Serb NGO claims Croatia obstructing refugee return with discriminatory laws

Serb NGO claims Croatia obstructing refugee return with discriminatory laws
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - August 3, 2005, Wednesday

Text of report by Bosnian Serb RTRS Radio website on 2 August

[Announcer] The Serbs who fled Croatia demand that the key property-rights and status problems of refugees and displaced persons on the territory of the former Yugoslavia be addressed systematically and identically, Veritas [Serb-run Veritas Documentation and Information Centre NGO] director Savo Strbac has said. He pointed out that Croatia must abolish discriminatory laws that prevent the return of the Serbs to their pre-war places of residence in Croatia. Mirsad Kebo, Bosnia-Hercegovina minister of human rights and refugees, announced that an agreement on the manner of addressing the issue of the status of refugees and displaced persons was expected to be reached in the next several months at a meeting of refugee ministers of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, and Serbia-Montenegro. Branka Veleusic has more:

[Veleusic] Strbac pointed out that the Serbs who had fled Croatia were in an unequal position because the manner of property return was not solved in the same way in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia. According to him, Croatia is obstructing the process with a series of discriminatory laws.

[Strbac] The problem was solved in Bosnia-Hercegovina in one way, all former tenancy-right holders got their apartments back, while in Croatia they are pulling the wool over our eyes, offering us fiction in the form of solving housing problems of the former tenancy-right holders. So far, 2,500 or 2,600 tenancy-right holders have asked for their housing problems to be solved. The deadline for submitting applications in Croatia was extended because they claim that a very small proportion of people applied. Why have so few out of 50,000 former tenancy-right holders applied? Because no one has ever gotten anything offered by that fiction, because no-one's housing problems have been solved. Those 20 discriminatory laws must change in order for the Serbs to be able to return and get their property back.

[Veleusic] There can be no real return until the key problem of property return and tenancy right are addressed in an adequate and equal manner throughout the former joint country, Strbac stated categorically.

Mirsad Kebo, Bosnia-Hercegovina minister of refugees, has said that his ministry is taking an active part in the multilateral efforts to solve the problem of property return that burdens the region.

[Kebo] The impression from the last meeting is that the Republic of Croatia has made some progress and I expect that all private property of the Serbs who fled Croatia will be returned in September, as [Croatian] Minister Kalmeta informed me. That would surely mark progress. Other issues are discussed by the relevant task forces. We were given assurances that the Republic of Croatia government was making very important steps in the sense of providing electricity to the villages to which the Serb refugees should return, in the sense of raising certain standards, and so on.

[Veleusic] Kebo announced that a meeting of refugee ministers of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro would be held in September to discuss the road map for solving those problems, adding that the prime ministers of the said countries are expected to work out an agreement on that issue in October.

SOURCE: RTRS Radio website, Banja Luka, in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 14:00 GMT, 2 Aug 05