AGREEMENT ON RETURN OF BANISHED PERSONS

AIM Zagreb, 3 May, 1997

According to the assessment of the transitional administrator of the Croatian part of the Danube river valley (Podunavlje), general Jacques Klein, a "good agreement" was reached between the Croatian Government and the international community about return of banished persons to Podunavlje and other parts of Croatia. The document which had been elaborated for a few weeks by representatives of the Croatian Government, UNTAES and UNHCR, was signed in Osijek on 24 April. Klein believes that the "Agreement of the Working Group on Operational Procedures of Return" - as its official title reads - has created key preconditions for this process, so that all that needs to be done now is to accelerate it.

    Nowadays, there are over one hundred thousand

inhabitants in Podunavlje. Majority of them are Serbs, among whom about 70 per cent are autochtonous, while the rest are those who have come to eastern Slavonija, Baranja and western Srijem on several occasions: first in 1991 (from western Slavonia), then after operations Flash and Storm, four years later. They were colonized in the houses belonging to the Croats who had been banished from the area mostly in 1991. If autochtonous Serbs from Croatian Podunavlje are excluded, the Croatian Government and the international community are faced with an exceptionally difficult task: return of the Croats, of the Hungarians, Slovaks, and others to Podunavlje, but also the parallel return of the Serbs to western Slavonia, to Kordun, Banija, to Lika and northern Dalmatia, that is to Knin Krajina. There, the third, not at all less complex, problem awaits the Croatian Government and the international community: about 50 thousand Croat refugees from Bosnia & Herzegovina have been colonized in Krajina and western Slavonia after operation Storm, with the aim to stay there. In order to enable the Croats to return to Podunavlje, the Serbs must return to their places of origin, and in order to enable them to do that, the Croats from B&H must leave their houses and flats. Almost 200 thousand people are involved.

What does the Agreement on return offer in this respect? Although all the details specified by the Agreement are not known - and not everything has been defined yet - its main contours have already been publicized. Fundamentally, Croatia wishes to enable return to all its citizens who are not in their homes. Those citizens of Podunavlje who do not have Croatian citizenship are the first who will have to abandon flats and houses of banished Croats. They will soon - most of them Bosnian Serbs and Serbs from FRY - be offered two options: they will either immediately leave Croatia and go to FRY, B&H or a third country which is willing to have them, or they will accept the status of refugees in Croatia and be accommodated in one of the refugee centres. The Serbs who have Croatian citizenship but are living in somebody else's houses, will have to move out, and the Croatian Government has undertaken the obligation to find temporary accommodation for them. What it will be like still has not been said. This also refers to those Serbs who are in FRY or Republica Srpska, but who have taken Croatian papers and filled out necessary forms including the demand to return.

So far, over one thousand Serbs have filed demands to return from Podunavlje to their domicile regions, and according to allegations of Drago Krpina, there are still about 26 thousand Serbs from other parts of Croatia in Podunavlje. International sources assess that there are even 30 thousand of them. The Croatian state will support their return because it is not in the interest of this state, as minister of reconstruction Dr Jure Radic declared a few times

• that the Serbs continue to form the majority in this region. Probably the minimum that the Croatian state policy wishes to achieve in the shortest possible time in Podunavlje is re-establishment of the pre-war ethnic structure. "The aim of the two-way return is primarily return of people to Podunavlje", said Dr Jure Radic. "The Croatian state by no means wishes to have all the Serbs concentrated in Podunavlje. Our aim is to achieve the balance which used to be established here in 1991, and in order to accomplish that we must return people who had come there by their own free will back, create conditions for their return to regions they had abandoned". According to him, this process should take place comparatively quickly: by 15 July all the Serbs should move out of houses which belong to the Croats. "We have set the goal to bring 40 thousand people back to Podunavlje, and next year all the others", says Radic. There are about 80 thousand of "all the others". "The return will begin in May this year, first to the damaged houses reconstruction of which is almost completed. First those who are not citizens of Croatia will leave. This primarily refers to the people from Bosnia and Serbia. Then return of those whose houses are occupied by the Serbs from other parts of Croatia will follow, and after that banished persons whose flats will be reconstructed or rebuilt will return". Lovre Pejkovic, head of the Government agency for banished persons, thinks that return of Croatian banished persons will begin in the end of this school year, and massive return is expected to take place in the beginning of next school year.

