     by pengovsky on February 28, 2007 at 6:11 pm

This is, indeed, a terrible situation; it’s also the one in which my grandmother could’ve easily found herself (she’s a Serbian, was born in Croatia, moved to Slovenia in 1952), if my mother did not take care of her paperwork.
In any case, I agree with you, Michael. It’s about basic human rights, about being human and humane.

And, btw, I just filed my permanent residency, working permit, travel document, etc. paperwork here, and I know exactly how being fucked by a train feels.

     by Tina. on February 28, 2007 at 7:49 pm

Michael: your paperwork stories (well, insinuations) just show how much more Slovenia needs to do to become a REAL EU state (you’ve told us before you have a German passport. I don’t want to prance, but I don’t even remember most of the occasions I had to submit anything to get the necessary permits and stuff. You see, it all went before I could think “twiddle-dum”. Even though I didn’t have all the papers at every occasion. And if we are all equal, as EU citizens, it shouldn’t be different for any of you. HOWQ)

     by alcessa on February 28, 2007 at 8:10 pm

alcessa: Part of my misfortune when applying for a visa was that it was before Slovenia became an EU member. It’s interesting that I had a lot going for me from the beginning, but still got my ass handed to me.

As a chess enthusiast, I really liked your story, Alexander — many thanks for sharing it.

And Luka: You seem to vanish for long periods of time, but when you do write, it’s always awesome. Thanks for the wrap-up!

     by Michael M. on February 28, 2007 at 9:42 pm

Fascinating string. Almost surreal even by our San Francisco standards. Though I can think of a few people over here that I’d like to see “erased” on some level, I think this post should be categorized as “Things you probably won’t see in the U.S.” We have our challenges but we haven’t stumbled onto this whole erasure thing!

     by KevinE on March 1, 2007 at 7:10 am

@ KevinE: You (Americans), in your very short history, HAVE managed to “stumble onto this whole erasure thing” twice already (if I need to remind you of how nice you treated your native- and your African Americans). Germans managed to do it only ones in their very long history. We are just learning from the masters here.

For all of you not satisfied with Slovene way of doing things, maybe we should start thinking of doing it the American way.

Ups, I do apologize for the above. For a moment I forgot that, saying anything bad about Americans is a big NO-NO.

     by Mojca on March 1, 2007 at 12:52 pm

Mojca,

I’m an American, and I absolutely agree with you.

Given America’s horrible treatment of African Americans and Native Americans in the 1800s (yes, I agree, America is a young nation, not like the old, brilliantly wise European nations - let’s forget about that silly 1789 Constitution), it was completely reasonable for both (i) the Germans (and Slovenes, btw, as there really aren’t any Anne Frank stories coming out of Ljubljana) to burn any Jew in sight in the 1940s and (ii) the Slovenes to engage in subterfuge to disenfranchise any non-Slovene in sight in the early 1990’s.

Mojca, can you believe these people? Challenging a nation’s right to destroy non-nationals. My God, these silly people, especially the silly Americans - for instance, an American might claim that, in a comparable situation in America, there are thousands of pro bono lawyers ready and willing to take up the case of any of the Erased, but we all know that, even if they exist, they’re all stupid. Anyway, as to denying the rights of non-nationals, this may be the 21st century, but it’s been going on for years in other countries, so it must be OK.

And those Germans - in their brilliant, long history, they never really did anything wrong, other than one minor atrocity they might or might not have committed outside of Munich in 1942. Well, I’ve actually read some documents from back then, and, in the original German, these documents suggest that all that business of a “holocaust” is simply a fabrication.

But anyway, Mojca, you’re right, the Germans never really did anything wrong; WWII was just a minor anomaly (if that) and those history books that suggest that the Germans had the same genocidal intent in WWI are just plain lying.

Mojca, my overall point is that your overall point is correct. If I may reconstitute your argument, it is the following:

1. America had slaves in the 1800s;
2. Americans killed a lot of Native Americans in the 1800s;
3. In its brilliant long-term history, Germany did one bad thing; therefore
4. It’s totally OK for Slovenia, as one of its first strokes as an independent country, to bureaucratically cleanse the country of people with darker skin.

Mojca, you have a classic brilliance to you, kind of Eva Braun, kind of Charles Lindbergh - perhaps we can meet up someday in Ljubljana, pretend that it’s 1923 and have blast while we make fun of those silly Americans.

Incidentally, as to the Jews in Slovenia - I will say this - there is a very healthy Jewish population in Slovenia.

I met him. He runs three miles a day, and is mostly a vegetarian.

((Seriously, folks, I met that guy))

Anyway, let’s get him!!!!! Check his papers!!!!!

Mojca, as to a related issue, I have to say something - the American health care system is DEFINITELY inferior to the Slovenia health care system. I mention this to you because perhaps you got the impression from a previous post of mine that it’s not OK to post anti-American statements here. Anyway, sorry for that. I was being an absurd nationalist. Anyway, I’ve had some contacts with the American medical system over the past few weeks, and I’ve been disheartened. I had to see a general, a dermatologist and an oral surgeon. In a word, it was odd. All the doctors and nurses (to the person) had PDAs and laptops and had up-to-date information among themselves concerning my situation. Sure, they were nice, they were willing to listen, they were immediately available for appointments, and they treated me with unbelievable respect, but, I couldn’t help but think, IT MUST BE BETTER IN SLOVENIA …

     by Patrick on March 2, 2007 at 2:26 pm