WHY DIDN'T YOU STAY WHERE YOU HAVE COME FROM...

Refugees in Serbia

AIM, BELGRADE, June 26, 1995

• You journalists - you're worse than the cops. You just keep asking questions. Do you want my address, by any chance? - a blond young man with a Bosnian accent asks, turning around cautiously. One of the many who have found their place under the sun behind stalls in Belgrade Revolution Boulevard, one of the greatest meeting-places of smugglers.

• A man can't have a moment of peace. The cops used to chase us because of smuggling, and now they are hunting us down to send us across the Drina - Nedjo complains. - What can I tell you? My house was destroyed. My father dead, my mother with relatives in Herzegovina. I got out of Sarajevo by the skin of my teeth.

He came to Belgrade two years ago. He stayed with relatives for a few months. The apartment was too small even for the host family, least of all for guests. He found friends who had arrived from Sarajevo before him and joined their "business" - re-sale of goods. He says he started faring well so that he could rent an apartment with a friend.

• I don't want to be a burden to anyone, and I can't get an honest job, because I am a military conscript - Nedjo says.

Each refugee's story is different. But, these few sentences describe a destiny recognizable by about 70 thousand men - according to the assessment of the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia - who live illegally in Serbia, probably out of fear of possible deportation to places of their origin on the other side of the Drina. Nor is the story more cheerful about those whose sex, age and other personal data, together with the motives for leaving their birthplaces, are occasionally subjected to administrative revision. The annual revision campaign, just completed last month, approved 365 refugee identity cards and denied 90 thousand. Simultaneously, the procedure for the approval of refugee status for 35 thousand people has still not been completed.

None of anyone's concern...

• We don't belong anywhere. We are people without home, homeland and citizenship. We are some kind of citizens, but our integrity is practically not recognized - says Dr Milorad Muratovic, president of the Association for the Assistance to Refugees and Banned Persons in the FRY, a former sociology professor from Sarajevo. - We are aware that the sanctions, social and economic distubances in places of our new residence deteriorate the already difficult situation our hosts are in. But, it is certain that the refugees suffer more than anyone. However, the thing that afflicts us the most is that we are strangers in our own country. And that noone has a program for resolving the problem of refugees - neither the authorities, nor any of the political parties.

The official statements still operate with data according to which 95 per cent of the refugees are living with families, relatives and friends, while about 5 per cent live in organized, collective accomodations. According to investigation of the Assciation for the Assistance to Refugees and Banned Persons, the situation concerning accomodation is quite different: while a small part of the refugee population is taken care of in an organized manner, about 95 per cent are completely left to shift for themselves: they live as subtenants, cope with the situation as well as they can, work illegally in order to be able to pay rent and feed themselves.

• We do not deny the hospitality of the local people. On the contrary. We are grateful for the way they welcomed us and took care of us in the beginning - Muratovic says. - But, after three years, the situation has significantly changed. Our hosts have also become poor, they were discharged from jobs, so the rent money has become necessary for their bare existence. In order to pay, the refugees have to earn some money. Of course, they try to make some money in any possible ways and everyone knows that.

• We are reproached that we are war profiteers. We do not deny that there are such people among the refugees. It is an established fact that the Bosnian market of arms is the most profitable in the world, that the profit is fifteen times on each and every bullet, let alone fuel. But, this refers to bosses who live in luxury, and there are only 2 to 3 per cent of them among the refugees. And yet they are not persecuted by the official authorities, either here or across the Drina.

Dragica Kljajic, Advisor for Social Welfare in the Red Cross Organization of Serbia, claims that the data of the Association about the number of refugees-subtenants can by no means be true. - Would all these people frequent the Red Cross, queue for the administrative procedure for humanitarian aid parcels which weigh hardly two kilograms and contain just four items, if they had all those German marks to pay rent and if they were employed?

The official data, after the latest revision of the refugee status, showed that the number of refugees accomodated with relatives and friends was reduced to 68.8 per cent, and that 25.2 per cent of refugees live like subtenants and are forced to make money in various ways to pay rent. Those 70 thousand unregistered refugees are still not included in these figures and they are none of anyone's concern.

Trading refugees?

After the Croat offensive in Western Slavonia in the beginning of May, a new stream of refugees flowed in. Contrary to those who came four years ago who were welcomed with open arms, now they were prevented to come in. The Commissioner for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia, Mrs. Buba Morina, said that "Serbia will do everything it can, and that is very little at this moment" and sent them word to remain in the "Republic of Srpska because they will be better off there than the refugees in Serbia". They were told that there is room for them in the so-called Republic of Srpska and Eastern Slavonia and that they were not refugees but displaced persons inside a single state. According to the data of reception centres, 2,100 Western Slavonians entered the FR of Yugoslavia, but it is assumed that there is much more unregistered ones.

