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Refugee Returns, Civic Differentiation, and Minority Rights in Croatia 1991–2004
International and Development Studies, Roehampton University, UK brad_blitz{at}yahoo.com
Many studies on refugee returns tend to amalgamate the experiences of migrants and concentrate on return as an end point of the refugee cycle. In reality, however, returnees do not share the same experience and endure the effects of their displacement long after they have returned. This study claims that a more useful tool of analysis is to consider both the paths of dislocation and the challenges of return and reintegration. It introduces the concept of ‘civic differentiation’ as a means of exploring patterns of return and reintegration in post-war Croatia where returning migrants enjoy vastly different access to critical resources, above all housing and employment. This study considers the relevance for reintegration of ethnic identity, property ownership, exit routes and time spent in exile, and describes five return scenarios: settlement as ethnic colonization; forcible relocation as a result of regional policies; the return of retirement; settlement following property repossession; marginalization and exclusion.
Ms received December 2004; revised MS received May 2005
1. The European Union estimates that during the conflict 950,000 people were displaced, including 550,000 Croats who fled to other parts of Croatia and 370,000 Croatian Serbs who settled in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia. By the end of 2003, there were still 189,500 refugees in Serbia and Montenegro and 19,500 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
2. This agency has been renamed several times. It was first renamed the Ministry of Public Works, Reconstruction, and Construction Office for Expelled Persons, Refugees and Returnees. It is now part of the Ministry of Tourism, Sea and Development.
3. For example, in 1991 more than 100 Serbs were killed near the town of Gospic in the Krajina region. Masked groups of civil and military policemen under the direction of Croatian army generals gathered together Serbian civilians who had been identified by locals and executed them. The Croatian general Mirko Norac and two of his subordinates were eventually indicted, charged with the murders, and sentenced to 12 years by a Croatian court in Rijeka in 2003.
4. For example, in August 2000 while the ICTY was investigating the 1991 murders in Gospic, in advance of a possible indictment against Mirko Norac, local Croatian witness Milan Levar was blown up in his car and killed.
5. The Law on General Amnesty was introduced in response to international pressure. According to Human Rights Watch, the Law grants amnesties to all those who committed ‘criminal acts during the aggression, armed rebellion or armed conflicts, in or relating to the aggression, armed rebellion or armed conflicts in the Republic of Croatia....during the period from 17 August 1990 to 23 August 1996’ but the law expressly excludes those who have committed ‘flagrant violations of humanitarian law having the character of war crimes’.
6. The total Serbian population is just 3,164, down from more than three times that before the war, and the town of Knin has managed to attract few but the elderly (European Commission 2003: 11). Of more than 15,000 inhabitants (all ethnicities) in the city of Knin, only 3,103 were listed in the 2001 Census as having permanent income from work. More than twice that number, 7,219, were ‘without income’. Only 1,463 persons received social welfare (Bureau of Statistics 2001). In the neighbouring areas, the situation is even worse. For example, in 1991 Gospic had a population of 28,732 persons, of whom 64.3 per cent were Croatian, 31.3 per cent were Serbian, and 4.4 per cent were from other national groups. Since the war, the population has fallen and the town itself has a population of 12,980 of whom more than 90 per cent are Croat. Only 625 Serbs were registered in Gospic (Bureau of Statistics 2001).
7. This point is underscored by the findings of Human Rights Watch in 2004, which found that there is continuing ethnic bias in war crimes prosecutions. During 2002, for comparable offences, the OSCE determined that 28 of the 35 persons arrested for war crimes in Croatia were Serbs. Serbs also comprised 114 of 131 under judicial investigation, 19 of 32 persons indicted, and 90 of 115 persons on trial. According to the OSCE, this trend appeared to continue in 2003. While a perfect symmetry in the numbers indicted for war crimes from the two ethnic groups—Serb and Croat—might not reflect the actual number of crimes committed, the disproportion in the number of prosecutions brought against Serbs compared to Croats (a ratio of 5:1, on average) is so large that it strongly suggests discrimination. By way of comparison, the Office of the Prosecutor for the ICTY has issued just over twice as many indictments against ethnic Serbs as against ethnic Croats (a ratio of 11:5) for crimes committed in the Croatian war (Human Rights Watch 2004).
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