FRI, 30 MAR 2001 01:31:41 GMT
Slovenia and Minorities
SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN THE OTHERS
Now that the Slovenian ethnic minority in Italy, after decades of
struggling in the Senate, has finally secured for itself a special law (after
which it can no longer be considered as discriminated against, as opposed to
other, protected minorities), and when the small German minority in Slovenia
(through a so-called "cultural agreement" with Austria) has been
granted special protection -- the uneven position of minorities in Slovenia
attracts great attention. This is primarily the case with discrimination
against unrecognized minorities.
AIM Ljubljana, March 23, 2001
Slovenian legislation protects three minorities -- Hungarians, Italians
and (partly) Roma. The first two groups are protected by the Constitution and
laws. They have a guaranteed right to education in their native languages,
their news media are entitled to financial support, their languages are in
official use in local government, they can widely use their national symbols
and are issued bilingual personal documents. Every member of these two groups
has a dual voting right: in addition to being able to choose candidates from
national tickets, these two minorities have two seats guaranteed by the
Constitution, regardless of the changing number of ethnic Hungarians and
Italians.
Such protection of (privileged) minorities even in international terms
is even more conspicuous when compared with the position of other, much more
numerous ethnic minorities which enjoy no rights in Slovenia and are far from
any "positive" discrimination. According to the latest, 1991 census,
in addition to the Slovenians, the country had 53,688 Croats (2.74 percent),
47,097 Serbs (2.4 percent), 26,725 Muslims (1.36 percent), 12,237 Yugoslavs
(0.62 percent), 8,499 Hungarians (0.43 percent), 4,233 Montenegrins (0.22
percent), 4,412 Macedonians (0.22 percent), 3,558 Albanians (0.18 percent),
3,063 Italians (0.16 percent), 2,282 Roma (0.12 percent), 546 Germans (0.03
percent), 322 Czechs (0.02 percent), and an even smaller number of others.
Most Slovenian politicians and experts in "minority issues,"
who almost without exception are paid by the state, will respond, when told
that according to the census, certain minorities are more numerous that those
protected by the Constitution, by saying that numbers do not mean anything per
se, and that other factors should be taken into consideration, such as, for
example, their compactness, being "indigenous," etc. These
explanations, however, are faulty even from the perspective of Slovenian
"minority policies" themselves. And for two reasons
at that.
First of all because "being indigenous" as a criterion, according
to international definitions, is not a condition for recognition and respect of
the rights of a certain ethnic minority. According to all such definitions,
"lasting or prolonged ties" of a minority with its home country is
the chief condition. As far as the expert definitions go, ties existing for
only two generations suffice for this purpose. The other reason is that to
certain unrecognized minorities in Slovenia -- Croats, Serbs, and Germans, for
example, indigenousness cannot be denied. Serbs appeared in the territory of
the so-called Bela Krajina (White Frontier) as early
as 1530, and permanently settled there in 1593. Soon, several Serb settlements
appeared on this region's borders -- Bojanci, Marindol, Paunovic, Adlesic, Zunic, and others. In Austria-Hungary,
Bojanci, for example, were granted the status of a parish, and between 1880 and the mid-1960s, a Serb
elementary school existed there. During the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (between the two World Wars), 6,745 Orthodox Christians, mostly Serbs
and Montenegrins, lived in Slovenia.
Even before the great migrations, at the beginning of the 1850s 11,225
Serbs and 1,365 Montenegrins lived in Slovenia. The Slovenian Central Committee
of the Alliance of Communists, for instance, used to describe as
"destructive" the demands of the Serb ethnic community for the right
to education in their maternal tongue and the preservation of the cultural
tradition of Bela Krajina. That there were locations
in Slovenia where Serbs were the indigenous population was also shown by
numerous newspaper articles which until the 1990s frequently tackled this
phenomenon. Thus for instance, under the title "Bela
Krajina Serbs Do Not Feel Threatened," the newspaper Delo
in its issue of Oct. 16, 1990, reported on a visit paid to the Bela Krajina Serb community by Slovenian Presidency
President Milan Kucan and a member of this body,
Dusan Plut. A little later the same newspaper
reported on the results of a plebiscite in Slovenia. "Bela
Krajina Serbs firmly back independent Slovenia -- the fact that most of them
voted in favor of independence means that the Serbs in Bojanci
will peacefully coexist with their Slovenian neighbors in the future,"
said Delo.
Eleven years later, Serbs can hardly be found in Bela
Krajina. As far as education goes, Prezihov Voranc Elementary School, which was the only one in
Slovenia to offer courses in the Serbo-Croatian language, in 1992, acting on a
decision of the municipal assembly, began to gradually eliminate these courses.
The last classes were disbanded in 1998. One of the arguments used then was
that the courses were unnecessary because it was a "(former) Yugoslav
privilege." The other maintained that it was not proper to organize
courses in Serbo-Croatian for pupils "who have mostly been granted
Slovenian citizenship."
The situation with the Croat and German ethnic minorities is more or
less the same. That members of the German minority
have deep and lasting roots in Slovenia is an undisputed historical fact. Its
problem lies in its small numbers. This, however, is not the case with the
Croat minority. Although Croats arrived in Slovenia as part of three large
migratory waves, in various areas on Slovenia's southern borders live several
thousand Croats indigenous to the region. In addition, the border between
Croatia and Slovenia is not as homogeneous as it appears at first glance.
Surveys conducted by the Slovenian Institute for Minority Issues have shown
that on the border with Croatia, there are 18,657 Croats and 7,320 Serbs, whereas
on the Croatian side there are 14,580 Slovenians.
Finally, it is not difficult to conclude that at the time it declared
its independence Slovenia should have protected at least the three
aforementioned ethnic communities, if it wanted consistency in its
implementation of the "indigenousness" factor. The fact that it did
not do so is due to a lack of an internationally valid definition of minority.
Because international standards pertaining to minorities are deficient,
minority rights primarily depend on each individual country, and in defining
them a dominant role is played by political elements.
Strong countries can ensure better protection for their nationals living
elsewhere. Where there is no state (the case of the Roma or the Kurds, for
instance), protection is poor, or does not exist. The results are quite obvious
-- some states are affected by strong waves of separatism, and in others,
ethnic minorities are gradually assimilated. The case of Slovenia shows that
even good protection of some ethnic groups does not exclude discrimination
against others, even by the state itself.
Igor Mekina
(AIM)