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[–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

Yeah the procedure was ruled unconstitutional. But the article is missing context to paint the event as some sort of ethnic cleansing.

After independence there was 6 month period to claim new citizenship if you had state citizenship of some other republic. 175000 did it while 25000 did not. Those that did not became foreigners in the new country.

The problem was that those that did not claim citizenship were not notified their status is going to change.

Its kinda similar to Baltics where Russians didnt want to take citizenship and you have old people to this day that have only USSR papers. I would assume similar problems would arise in case of indy Scotland or Catalonia.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    Thanks for the additional context. I read some more background and opinions on the izbrisani. It doesn't sound so much intentionally cruel as people had to make decisions during a war, and then when it came time to figure out what to do with the people that became unaccounted for due to whatever reason, there was also nothing in place to get them reintegrated and they were thrown off into various bad situations without means to appeal because of their administrative erasure.

    One opinion I read said these were people that didn't think independence was going to happen, and if it did, they could just get a working visa and carry on, but now they were not in the system and therefore that plan went up in smoke.

    Another said there had been a general Yugoslavian citizenship everyone had, and one would register a Republic citizenship as well, but that wasn't seen as super important during unity, but then post war, that became a huge problem as they were suddenly non-citizens.

    Regardless, it does seem a bit more complex than this article implied. It's still scary the effects paperwork being filed or not can have, but I'm glad to have reserved some of this story.

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