The refugees in the FR of Yugoslavia are not welcome any more. The feeling of sympathy and solidarity is increasingly turning into animosity. The row that brought them across the Drina to Serbia is cursed more and more often. Stimulated by everyday (daily messages and television polls after the split between Belgrade and Pale, even the greatest supporters of the struggle for Serbdom and "the honourable cross and golden freedom" have started to ask them what they are doing in Serbia and why don't they return where they had come from, and reconcile with the enemies there or be killed.

Destinies of refugees have become statistical figures and a burden for many consciences, but also a convenient means for bargaining between the authorities in Serbia and those on the other side of the Drina. Although it is impossible to prove that refugees were traded for UN hostages, by liberation of whom Serb President Milosevic beautified (embellished his peace-making image, mobilization of refugees-military conscripts which is carried out for the past three weeks by the militia from Krajina with unselfish assistance of their colleagues from Serbia, could verify this fact. The authorities are completely silent about collecting of men all around Serbia who are being sent to the battleground in the so-called Republic of Serb Krajina and the Republic of Srpska. Federal Minister of Internal Affairs, Vukasin Jokanovic, stated for the journalists, even after many revealed cases of forced mobilization that "he knows nothing about forcible mobilization going on in the space of the FR of Yugoslavia".

When the authorities assessed that the public could perhaps start believing its own eyes and ears more than their silence, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia issued a statement "concerning the attack against the Ministry that it is carrying out mobilization", explaining that it was actually an "organized control of persons who are not citizens of our country and have no registered residence or regulated status of refugees". Allegedly, these are persons who "are engaged in criminal acts, offences, provocations of citizens and other delicts". The fact that many persons taken into custody were citizens of the FRY whose families knew nothing about them for ten days or more and who are now contacting them from battlegrounds, or that, for instance, Mirko Drljaca who was legally domiciled in Yugoslavia, was stopped short by a round shot from an automatic rifle and heavily wounded when he tried to run away, were explained as "minor mistakes" which will be corrected after control.

For refugees, either registered or unregistered, this move of the authorities means just another agony in the difficult life of refugees. One of them, Nedjo from the beginning of this story, remained behind his stall, armed just with increased cautiousness.

• The risk is great, but what have I got to lose? I rely on good fortune and good sight.

Fatigue of donors

The acute problem of forcible mobilization completely pushed aside the chronic problem of insufficient humanitarian aid for the refugees. Both representatives of the authorities and local humanitarian organizations and the refugees agree about that. In the Commissariat for Refugees of the Republic of Serbia it is often stressed that refugees in this space are discriminated in relation to the others from the former Yugoslav space, for instance, Croatia. In the Red Cross of Yugoslavia and Serbia, they readily show half-empty storehouses and point out to the fact that international humanitarian aid is reduced, and funds for social welfare abolished. According to what Dr Rade Dubajic, Secretary General of the Red Cross of Yugoslavia, says, in the course of last year, international humanitarian organizations provided 65,136 tons of various aid (food, drugs, medical equipment, clothing, hygienic means) so that monthly aid amounted to about five and a half tons, and in the first half of this year it dropped down to three tons. The forecasts predict that in the second half of the year, it will be further reduced for another ton.

The reduction is caused by the fatigue of the donors, by too long duration of the war, and opening of new crisis areas in the world. It is possible to distribute only what there is to distribute - and there is less and less of it, although about 50 per cent of the total this year's aid funds for the whole former Yugoslavia collected by the International Federation of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent is allocated to the FR of Yugoslavia.

In the Humanitarian Office of the European Union, they say that the aid was reduced and that there are no gladly received 15-kilo parcels any more. They are reduced to three kilograms now. The aid was reduced based on the assessment in Geneva that, in relation to two years ago, the situation is much better. Since the beginning of the war, this organization has provided aid for refugees worth 956 million ecus.

Accustomed to former humanitarian aid, the refugees believe that it is acquiring not just symbolic proportions, but rather those of a caricature. A monthly ECHO parcel contains a litre of oil, a kilo of sugar, a package of macaroni and a few cans. Who could survive on that...

Until recently, the refugees were encouraged that many of their problems would be resolved when a new law on citizenship is adopted - once they become citizens it will be easier for them to get employed, to get pensions, scholarships... The adoption of the law, however, is postponed, for three years now. And the new Draft Law recently adopted by the Federal Government and sent into parliamentary procedure prescribes a new agony for the refugees: there will be no guarantees of citizenship for the refugees. Is there any hope is left for them?

Vesna Bjekic