In Slovenia, 25,000 residents were removed from registers in 1992 — The Guardian
On February 26, 1992, Slovenia removed about 25,000 permanent residents born in other republics of the former Yugoslavia from the state register. According to Slovenian writer, filmmaker and anthropologist Miha Mazzini, writing in a column for The Guardian, the people subsequently lost their right to reside, access healthcare and pensions, and became illegal migrants without warning or an opportunity to appeal the decision.
According to Mazzini, 1.3% of the country’s population was removed from the registers overnight. He calls these people “the erased” and links the event to current discussions of “remigration” in Europe.
Loss of basic rights
The author cites stories of people who, after being removed from the registers, could not enroll their children in school, receive medical care or protect their housing. One woman told Mazzini that when she tried to enroll her son in secondary school, an official informed her that her son did not exist in the documents.
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Mazzini also describes the case of a man who, after being stopped by police, was not found in the register and was taken to a center for asylum seekers. The man, who was born in Serbia, was deported to Croatia, where a war with Serbia was underway at the time; there, he was treated as a prisoner of war.
Constitutional Court ruling
According to the author, for six years the people removed from the registers hid and worked illegally for low pay, depending on employers and landlords. He mentions cases in which people returned home to find their locks changed, as they could not turn to the police for protection.
In 1998, Slovenia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the removal from the registers was unconstitutional. At the same time, Mazzini writes that restoring the rights of those affected and obtaining compensation became a lengthy process that has still not been completed for some people. A monument was erected and a park named in Ljubljana in honor of “the erased.”
