OSIJEK, June 5 (Hina) - Osijek-Baranja County branch of the Association of Croatian Returnees (ZPH) forwarded a letter to Prime Minister Ivica Racan Thursday, claiming it was "impermissible for the international community to use
pressure, seeking of Croatia to restore tenancy rights to Serbs who fled".
OSIJEK, June 5 (Hina) - Osijek-Baranja County branch of the
Association of Croatian Returnees (ZPH) forwarded a letter to Prime
Minister Ivica Racan Thursday, claiming it was "impermissible for
the international community to use pressure, seeking of Croatia to
restore tenancy rights to Serbs who fled". #L#
The ZPH warned that, if pressures did not cease, it would urge
refugees and displaced persons to sue the state "to compensate for
all forms of damage incurred during the Homeland War and exile".
The returnees believe that "it is impermissible to ask of Croatia to
realise rights from laws which have not existed for years", adding
it was also "impermissible for the international community to
equate a fiction of the former system -- tenancy rights -- to
ownership".
"Since the end of the war the international community has been
exerting pressure, particularly on refugees and returnees in areas
of special government concern, about the need to spread peace,
tolerance, multiethniticity and ethnic tolerance. Recently it has
been persistent in fighting for only one, the ethnic Serb
minority," the letter says.
The ZPH expressed "great dissatisfaction" with the fact that a
parliament conclusion on the government's obligation to compensate
returnees for confiscated assets based on judgements on paying
lease for houses and flats which they used in exile had not been
implemented to date.
The returnees announced a general protest of returnees and refugees
if they did not receive a response to their requests within 14
days.
(hina) lml sb