AEMI

22 AEMI JOURNAL 2015
in his second report (Council of Europe,
Office of the Commissioner for Human
Rights 2006: 4-5 point 1: Protection of
Minorities). In the latter, the commissioner
also reported that the measures
of the government for minority protection
required additional investigation
into the concept of ‘autochthonous’
(primary) minorities and non-autochthonous
(‘new’) minorities, and that
the Framework Convention for the
Protection of National Minorities also
applies to groups of people who come
from the other republics of the former
Yugoslavia. The commissioner felt it was
extremely important that the Slovenian
government take measures to reduce the
different levels of protection for Roma
communities that emerge from the definition
of these groups as either autochthonous
or non-autochthonous, as the
definition is still legally ambiguous. He
was concerned that the use of these concepts
caused legal and practical uncertainty
and created the risk of arbitrary
exclusion. As far as people from the republics
of the former Yugoslavia were
concerned, the commissioner expressed
concern that they were not recognized
as a minority in Slovenia, which caused
great difficulty in terms of the preservation
of language, faith, culture, and
identity.
The Slovenian government or, more
precisely, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
defines its understanding of the concept
of autochthonous minorities as follows
(Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs 2006: 2): ‘By and large, we
speak of autochthonous or historical settlements
of certain communities in cases
where such communities have been
present in a certain area for at least two
generations or more’ (emphasis added).
Similarly, the Minority Rights Group
stated in World Directory of Minorities
(1990, xiv) that ethnic minorities become
autochthonous after two generations
(or in 40–50 years).
This is the same interpretation implicitly
recommended by the European
Commissioner of Human Rights (Office
of the Commissioner for Human
Rights 2006: 3, comment f-5). But the
use of the term in the Slovenian government
documents is inconsistent to say
the least, and at times even hypocritical.
In international communication the
Slovenian government uses the interpretation
of the term as quoted above.
But this definition of autochthonous
minorities is not yet established in Slovenian
internal documents. Most people
who immigrated to Slovenia from
other republics of the former Yugoslavia
came during the 1970s and have dedicated
the entirety of their active lives
to the Slovenian economy and society.
Moreover, the number of their second
and third generation born in Slovenia
now exceeds the number of first generation
immigrants. Nevertheless, the
Slovenian government in its internal
documents continues to qualify this
minority with the label ‘non-autochthonous,
new ethnic communities’ or ‘new
minority ethnic communities’ (Čurin
Radovič 2002: 232). We find similar
syntagms in other expert literature, for
example ‘new ethnic/national communities’(Komac
2003) and ‘new national
minorities’(Medvešek and Vrečer 2005).
By placing the label ‘new’ in quotation
marks, some authors implicitly question
the suggested non-autochthonous status
of these communities. The danger exists