This article is also published in a thematic block Living on a Border within the art in migration magazine collaboratively published by Soho in Ottakring and KITCH. The texts and photos are contributed by the authors from every partner organization of the Living on a Border project.     

Among Slovenian NGO's (in the first place those are Amnesty International, Legal-informative Centre for NGO's and Peace Institute) and horizontal non-formal activist groups dealing with human rights and political actions in Slovenia, the problem, or better, the phenomenon of The Erased People of Slovenia is still one of the most important one. Fifteenth years ago, like "the side effect" of the independence process in Slovenia, on 26^th of February 1992, at least 18.305 individuals were removed from the Slovenian registry of permanent residents and their records were transferred to the registry of foreigners. Those people, who were not informed of this measure and its consequences, were mainly from other former Yugoslav republics that had been living in Slovenia and had not applied for or had been refused Slovenian citizenship in 1991 and 1992, after Slovenia became independent. As a result of the "erasure", they became de facto foreigners or stateless persons illegally residing in Slovenia. This represents unique and bizarre act of one sovereign country in modern history in Europe.  

In some cases the erasure was subsequently followed by the physical destruction of the identity cards and other documents of the individuals concerned. Some of the erased were served forcible removal orders and had to leave the country. In his report, published in 2003, on his visit to Slovenia, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights noted that many of them were deprived of their pensions, apartments, access to health care and other social rights. The personal documents of these persons, such as identity cards, passports and drivers' licenses, were annulled. It has been reported that some people, albeit a very limited number, were deported as illegal aliens. Their living became living on a border paradigm par excellence. 

Interesting enough is that some of them, who are still without any rights (about 4000 people) or those who had managed to organize their status somehow (got temporary or permanent residency back again or even citizenship) in cooperation with some activist movements in Slovenia, are for years organizing artivistic (artistic and activist) actions in Slovenia and abroad (a lot of actions they have performed in Italy, countries of ex Yugoslavia, in November 2006 they have organized action "The Caravan of The Erased", where they have demonstrate in front of the European Parliament in Brussels) wanting to raise the question of the erasure in public discourse in some other way that just fighting with legal instruments (although legal fight is however very important thanks to which a lot of them have managed to re-organize their status back again). But the public actions were much more important especially also because the state of Slovenia did everything to conceal the erasure at the public discourse on one hand yet on another, to represent those people in public like the "enemies of the state" who were legitimately expelled from the community because they were »against Slovenian sovereignty«. So a group of the erased started with different public actions implementing the title The Erased People of Slovenia and making a series of peaceful demonstrations and actions wanting to raise the question of the erasure in the new context of human rights within rethinking the idea of a sovereign state as a community of citizens.

One of the most interesting and important performances happened on the 11^th anniversary of the erasure on 8^th February 2003 when activists, dressed in white overalls lied down in front of the Slovene parliament building and with their bodies made the word THE ERASURE (IZBRIS). It was a great example of combining performative form with actual political issue and doing that in a public space. So it was unique combination of artistic freedom of expression and political incorrectness and at the same time the good example of citizen's disobedience. It was a political performance and direct action like the reminiscent of agitprop and guerilla performance, of which main goal was to make political effect. Last year, at the 14^th anniversary of the erasure they had a new performance - symbolic annulling of the documents for free. It was of course a clever reminiscent of the document annulling done by Slovene bureaucracy and made possible by the Slovene government, to the people who thanks to that became erased. Performance of symbolic annulling other people's document (those who offered the copy of their document to annulling were Slovene citizens, mostly supporters of the erased) has in addition taking place in front of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia.

 

The Erasure, photo & copyright by Denis Sarkić

 

Clearly ehough, these and similar performances polarized Slovene population into more or less two antagonistic blocs, one which understand the problem of the erasure as decline of the human rights and racist act of the young nation state, and the other which understand the nation state as  homogeneous community of dedicated citizens. But although for strict legalists dedicated to the power of the nation state is more that strange that Slovenia hadn't done much to solve the problem of the erased systematically, even though eight years ago the Slovene Constitutional Court has decided that the erasure was unconstitutional and four years ago they order to the state of Slovenia to fix the injustice immediately in a systematic way.

 

Lana Zdravković is researcher and artist at Institute KITCH Ljubljana. 

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SLOVENSKO    26. februarja 1992 je kot posledica osamosvojitvenega procesa Slovenije 18.305 posameznikov bilo izbrisanih iz registra stalnih prebivalcev Republike Slovenije. Tako so ti ljudje čez noč postali popolni tujci v državi v kateri so živeli več deset let. Šlo je predvsem za ljudi iz drugih republik takratne države Jugoslavije, ki v času osamosvajanja Slovenije niso zaprosili za novonastalo slovensko državljanstvo. Četudi je slovensko Ustavno sodišče leta 1999 odločilo, da je izbris bil neustaven in leta 2003 naložilo Državnemu zboru, da nemudoma sistemsko uredi status izbrisanih, se situacija ni bistveno spremenila. Posamezni primeri so se reševali ločeno, odgovorni pa nikoli niso priznali svojo napako. Članek opisuje predvsem artivistične (artistične in aktivistične) prakse, ki so jih skozi leta izvajali Izbrisani prebivalci Republike Slovenije, kakor so se sami poimenovali, skupaj s pripadniki neformalnih aktivističnih organizacij in s pomočjo nekaterih slovenskih nevladnih   organizacij (predvsem Amnesty International, Pravno-informacijski center nevladnih organizacij in Mirovni inštitut), ki še dandanes tako ali drugače opozarjajo na ta problem.