The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 110110 THE SCARS OF THE ERASUREAs a matter of fact, the erased people were not deprived of Slovenian citizenshipbecause they had never had it. 29 Accordingly, the issue of citizenship is relevantonly in specific situations:- Many erased persons applied for citizenship but were rejected, and oneamong the reasons was that they allegedly constituted a threat to thepublic order and peace; this reason was later declared invalid by the ConstitutionalCourt. 30- Many erased persons wanted to apply for citizenship but missed the sixmonthdeadline for the application, which was 26 December 1991, orthey were prevented from applying for citizenship by state officials whorefused to accept their presumably incomplete applications.- Many erased people who were born in Slovenia expected that they wouldautomatically qualify for Slovenian citizenship, as did some of their bro -thers or sisters born in Slovenia to the same parents (see the example ofJana S. above).- With the erasure, some persons who were rejected for Slovenian citizenshipand who at the time of the erasure had long been absent from theircountry of origin, lost the effective link with the only country (Slovenia) inwhich they could, at some point in the future, apply for citizenship throughnaturalization. Persons who have not obtained citizenship from any countryand whom no country treats as its citizens at a specific point in time,regardless of whether or not they would obtain its citizenship if they appliedfor it, are de facto stateless persons. In this sense, in certain casesthe erasure led to de facto statelessness.The right of children to obtain citizenship is specifically protected, as in Article24 (3) of the ICCPR. Some erased persons who lived in Slovenia withoutlegal status and had children during that period were refused the entry of theirchildren’s birth into the register. Such is the case of Ismeta and her daughter,whose father also had no legal status:Our daughter was born in 1999 in Slovenia. When we wanted to enter her birthon the central register of births, they turned us down and instructed us to go tothe Bosnian embassy, where they also didn’t want to recognize the child becausenone of us was a Bosnian citizen. My daughter didn’t have any documents fortwo years; she didn’t have the unique personal identification number, health insuranceor the like. She got status only when I obtained a permanent residencepermit . (Ismeta, 49)29 Certain persons were deprived of citizenship, but according to the definition they do not belong in the group oferased people. The erased people are individuals who on 23 December 1990 were registered as permanent residentsin Slovenia but had not obtained Slovenian citizenship and were consequently erased from the register of permanentresidents. See Dedić et al. 2003, 55.30 See the Constitutional Court’s ruling No. U-I-89/99, dated 10 June 1999.