The Erased Organized Innocence and the Politics of Exclusion

JASMINKA D EDIĆ, VLASTA JALUŠIČ AND J ELKA ZORN THE ERASED ORGANIZED INNOCENCE AND THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION JASMINKA DEDIĆ, VLASTA JALUŠIČ AND JELKA ZORN THE ERASED: ORGANIZED INNOCENCE AND THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION TRANSLATION: OLGA VUKOVIĆ AND MARJANA KARER (CHRONOLOGY; POST SCRIPTUM) PROOF-READING: MICHELLE GADPAILLE ILLUSTRATION ON THE COVER: A PUNCHED IDENTITY CARD OF AN ERASED PERSON PHOTO INSIDE THE COVER: »ERASURE«, DENIS LUKA SARKIĆ / MLADINA DESIGN: IRENA WÖLLE PRINT: STANE PEKLAJ © MIROVNI INŠTITUT, 2003 THE PUBLISHING OF THIS BOOK WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE BOOK SERIES POLITIKE EDITOR: ALDO MILOHNIĆ PUBLISHER: PEACE INSTITUTE INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES METELKOVA 6 SI-1000 LJUBLJANA E: [email protected] WWW.MIROVNI-INSTITUT.SI CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana 342.71(497.4) DEDIĆ, Jasminka The erased : organized innocence and the politics of exclusion / Jasminka Dedić, Vlasta Jalušič and Jelka Zorn. - Ljubljana : Peace Institute, Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies, 2003. - (Edition Politike) ISBN 961-6455-16-8 1. Jalušič, Vlasta 2. Zorn, Jelka 126445312 CONTENTS VLASTA JALUŠIČ 7 ORGANIZED INNOCENCE JASMINKA DEDIĆ 25 DISCRIMINATION IN GRANTING SLOVENIAN CITIZENSHIP JELKA ZORN 93 THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION DURING THE FORMATION OF THE SLOVENIAN STATE 153 CHRONOLOGY OF ERASURE MATEVž KRIVIC 157 POST SCRIPTUM 95 ORGANIZED INNOCENCE V LASTA J ALUŠIČ This book comprises two essays on citizenship and exclusion. Both are products of an ongoing Peace Institute project entitled »Contempo- rary Citizenship: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion« that com- menced in 2001. If I had to sum up this project in one sentence, I would say that we have been studying the implications of the concept of contemporary citizenship and policies for political equality in the globalized world. The focus of our attention is on various minorities and groups and their role in political decision-making and social co- hesion. In our understanding, the concept of citizenship includes dimensions beyond that of status, or in other words, we attempt to pro- blematize the now hollow classical conception of citizenship where citizenship is solely a legal status. In globalized circumstances, this concept no longer fulfills its original function, which embraced the protection of a whole range of rights of the individual while adding to it significant political and ethical dimensions. The main questions we seek to answer are: what are the origins of exclusion from the status of citizenship in Slovenia and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe? and how does this affect active citizenship, democ- racy and politics, or rather, political inclusion in new democracies? The studies are the result of two research grants1 that were award- ed within the Peace Institute research program of 2002. The researchers Jasminka Dedić and Jelka Zorn jointly tackled the subject of mass violation of human rights in Slovenia during its recent his- tory, when the country was emerging as an independent state, and the repercussions of these violations in the sovereign country. The case in point is a series of violations that were mainly concealed or 1 The Fellowship Program at the Peace Institute is intended for young researchers who wish to deal with daunting problems concerning various public policies and to examine their implications for the lives of individuals. It is funded by donations from the Open Society Institute. 7 T HE E RASED denied (and, moreover, continue to be denied despite evidence to the contrary), thus rendering service to a phenomenon I have chosen to call »organized innocence« (I’ll expand on the meaning of this phrase later in the text). The most important issues in this connection are formal exclusion from citizenship status, on the one hand, and (related) general exclusion from human rights on the other. Both affected the erased group of Slovenian residents. The first study examines the issues and paradoxes of contemporary citizenship understood as status, and its implications in the con- text of the disintegration and succession of former socialist countries. Within this frame, the author analyzes the case of erased residents, treating it as a special and symptomatic mass violation of human rights. Although in this example violations were not directly and formally linked with citizenship status, the connection between the two nevertheless exists, since they occurred in the process of determining the body of nationals and residents; in circumstances such as those resulting from the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and the succession of states, this process is susceptible to violations. As Jasminka Dedić points out at the beginning of her essay, »citizenship in itself embodies legalized discrimination, since it presup- poses a legitimate distinction between citizens and non-citizens. It is precisely this problem that makes our task – the demonstration of illegitimate discrimination within legitimately discriminatory procedures – even more difficult.