Expellees against Croatian campaign to scrap refugee status

BELGRADE - The leader of the Coalition of Refugee Associations Miodrag Linta announced on Tuesday that he will request that UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres reject the Croatian initiative aimed at rescinding the refugee status of Serb expellees, adding that this would be the final act of the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia.

The expelled Serbs from Croatia who are represented by refugee associations believe that this is the wrong approach, as there are 41,000 people in Serbia with refugee status, Linta said in a statement of the Coalition submitted to Tanjug.

Also, there are more than 250,000 people in Serbia who have lost the refugee status after obtaining Serbian citizenship - in that way, they also lost the opportunity for sustainable return, but have not been able to exercise their property and status rights or other established rights, Linta warned.

The letter that the Coalition intends to send to Guterres will be shown to the Serbian leadership, the EU, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and ambassadors of the UNHCR Executive Committee member countries, Linta said.

He warned that Croatia has failed to fulfil its obligations from international and bilateral agreements, in particular, the Vienna Agreement on Succession Issues from 2001, which protects refugee rights, or the conclusions of the Sarajevo Declaration from 2005, by refusing to solve the issue of rescinded tenancy rights and unpaid pensions.

In addition to all this, Croatia's commitment to the views expressed in the declaration signed in November 2011 by the foreign ministers of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro at a regional conference in Belgrade has become questionable, he said.

Rescinding the...