The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 117THE ERASURE AS A VIOLATION OF LEGALLY PROTECTED HUMAN RIGHTS117mation when filling out the form. However, persons without legal status or validdocuments could not provide this information (e.g., permanent or temporary address,tax number, the number of a personal document etc.). A person must alsobe physically capable of receiving a pension at his/her official address or bankaccount. Erased people without valid papers and a legal status in Slovenia weretherefore physically incapable of receiving a pension. 35 If they were unable tomeet the requirements for permanent resident status, they had no choice butto leave Slovenia, obtain legal status in another country and then claim a pensionin Slovenia, if there existed such an agreement between Slovenia and the othercountry. The requirement to leave the country, imposed upon erased people andparticularly older people who had lived in Slovenia for decades before the erasure,was disproportional and prevented the erased people, and still preventsthem, from exercising their right to the protection of possessions or property. Accordingly,erased persons could exercise their right to pension only after they obtainedlegal status (e.g., when they acquired citizenship or a permanentresidence permit). Ekrem told us:I worked in Slovenia from 1976 to 1992 when I became redundant because oftechnological progress. From that time on, I could work only illegally because Iwas erased. When a short while ago I obtained citizenship, Dr. Doplihar fromthe Outpatient Clinic for People Without Health Insurance began to arrange papersfor my disability pension. The procedure is not yet finished. (Ekrem, 56)This right is also important if viewed from another perspective: manyerased people no longer were able to find a job legally, except those whose employersarranged a work visa for them, which initially could be obtained for onlythree months at a time. They could work only illegally, or they did not work at all,and in both cases their contributions were not paid. Similarly, they were not entitledto participate in the programs within the framework of active employmentpolicy or public works, nor were they entitled to other arrangements by whichthe state takes upon itself the payment of a certain part of the contributions(e.g., for families with many children). Consequently, people forced to live “illegally”lost many years of life (for many of them it was the most productive agewhen they could find employment or at least apply for a job), for which they cannever compensate, and similarly they no longer have the possibility of havingthe contributions paid for this period of time. In this sense it is indeed not possibleto speak about the violation of the right to possessions, since this type ofpossession is only hypothetical, but the information is important for understandingthe extent of the impact the erasure had on the lives of these people.35 It is interesting that many erased persons obtained a tax payer ID, which the Tax Authority was officially obligedto assign, meaning that their records were not harmonized with those of the Ministry of the Interior and administrativeunits.