«2 The first detail that attracts attention is the fact that violations in Slovenia occurred despite relatively just initial regulations on the acquisition of citizenship, a statement of good intentions and other motions to this effect. The second is the fact that violations began to occur more than a decade ago, and the situation remained unchanged even after 1999, the year of the first in a series of judgments of the Constitutional Court alerting the public to the unconstitutionality of erasure. The third important detail is the blatant fact that the public and politicians not only take these violations perfunctorily but also brand those who draw attention to injustice as defamers of and traitors to the country. Since the case in point does not involve random individual violations of human rights but legalized discrimination, one could speak of systematic public 2 See Dedić’s text in this book. 8 O RGANIZED I NNOCENCE justification or organized lying of system representatives3 (i.e. a systematic violation of not only human rights but laws of basic human- ity as well). The second study concentrates on the group of affected (erased) persons and evolves out of their narratives. As the author Jelka Zorn explains, the questions posed, the methods of field data gathering, the analysis and so on, are based on the advocacy perspective in research. The purpose of this approach is to redirect attention from the dominant discourse to the narratives of affected people. Our goal in publishing this book is not to »discredit the state of Slovenia,« as some politicians and civil servants would like to inter- pret our public advocacy for erased citizens. Our engaged approach to research and public advocacy for erased citizens are aimed at restoring the state’s lost dignity – by interrupting the silence. We endeavor to achieve acknowledgement of the injustice done to these people and to raise public awareness that active citizenship and civic judgment are a necessity which could help forestall future systematic violations of this kind. In publishing this book, we would like to encourage first the acknowledgement and then the consolidation of the facts among the public (in other words, »saying what this actu- ally is«). In order to achieve this, we find it necessary to alert the public to existing laws, i.e. current legal regulation of human rights, as well as past events and practices which have been, for quite some time now, the cause of bitter struggle on the part of various political elites striving to offer interpretations that best suit their interests. In this struggle, many facts, numbers and procedures have been either denied or interpreted in a manner that takes the edge off the accu- sation that this was a case of systematic violation of human rights. In order to counterbalance these attempts, the authors in this book present a number of relevant documents and procedures (Dedić), and narratives of affected people (Zorn). The underlying assump- tion here is that certain significant facts were (although accessible) unknown to the public, or were held back or concealed. Facts do not consist solely of decisions, or documents stashed in drawers, or 3 The first person to draw attention to this by presenting evidence was the mentor of the researchers and the defender of the Association of the Erased Residents of Slovenia, Matevž Krivic, who in many public debates exposed the faulty logic behind the justification of officials extending even to systematic lying. 9 T HE E RASED interpretations offered by administrative bodies; they also include events, which, however, obtain factual value only when exposed to the public eye. Accordingly, in our understanding, numerous testi- monies and stories of the discriminated victims of erasure belong in the class of the most important facts.4 Jelka Zorn gives these people the opportunity to talk and thus brings to light the reasons behind their incapacity and the perpetuated victim position. Owing to such an approach, both studies are far from being uninvolved academic papers, since both enable the sufferers of discrimination to become persons whose voice is heard, although the truth they tell is appal- ling and »we,« the citizens of Slovenia who feel co-responsible for the acts of our representatives, would prefer not to hear it.5 So, even though the act of erasure itself, which is the focus of our attention here, was not directly related to the status of citizenship, this book explicates the essential link between it and various aspects of the contemporary conception of citizenship, whereby citizenship is understood in the wider sense of the word and not solely as a legal status.6 Therefore, let me first say a few words about this. 4 This is particularly important in view of the debates that try to reduce the question of human rights violations to a discussion about the supposedly problematic status of the victims (for example, the argument that persons in question were officers of the Yugo- slav Peoples Army who were disloyal to Slovenia).

Load more