MINELRES: Fwd: RFE/RL: Conference Highlights Minorities in Slovenia
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Wed Jun 5 07:32:49 2002
Original sender: Greek Helsinki Monitor
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RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL Balkan Report
Vol. 6, No. 20, 17 May 2002
CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS MINORITIES IN SLOVENIA. Although Slovenia lacks
the ethnic diversity that can be found in some neighboring countries,
it nonetheless has a noteworthy non-Slovenian population, many of
whose members are not altogether happy with their current status. This
is particularly the case with people from other former Yugoslav
republics.
A two-day conference entitled "Modern National and Religious Groups in
Slovenia: Between Assimilation and Cultural Pluralism" took place in
Maribor, "Delo" reported on 10 May. The event was sponsored by the
ISCOMET Network for Democracy, Human Rights, and the Protection of
Persons Belonging to Ethnic and Religious Minorities in South Eastern
Europe. The over 150 participants represented Albanians, Bosnian
Muslims, Croats, Kocevje Germans, Macedonians, Roma, and Serbs living
in Slovenia. The meeting did not address the subject of Slovenia's two
constitutionally protected ethnic groups: Hungarians and Italians (see
"RFE/RL Balkan Report," 8 March 2002).
Martin Berishaj pointed out that Albanians have been successful in
demands for an Albanian lectureship at the University of Ljubljana.
However, he said, it is necessary to press the state to fulfill other
legal obligations towards its minorities.
The coordinator of the Bosnian Muslims' Cultural Alliance, Fahir
Gutic, emphasized a lack of infrastructure to support his people. He
pointed out that Slovenia lacks a state office for their affairs, as
well as language courses, radio and television broadcasts, and
libraries in the "Bosnian" language. Gutic also faulted the absence of
streets and squares named for Bosnian cultural figures. He charged
that school texts associate Islam with violence and called for
establishing official minority status for Bosnian Muslims.
Sime Ivanjko of the Croatian Cultural Society said many Croats remain
reluctant to identify themselves as such. Croats have a centuries-old
presence in parts of Slovenia and thus object to being labeled a "new"
minority, in contrast to the Italians and Hungarians, who are
considered "indigenous." The label "immigrant" carries negative
connotations, says Ivanjko, while the designation "non-Slovene" is
also unacceptable. Slovenia is home to several Croatian societies and
two Slovenian-Croatian friendship associations.
Arsen Mitar, a representative of Slovenia's Roma, charged that nowhere
else in Europe do so many people face bureaucratic obstacles to
receiving their papers. When Slovenia became independent in 1991, he
says, some Romany men with non-Slovene Yugoslav citizenship were
living abroad. Now denied entry into Slovenia, they are forced to
enter illegally to visit immediate family members.
The second day of the meeting focused on religious diversity. Mufti
Osman Djogic explained how Slovenia's Muslims bought a house in
Ljubljana in 1981 and established a meshihat - a religious authority
analogous to a synod. However, Djogic criticized the now 30-year delay
in securing a building permit for an Islamic cultural center, blaming
ideologically rooted administrative impediments. He also noted a lack
of general knowledge about the needs of Slovenia's 30,000 Muslims. "On
Malaysia Airlines, the carrier of an Islamic state," said Djogic, "you
receive whiskey if you ask for it. On [Slovenia's] Adria Airways, if
you ask for halal food, they look at you as if you come from another
planet."
Trajce Andonov said that the greatest problem for the Macedonian
Orthodox in Slovenia is that they have no "place" of their own. The
Macedonian Orthodox Church was proclaimed autocephalous only in 1967
and is not recognized by any other Orthodox churches.
In contrast, the current Serbian Orthodox church in Ljubljana dates
from 1935, and Serbian Orthodoxy in Slovenia dates back to the 17th
century in the Bela Krajina area. But despite this long history, said
the president of the Serbian Community society, Vesna Milic, it is not
easy to officially identify oneself as a Serb in today's Slovenia.
The conference organizers plan to issue a set of proposals. These will
include a call for Slovenia to implement EU directives on minorities,
greater cooperation with the Yugoslav successor states, minority
language and human rights education in schools, and greater focus on
diversity in the Slovenian media.
Demands such as those raised at the conference do not find wide
resonance in Slovenian society, however. Many are eager to preserve
Slovenia's relative homogeneity, widely credited with shielding it
from the ethnic conflicts that ravaged the other Yugoslav republics in
recent years. Also widespread is the view that war refugees - whose
number grew to some 70,000 the mid-1990s - have increasingly become
economic refugees, leading to calls for their repatriation. And a
cash-strapped budget prevents the full implementation of projects
supporting the Slovenian cultural heritage, let alone that of other
ethnic groups.
Perhaps more important, independence has also given Slovenes greater
confidence in asserting themselves linguistically and culturally.
Slovenes point out that other Yugoslavs often lived in Slovenia for
decades, refusing to learn Slovenian - while Slovenians were required
to learn Serbo-Croatian as a second language in their schools. One
legacy of this practice is the scant enthusiasm for fostering the
languages and cultures of the former Yugoslavia in Slovenia today.
(Donald F. Reindl is a free-lance writer and Indiana University Ph.D.
candidate in Ljubljana, [email protected])
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