Refugees Non Grata

The lengthy explanation of the law says citizenship is not available to refugees from Serb lands across the Drina, only people who came from Croatia proper and the Croat-Moslem parts of Bosnia and only if they fled to Yugoslav territory "because of their national or religious membership".

Why? Because, the explanation says, national and state interests dictate that refugees from those areas should return to their previous residences. The refugees have RS and RSK citizenship and the law is based on the belief that the systematic creation of dual citizenship cannot be permitted.

It adds that the law imposes the obligation of checking the Yugoslav citizenship of people being issued with birth certificates which are used to prove citizenship. If the check determines that any entry into citizenship is illegal, that person's citizenship will be annulled along with all the legal consequences. That will also be used to check the Yugoslav citizenship gained by citizens of the Republic of Albania living in Kosovo.

First, the law starts from the continuity of the FRY with the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ), the favorite political stand of the authorities, although the continuity issue is far from being legally resolved. "The basic premise in the law is continuity in citizenship since that would prove continuity in principle," law professor Gaso Knezevic explained. "What does continuity stem from? Under the law (ex lege), citizenship in the new state of FRY is automatically acquired by citizens of Serbia and Montenegro which was never under dispute. But besides them, ex lege citizenship is also acquired by citizens of other former Yugoslav republics under certain conditions. Those conditions (article 45) are that on April 27, 1992 (the day the new state's constitution was proclaimed) they were residents in the FRY and had no foreign (Slovenian, Croatian) citizenship. Citizens of other SFRJ republics who were officers or civilians working in the Yugoslav Army automatically got FRY citizenship".

Earlier drafts of the law introduced the institution of accepting citizenship. The first version, in early 1994, said citizenship could be acquired by Serbs and Montenegrins in the ethnic sense (people of those origins). The second version, late in 1994, said citizenship could be acquired under that criteria by refugees in Yugoslavia who fought for human rights or were persecuted because of religion or nationality.

"It's absurd to replace one version with another which is based on easily winning citizenship for urging respect of human rights because the legislator who viewed citizenship only under ethnic origin criteria, which is a violation of human rights, now gives citizenship to people who are fighting for those rights," Knezevic said.

Now, since the accepting of citizenship has been criticized the most recent version of the law seemingly does not include it since it does not exist as a basis for citizenship in the parts of the law that regulate citizenship. "However, if you look at transitional regulations you'll find it there, swept under the carpet," Knezevic said and added that three facts are ridiculous. First, by introducing it into transitional rules, the legislator failed to prove continuity for the third time since by accepting it, citizenship is acquired only after the home affairs ministry rules, not on the basis of the law. Second, the legislator showed either lack of legal knowledge or arrogance and power since the transitional rules only regulate the transitional period after the law is changed. Article 47 on accepting citizenship is not transitional and has no time limit. And third, "the institution of accepting citizenship cannot be used by all refugees, especially men who came from what we now call the Republic of Serb Krajina and Bosnian Serb Republic. I don't understand the fight for human rights being implemented by our legislator since he discriminates not under ethnic principles as before but principles of place of birth and residence. In the name of higher national and state interests, which the authorities always define, human rights are being violated under the guise of protecting them", Knezevic said.