On December 23, 2003, the Croatian parliament elected a new cabinet, following parliamentary elections held a month earlier. The cabinet is dominated by members of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which returned to power after four years in opposition. Croatia’s new prime minister, Ivo Sanader, has expressed a wish to continue the country’s path toward integration into Europe, begun by the previous government. Croatia applied for European Union (E.U.) membership in February 2003.
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Below, Human Rights Watch proposes specific benchmarks to measure Croatia’s implementation of the SAP report’s recommendations in these two areas. Human Rights Watch believes the new Croatian government also needs to make improvements in other areas not addressed in this memorandum, including the broader issue of minority rights, judicial reform, and freedom of the media.
Regarding refugee returns, the SAP report found that “[i]n practice, only limited progress has been achieved in the return process, and de facto integration of the Serb minority” that had fled during the 1991-1995 Balkans war. The report identified the return of refugees as one of the “[p]riority areas needing attention in the next 12 months.”
In June 2003, the E.U. foreign ministers issued conclusions likewise making clear that progress was “required on refugee return, in which very little was achieved in the last year, in particular with regard to the integration of the Serb minority.”
On the issue of war crimes accountability, the SAP report found that “[t]he Government’s attitude in the co-operation with ICTY remains lukewarm,” and called on the Croatian government to “ensure full co-operation with ICTY.” More recently, the General Affairs Council conclusions of October 13, 2003 called for full cooperation by the former Yugoslav states with the ICTY. The Council called on the countries of the region “to improve their co-operation in respect of arrest and transfer of indictees still at large, requests for documents, access to archives and availability of witnesses.” It reaffirmed that “full cooperation […] with ICTY remained an essential element” of the SAP process and made clear that “[f]ailure to cooperate fully with ICTY would seriously jeopardize further movement towards the E.U.” Addressing the need for domestic war crimes trials, the Council “stressed the importance of strengthening national judicial systems and to improve their capacity to prosecute cases transferred from the ICTY.”
Shortcomings in Croatia’s record on refugee returns and war crimes accountability have been long-standing concerns to Human Rights Watch. On September 3, 2003, we issued a comprehensive, 61-page report, “Broken Promises: Impediments to Refugee Return to Croatia,” describing the plight of displaced Croatian Serbs and urging that the European Union condition Croatia’s membership application on tangible progress on returns. We have also called on the Croatian government to fully cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and to make genuine efforts to bring to justice before domestic courts war crimes suspects not tried in The Hague.
Below are the proposed Human Rights Watch benchmarks regarding Croatia’s implementation of E.U. recommendations related to refugee return and war crimes accountability.
(1) Refugee Returns
Regarding SAP recommendation “effective implementation of adopted legislation to complete the repossession of property, take administrative decisions for all pending application for reconstruction:”
- Temporary occupants who refuse housing care (stambeno zbrinjavanje) or temporary alternative accommodation offered by the government should be evicted after prompt proceedings meeting due process standards;
- Croatia should fully implement the legislation, adopted in July 2002, which denies entitlement to alternative housing care to temporary occupants who own vacated property in Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia and Montenegro;
- Owners of temporarily occupied property should receive just compensation from the state for continued deprivation of the use of property, as provided by law, as well as compensation for deprivation of the use of property in the past;
- Courts should use expedited procedures for resolving repossession cases, irrespective of whether these have been initiated by the state prosecutor or the property owner; verdicts reached under the Law on Areas of Special State Concern should be promptly executed.
