FAMILY BORDERS
AIM, PRISTINA, April 7, 1994
Nine year old Leonard Dumani from Milosevo near Pristina, after unsuccessfully being treated for brain cancer died in Dusseldorf. Despite the wishes of his family to bury him in his place of birth, his mortal remains "travelled" from Skoplje to the border crossing Djeneral Jankovic and back from January 16 to 26 this yaer, i.e. a full ten days. The funeral finally took place in Skoplje. The reason for this is that the Serbian authorities demanded what is known as a "green document" as a condition for the entry of the coffin into the territory of Kosovo.
Leonard's grandfather Hamit Thaci says "that it was impossible to obtain the document in Germany, because it is issued only in the Yugoslav Embassy in Bonn and the parents of the dead boy did not know that it was necessary".
The case of little Leonard Dumani is not isolated. Bajrus Salihu from Skoplje, born in Kosovo, had similar problems and only after days-long complications managed to get the approval of the Macedonian authorities to transfer the mortal remains of his mother to Kosovo. After the break up of the former Yugoslavia, the recognition of Macedonia and the establishment of new borders with Kosovo, i.e Serbia, "border problems" which common citizens on both sides of the new borders encounter are becoming common practice. The new border at Djeneral Jankovic has created new problems of a legal nature for citizens who were until yesterday nationals of the same state. The exercise of civil rights not only in the area of inheritance law but also property and debenture law, has become almost impossible. The case of a family in the village of Bardh on the very border between Kosovo and Macedonia is a story in itself.
The new border divides their holding. Their house is in Kosovo and their arable land in Macedonia. And while somehow, on this side, the "same nationals" until yesterday and now aliens, nationals of Macedonia can through inheritance law acquire ownership of real estate on the basis of formal reciprocity, it is not yet clear how and under which conditions nationals of Kosovo may acquire property rights to real estate in Macedonia. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has not yet adopted laws on inheritance. Moreover, a new paradox arises: Macedonia is as a state, still implementing the laws on the former Yugoslavia in many areas, such as the Law on Civil Aviation or the Law on the Directorate for Civil Aviation (statement by the Deputy Minister for Town Planning, Construction, Transport and Ecology of Macedonia, Gorgo Sandevski, in the "Nova Makedonija", March 26, 1994).
In most cases citizens on both sides of the border cannot prove their ownership rights to real estate as its formal - legal owners until yesterday. The citizens of Kosovo, for instance, with residence in one of the communes of Kosovo and who were born in Macedonia and are nationals of that former Yugoslav republic, cannot transfer to themselves titles to ownership of real estate. Citizens permanently residing in Macedonia, born in Kosovo, who do not have Macedonian citizenship, are trying in vain to prove that they were and still are owners of real estate in Macedonia.
No easier are problems of a status and personal nature regarding the issuance of documents such as identity cards, passports, registration numbers, etc. A new element is also of importance here: on account of a change of citizenship, citizens who have been living even over 20 years on this or that side of the border have become aliens (overnight) in formal and legal terms!
How can all these specific problems imposed by life in the event when those demanding these basic civil rights are still citizens of mutually unrecognized states, be solved? In any case, the Kosovo Albanians do not recognize the state of Serbia, Serbia and/or Yugoslavia still doesn't recognize Macedonia, and Macedonia has not recognized the present Yugoslavia, just like the international community.
If they were to recognize one another reciprocally, at least one possibility could be resorted to, namely to regulate all disputes of a specific nature related to the exercise of the rights of citizens through an intergovernmental agreement, like those the former Yugoslavia had with many states (the former GDR, Hungary, Austria, etc.). However, that is impossible in a situation where there exists the so called reciprocal non-recognition of states, which implies the non-existence of any diplomatic relations and the impossibility of signing such international agreements. In any event, until possible changes in relations among the neighbours, citizens on both sides of the border will be hardest hit as a third of them have close family ties on the other side.
Blerim Reka