Although the Agreement does not mention nationality of returnees and does not distinguish the Serbs from the Croats, in its interpretation it is possible to feel the differences. The Croatian administration is concerned primarily about return of the Croats. "The law on reconstruction defines priorities and everybody accepts that we will rather reconstruct homes for the children left without their parents, disabled people, than for those who had left other parts of Croatia by their own free will in order to go to Podunavlje", said Radic, which means that the Croats will have a clear advantage in return, but also in reconstruction of their homes. Political representatives of the Serbs in Croatia have because of that and despite support to the agreement - expressed reservations about the manner in which the Croatian government is reading it.

"We support the resulting stance of the Government that all banished persons should have their rights safeguarded", says Dr Milorad Pupovac. "We have not been informed about all the details of the plan yet, so we cannot talk about them. But, we are not satisfied with the way in which Government officials have spoken about the plan, because they openly said that the Serbs would have to leave the houses and that some kind of a solution would be found for them. This is not a good tone, because all should be treated equally, not only in general, but in the implementation of the plan as well". According to the opinion of Pupovac, return of the Croats and the Serbs should be parallel and under equal conditions. The same is claimed by the President of the Serb Democratic Independent Party of the Serbs (SDSS), Dr Vojislav Stanimirovic. "We believe that the return will not be that simple and that the agreement signed by the Croatian Government, the UNHCR and te UNTAES has other aspects to it. We must openly say that this agreement refers to return of all citizens of Croatia. The Government must equally treat return of all banished persons who lived in the region until 1991 and later. This process should be bilateral and proceed in both directions. Croatian banished persons should not be misled that they will be able to return to their homes immediately, before conditions are created for the Serbs who live there now to return to theirs". The Serbs who have relatives there will be able to return to Krajina immediately, as well as those whose houses have remained empty.

Representatives of the Serbs have, nevertheless, expressed hope that the return will proceed in a satisfactory manner and without discrimination. Jure Radic claims that a place will be found for all - eastern Slavonian Croats and Serbs, Serbs from Krajina, but also refugees from Bosnia who are living in Krajina now. There is plenty of housing over there which can receive all these people, because majority of Serb refugees probably will not return to these regions, but despite that the question whether the Croatian Government will discriminate Serb returnees from Podunavlje remains open. So far they have encountered more obstacles than good will - they could not enter their homes for months, majority still cannot, and returnees to Krajina are mostly sent to other people's houses by the Government, most frequently into villages in the middle of nowhere. The Serbs who had their homes reconstructed by the Croatian state can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Foundation of a Government agency for mediation in sale and exchange of real estate by legal owners who do not wish to live in their property any more has also been prescribed by the Agreement as one of the mechanisms of longterm resolving of ownership issues. The agency whose foundation is exptected to take place in the course of a fortnight, would overtake the property of the Serbs who do not wish to return to Krajina, and allegedly pay for it a market price, and then resell or give it away to those who are interested, pursuing state interest. Critics believe that establishment of the agency is an instrument of "ethnic engineering", and those who support its foundation think that such a solution is better than the existing. The law on temporary use of property adopted by the Assembly after operation Storm did not prescribe the possibility of sale.

Implementation of the plan still has not begun, but it will not take long. Croatia has been under exceptionally strong international pressure in the past few weeks, and return of Serb refugees, even those from FRY is one of the conditions which must be resolved. It seems that the international community, but especially the USA do not wish to give up this goal because they believe it to be the first big step in bringing the situation in the whole region back to normal. In diplomatic circles information can be heard that the number of the Serbs in Croatia, according to the agreement between Zagreb and Belgrade will amount to between three and five per cent of the population. Before the war, there were about 12 per cent of the Serbs in Croatia. If the Serbs return from Podunavlje to Krajina peacefully and with no major problems, and the Croats return to Podunavlje, it might be a sign that it is not too late for Bosnia either. Results of the Agreement will very soon become evident.

BORIS RASETA