To the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights Mr. Alvaro Gil Robles

and to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Strasbourg

Since the establishment of our Association we addressed special appeals to "the state and the public" from the three assembly meetings (of 26 October 2002, and 26 February and 20 July 2003 respectively), the first two already before the Constitutional Court's (CC) decision from April 2003. In the second appeal, adopted a month before the CC decision, we wrote: "If this decision will be positive for us, on which we have no doubts, we question the government and the National Assembly and the political parties respectively, whether they intend to evade (or by-pass) this CC decision as they evaded the CC decision from 1999?"  

In the third appeal, three months after the CC decision from April 2003, we pointed out to two great deceptions in the evasiveness to the CC-decision-implementation and judged them as evident proof that Minister of Interior Mr. Bohinc intends to evade also the latest CC decision as the CC decision from 1999 was evaded. Therefore, in our appeal we asked, if the government will fall for this deception as well, although we warned the government on this, and if the National Assembly will evade the CC decision again? Unfortunately, as all these ill inklings were realized, after three of completely ignored appeals to Slovenian authorities, from which we can trust only to the CC and the Ombudsman, we turn now directly to the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe and to the Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) of the Council of Europe from our assembly for the first time. Both bodies published reports on their visit to Slovenia, in which both the Commissioner and the ECRI emphasized particularly the issue of the erased, for which we are sincerely grateful.

We quote paragraph 31 from the Report of the Commissioner Mr. Gil Robles, which encompasses also the period after the CC decision from April 2003: "The early execution of the opinion of the Constitutional Court is essential for regulating the situation of these persons in an appropriate manner. The President of the National Assembly assured me that the law will be supplemented in the manner ordered by the Constitutional Court. The Minister of Interior informed me that the process for giving retroactive effect to the status of permanent residence has been started, and the legislative process towards providing a new time limit will be initiated without delay."

The development of events that followed showed that these were empty promises, and it is perhaps irrelevant if they were deliberately untrue or mere irresponsible statements and promises:

- The first Minister's information (that the procedure of restoring the status started in May last year) was completely untrue, because the Minister then violated also the written promise, given to the public, on the start of issuing the decisions in September at latest. He started to issue the decisions slowly and in exceedingly selective manner only recently;

- The government did not start the legislative procedure without delay as the Minister promised, and put the draft bill in the legislative procedure only in mid-October, when the six-month-deadline for the adoption of the so-called systemic law already expired; 

- The "assurance" of the President of National Assembly that the law will be in compliance with the CC decision turned out to be evenly void, whereby his role of the President of National Assembly was the most visible in scandalous deference of governing coalition against the opposition's unconstitutional demands. The members of governing coalition already publicly speak of attempts not for full, but only for "major possible" implementation of the CC decision. 

Ultimately, we repeat the last sentence from our previous appeal, only now we start it no longer with "if", but with "because": Because we will have to lodge a complaint against another unconstitutional law before the CC, and then perhaps before the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg – also because the law entirely excludes the damages for the period 1992-2000, and to some groups of the affected even for the last three years -  many of us will not see the end of this shameful story. Shame for Slovenia, which is our home as well, will swell to unprecedented spreads.

The Association of Erased Residents of Slovenia –

adopted at the assembly meeting on 26 February 2004 in Ljubljana –

on the occassion of 12th anniversary of unlawful erasure