Stand-by the Motherland

The first day of spring brought Serbs and Croats a statement by FRY Foreign Minister Milan Milutinovic that Belgrade is working hard on a dual citizenship agreement with Zagreb. The Croatian government was given the FRY’s proposal on the document which expert teams in both states will debate in Zagreb on March 27-28.

Vojislav Stanimirovic, head of the Serb government in Eastern Slavonia, said dual citizenship would provide great motivation for Serbs to stay in the region.

Dual citizenship, that is Croatian citizenship, has become one of the main Serb interests. It’s interesting how the current regime in Serbia didn’t think of that in 1991 or 1992. That was when they claimed that there weren’t so many Serbs and that Serbia could afford to let them live in other states (Milosevic), while the people who were put into place to head those Serbs (Jovan Raskovic, Milan Babic, Milan Martic) played with a number of options: if Croatia stays in the Yugoslav federation they would ask for cultural autonomy; if it joins a federation with Serbia they wanted territorial autonomy and finally if Croatia declares independence they would break away the territories where Serbs are a majority. We saw where all that led to in August 1995.

The FRY draft of the dual citizenship agreement doesn’t include only the Eastern Slavonija population as some media originally reported, which caused a lot of controversy among the public. Gaso Kneyevic, a professor of private law at the Belgrade law school, noted it was strange that only a section of the population of that region had this right. The joint Board of Councils, which the Serbs in Eastern Slavonija are entitled to form on the basis of a "Letter of Intentions" issued by the Croatian authorities as part of the peaceful reintegration process, is entitled to "open up its own giro account and separate boards but not to a legislative status or the status of an executive body," said Croatian transitional administration bureau chief for Eastern Slavonia Ivica Vrkic.

It’s clear that the region, where local elections and elections for the Croatian parliament have been scheduled for April 14, is the place where future Serb-Croat relations will be defined. If the local Serbs turn out for the elections, they’ll show that they definitely accept reintegration into Croatia.

Dual citizenship, along with the "soft" border with the FRY and the UN and OSCE presence after the UNTAES mission ends are considered to be the basis for that and a guarantee that should prevent the mass exodus of Serbs from the region.

In any case, Eastern Slavonia is the place where the right to dual citizenship could be solved in the best possible way: The Serbs are still there and Croatian bureaus issuing Croatian documents are in place. Up to February 10, Serb refugees from other parts of Croatia could get Croatian personal documents but since then only the people registered as inhabitants of UNTAES-controlled areas can apply for documents. That measure was explained with the need to issue Croatian documents to the people who live there first so that they can vote in the elections. It’s hard to say whether anything will change after the elections but since negotiations are underway on the dual citizenship agreement and a Croatian proposal on local border traffic, it’s easy to conclude that the Eastern Slavonia Serbs and Vojvodina Croats could be the first with two passports.

Vrkic said he considers the dual citizenship request legitimate and added that he expects the border regime to be softer than is usual. Croatia has that kind of regime on part of its border with Slovenia but whatever agreement is reached it’s hard to believe that Croatia’s border with the FRY will be as soft as its border with western Herzegovina. "If we resolve this, I see no need for dual citizenship because it’s wrong to believe that having dual citizenship will resolve problems permanently. The problem can be solved by defining relations towards the authorities and state they belong to and that means Croatia," Vrkic said.

He didn’t say that almost all the Herzegovina Croats have dual citizenship so that they can vote in Croatia and they have 19 members of the Croatian parliament which is a unique case in the world.

The Croatian citizenship law allows "members of the Croat people who do not reside in Croatia" to get Croatian citizenship. All those Croats have to do is state in writing that they feel themselves to be Croatian citizens and that "their behavior shows that they respect the legal order and customs of the Republic of Croatia and accept Croatian culture." The fact that they already have another state’s citizenship is no obstacle and they’re not required to know the Croatian language. Under the letter of the law, Serbs in Croatia or those who themselves or whose parents were born there should have no problem obtaining dual citizenship. The law does not require anyone to give up the other citizenship to get a Croatian passport. The problem lies in the FRY citizenship law which states that citizenship can be acquired by birth on FRY territory, by family origin and under international agreements. It states clearly that whoever applies for FRY citizenship must renounce their other citizenship or provide proof that they will loose their other citizenship once they are registered as an FRY citizen. Specifically, the Croatian Serb refugees from Krajina have little chance of getting FRY citizenship. The law allows them to become FRY citizens if they state that they have no other citizenship or have renounced it if they resided on FRY territory on April 27, 1992 when the new republic was proclaimed, or if they took refuge on FRY territory because of their national, religious, political affiliations or their advocating of human rights and liberties.

Both laws allow citizenship under international agreements. The FRY law states explicitly that this is the only way to have dual citizenship on the condition of reciprocity. The belief is that dual citizenship was regulated in that way to prevent Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians from becoming citizens of Albania. Belgrade’s draft of the agreement enables Croatian Serb refugees to get FRY citizenship under a bilateral agreement. Formally, their Croatian citizenship was not under dispute.

A look at the text of the draft agreement shows that it was formulated to be very wide-ranging. Yugoslav, i.e. Croatian citizenship, can be given to refugees and displaced persons if they were born in either state or resided there for no less than five years. It covers both Serbs and Croats born in Croatia and residing in the FRY. It also gives the right to two passports to Croats who were born and live in the FRY and Serbs who were born and reside in Croatia and their family members. The same rights are there for their children. Bearing in mind the 70 years the Serbs and Croats spent living in the same state, it’s easy to conclude that there will be a lot of people applying for dual citizenship. They include the families of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic and Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle.

The essence of the draft agreement is the return home of refugees from Krajina and enabling them free access to their property. Opinions have been voiced in Zagreb that this will boil down to Croatian Serbs being able to sell their property and start a new life in their new homeland which will have to accept them as its citizens.

In any case, this draft agreement, if it is adopted, would change many things in the national laws in the FRY and Croatia. Visas would be abolished quickly because of the number of people with dual citizenship along with passports at border crossings, large-scale economic deals would come as well along with many other things. Many fundamental issues would have to be redefined but fundamental principles never played the main or even an important role in Serb-Croat communication at every level to date. That’s why this isn’t cause for too much optimism.