Croatian Serbs in Property Battle

When the Milics of Osijek packed their belongings in the dark days of 1991, they little thought they were abandoning their home for good.

Stanko Milic, a top neurologist, had no links to the military groups then fighting for control of the strategic border town in eastern Croatia.

But as ethnic Serbs living in a town encircled by Serb paramilitary groups and their allies in the Yugoslav army, he felt the full weight of public suspicion.

A dozen years on, Milic is still fighting to recover his rights to a home which has since passed through several hands, in a story that mirrors many twists and turns in Croatia's convoluted history since 1991.

In September of that year, Stanko and his wife Danka, a dentist, left their flat. The last straw had been a report in Glas Slavonije, the local nationalist newspaper, which accused the head of the neurology centre of turning his clinic into "a club for Chetniks", as Serb paramilitaries were called.

When friends advised them to take cover, they left for Belgrade, intending to stay away for a few days at the most.

The Milics were wise to leave when they did. Soon after, a dozen prominent Serb civilians, including Milic’s colleague, a paediatrician at Osijek hospital, were murdered.

The killings sent a clear message to the Serb community, then comprising 20 per cent of the town's population, that powerful forces did not want them in Osijek.

Some were found in the Drava river, hands tied behind their backs with bullet holes in their heads. The killings were never investigated and remain unsolved.

As fighting escalated sharply around Osijek in the autumn of 1991, the border between Croatia and Serbia was sealed and the Milics could not return now, even if they wanted to.

Now, the Milics and thousands of other displaced families and couples are seeking the restoration of their lost tenancy rights in Croatia.

They can count on international support, for Croatia is obliged to restore property and leases to citizens who lost them in the 1990s, in order to gain membership of NATO and the European Union.

But repeated changes of hand since the 1990s means it will be a complex process. The history of the Milic apartment highlights the confusion over who now owns what.

A few days after the family left Osijek, their property was broken into and robbed. The following February, a family of Croatian refugees, from a nearby village occupied by the Serbs, moved in.

This family had obtained a temporary right to occupy the flat from the military housing military committee, headed by Petar Kljajic, head of the Osijek district court.

That was not the end of the story, however, for the spacious four-bedroom apartment soon caught the eye of Branimir Glavas, then in charge of town’s defence against the Serbs.

The refugees from Laslovo were moved out and Glavas moved in, also under a permit from the military housing committee, which stated his right to the flat was temporary and did not include any tenancy rights.

In spite of this, Glavas somehow managed to purchase the flat, after signing an agreement with the city's housing fund in December 1993.

Under numerous discounts available to war invalids and thanks to his willingness to pay in cash and in hard currency, he paid only 3,700 German marks for the apartment.

Glavas then sold the property to the Slavonska Bank (now owned by the Austrian Hypo Bank) after five years for 280,000 marks, giving him a net profit of 277,630 marks.

In an interview with IWPR, Glavas insisted that his purchase and sale of the Milic flat was perfectly in order.

Many families like the Milics paid contributions over the years into funds that were designed to enable them to buy their leaseholds only to lose everything in the 1990s.

But government attempts to return these apartments to their previous owners may land Croatia in legal chaos. As in the Milic case, lots of apartments have been sold, or changed hands, several times.

Although the centre-left government of Ivica Racan is under international pressure to to set right the injustice, no obvious solution is in sight.

Tomislav Jakic, an advisor to President Stipe Mesic, proposed that the state offer financial compensation to former holders of tenancy rights. But Racan rejected this, pointing out that such a move would bankrupt the cash-strapped government.

In the meantime, the Milics are not going to give up. From their new home in Podgorica, Montenegro, they have said they will take their case to the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg if the Croatian judiciary does not resolve their grievance.

Other former citizens of Croatia have warned that will take the same step.

Drago Hedl is an Osijek-based IWPR contributor. Dragana Nikolic-Solomon is an assistant editor at IWPR in London.