Additional Human Rights Watch benchmarks on property issues not directly addressed in the SAP report:
- Temporary occupants’ use of Serb houses for business purposes should be promptly ended;
- Temporary occupants who use the property only occasionally, while living and working elsewhere, should be deemed multiple occupants and evicted without prior provision of alternative accommodation; the Law on Areas of Special State Concern should be amended accordingly;
- Wherever members of a family lived in the same household before the war and now occupy two or more Serb houses, it should be considered a case of multiple occupancy and the temporary occupants should be evicted without prior provision of alternative accommodation; the Law on Areas of Special State Concern should be amended accordingly;
- Temporary occupants who are determined to be financially or otherwise able to make other housing arrangements should be subject to eviction without prior provision of alternative accommodation;
- Croatia should introduce looting and devastation as ex-officio prosecutable criminal offenses tailored for the specific circumstances of occupied property, rather than acts prosecutable in civil proceedings;
- The Ministry for Public Works, Reconstruction and Construction/ODPR should include a notice or warning to a temporary occupant about criminal sanctions for looting or devastation;
- State prosecutors should prosecute temporary occupants who intentionally damage or loot property that has been allocated to them;
- If reasonable grounds exists that the temporary occupant damaged or looted the property, the Ministry for Public Works, Reconstruction and Construction/ODPR should consider such a person ineligible for state-provided housing care even before the conclusion of the judicial proceedings;
- The government should withdraw the legislation that retroactively eliminates damage suits lodged by property owners against the state, when damage or destruction to their homes resulted from acts of violence or terror that the state was under a duty to prevent.
Regarding SAP recommendation “design an operational system for compensation of lost tenancy/occupancy rights inside and outside the areas of special State concern:”
- Where apartments have not been privatized, original tenancy rights holders should be given an opportunity to repossess them, and they should be offered an opportunity to obtain a protected lease or purchase the apartments on terms comparable to other privatizations;
- Where the apartments have not been privatized because they were destroyed after the termination of the pre-war tenancy rights, the pre-war rights holders should be beneficiaries of the building reconstruction or should be entitled to a similar apartment in another location;
- Where the post-conflict occupant has purchased the apartment, the former tenancy rights holder should be entitled to a property of equivalent value;
- If the former tenancy rights holder does not choose any of the solutions from the above, he should be given fair compensation.
Regarding SAP recommendation “creation of social and economic conditions to improve the climate for returns and the acceptance of returnees by receiving communities:”
- The government should closely monitor employment practices in state institutions and enterprises. Pertinent ministries should intervene in cases in which discrimination on ethnic grounds is apparent and develop a proactive strategy for recruitment and hiring of qualified minority candidates;
- The government should end discriminatory practices and ensure fair employment opportunities for Serb returnees in the state administration and state-owned enterprises;
- Croatia should vigorously implement the July 2003 amendments to the Labor Law, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin, among other grounds;
- With respect to pensions, the government should establish a new deadline for submitting requests for the validation of work completed between 1991-95 in the so-called Republika Srpska Krajina;
- The government should relax the requirements for proving 1991-95 employment status, by unequivocally eliminating the requirement that only witnesses who have validated their own employment status can testify that the applicant was employed in the same company. Witness statements should be considered to create a rebuttable presumption of the applicant's wartime employment;
- The government should pay pensions covering the 1991-95 period to Croatian Serbs who lived outside government-controlled territory during that time. If they were receiving pensions from the Republika Srpska Krajina fund, they should receive pension installments reduced by the amount of such installments received.
(2) War crimes accountability
Regarding SAP recommendation “ensure full co-operation with ICTY” and General Affairs Council conclusion relating to domestic war crimes trials:
- Croatia should arrest indicted Croatian army general Ante Gotovina and surrender him to the custody of the ICTY;
- Given the high number of dropped charges and acquittals in war crimes cases against Serb returnees in recent years, the authorities should in all possible cases pursue provisional release as an alternative to detention of indictees pending trial;
- Cooperation between Croatia and other states in the territory of the former Yugoslavia should include providing requested documents and allowing access to all witnesses sought by the court, in a timely manner;
- Croatia should, along with other governments in the territory of the former Yugoslavia and with the possible technical and financial support of international donors, facilitate testimony of witnesses from other jurisdictions, including by video conference;
- Croatia should enforce the newly enacted legislation providing for witness protection measures, and ensure that sufficient funding is allocated for effective implementation of such measures;
- Legislation criminalizing intimidation or threatening of witnesses and other participants in the proceedings should be adequately enforced;
- Authorities should show a greater commitment to bringing to justice and trying fairly war crimes suspects irrespective of their ethnic origin;
- As part of the government’s ongoing, statewide review of the outstanding war crime indictments and supporting evidence, those indictments for which the state prosecutor does not have a prima facie case should be dropped.
