The problem of “deleted” citizens of the Republic of Croatia from voters’ lists right before the upcoming local elections is once again a hot topic in public circles. Especially given the fact that because of police practices which have already caused a fuss among many Croatian citizens, many of these individuals have lost of both active and passive voting rights. In democratic societies this right is considered one of the most important state rights.

On December 19, 2012, the Croatian Parliament passed the Residence Act (OG 144/12 and 158/13). The implementation of the Act was postponed for January 2015. According to Article 12 of the Act, the police administration confirms on the field whether or not a given person lives at a registered address. Pursuant to Article 18 of the Act, those citizens whose identification cards have expired or who never obtained a personal ID card in the first place are deleted from the register. The Minister of the Interior at the time of enforcing the Act (January 2015) was Ranko Ostojić, while the Public Administration Minister was Arsen Bauk (SDP). From 2016 until his recent dismissal, Vlaho Orepić was Minister of the Interior, while Public Administration Minister was Ivan Kovačić, who was preceded by Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović (all from the MOST party).
The Croatian Helsinki Committee (CHC) addressed the Ministry of Public Administration and requested data on the number of deleted voters, and on April 27, 2017 received a document signed by Jagoda Botić, Assistant Minister.

According to Ministry records, up to April 19, 2017, a total of 269,516 citizens were deleted from voting lists in the Republic of Croatia. Of that number, 152,974 were Croats, 61,264 were of unknown nationality, 40,103 were Serbs, 3768 were Others, 3638 were Muslims, 2236 were Albanians, and 1492 were Romani, including a number of other nationalities. Based on records from the Ministry of Public Administration it is clear that they kept diligent record of the nationality of those who were deleted. (Attached is an excel spreadsheet for media editors for all counties, cities and municipalities, as well as a map. All documents can be found on the CHC website www.hho.hr).
The Executive Committee of the CHC (EC CHC) believes that publishing information on the deleted individuals will prevent the abuse of the issue of deleted persons in Croatia and outside its borders.
Accordingly, it is evident that the words of former Minister of the Interior Vlaho Orepić (May 9, 2016, T-Portal) are inaccurate and untruthful when he said that since passing the Law only 90,000 Croatian citizens have been deleted from the register. Mr. Orepić’s claim that “in the last three years about 80,000 people have been deleted from the residence register,” and that “there is no data on the nationality of the deleted voters” is also false. At the very least it is irresponsible for the head of the Ministry of the Interior to not know what is going on in his own Ministry, but it also clearly shows that he is neither competent nor capable of performing such an important duty.
It has been shown that the claims of MP Milorad Pupovac were also incorrect when he stated that 67,000 Serbs in Croatia were deleted from the register, and this information was published in Novosti (News), a weekly paper by the Serbian minority in Croatia, and claimed that this number of voters was deleted in only eleven counties. From the published chart we see that 40,103 Serbs were deleted in Croatia. This inaccurate data was also abused by the President of the Republic of Serbia, Milorad Dodik, in his letter of 18 April 2017 to the Bishop of Banja Luka, Franjo Komarica, in which he, accepting the record of 67,000 deleted voters as true, complains about why the bishop didn’t comment on these affairs.

It is an indisputable fact that every legal state, including the Republic of Croatia, must organise data on residence, and thus regulate the voting rights of its citizens. However, it is not good when part of the public condemns the process by saying it is mainly about deleting the names of those who will not vote for individual parties. On the other hand, such manipulation of numbers, volens-nolens, implies that the process is actually a continuation of the “ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia”. If this thesis of ethnic cleansing is accepted, then the data could also reveal the absurd thesis that we are actually dealing with the “ethnic cleansing” of (undesirable) Croats, and in the Croatian state. This derives from the fact that part of the public warned that in some regions the deletion procedure was particularly intensified for the needs of individual parties before an election.
The Executive Committee of the Croatian Helsinki Committee (EC CHC) maintains that it is necessary to pay heed to objections coming from the Serbian national community in Croatia (M. Pupovac), so that Croatian Serbs will not end up the greatest collateral victims of the deleting of Croatian citizens, and so that the results of the deletion could not be used as evidence of the further “ethnic cleansing” of Serbs in Croatia. It is certain that disorder will arise in the rights of the Serbian national community in Croatia as a result of the deletion, that in certain municipalities, cities, and counties, based on the constitutional law on the rights of national minorities they have a guaranteed number of seats in parliament and in the executive administration as well.
This is particularly important to highlight given the fact that in a large number of places inhabited by Croatian Serbs there is a very high percentage of persons over the age of seventy, where this disorder will continue for biological reasons.
Furthermore, the EC CHC warns of the justification of numerous complaints on the manner that representatives of the Ministry of the Interior obtain data on who does or does not live at a certain address. According to the provisions of the Law, Article 12, Paragraph 1, “The Police Administration shall issue a decision on the termination of permanent residence for a person through a field check or if they are informed of such by public authorities or other legal or natural entities.” We have information that individuals have been deleted from their addresses based on statements by their neighbours who utilised this “opportunity” for their personal advantage and/or conniving schemes. Individuals, especially in cities, were deleted from the voting lists only because their mail did not reach them, and their “neighbours did not see them for a long time”. When such individuals contacted their local police authorities they were told that their names could only be returned to the list after the police personally confirmed that they were at their residence, but would not be told the checking time in advance, which means that the individual could not leave his/her home for days until the police came. Equally so, they would use the opportunity when elderly citizens would leave their homes in the winter months to visit relatives and delete them from the register. This method was also used to delete the names of students who lived in university cities for months on end, or grandparents who left to take care of their grandchildren, and so on. The police considered all this as leaving your place of residence, and treated it in the strictest manner.
We do not want to list all the cases of violation of human rights of the citizens of the Republic of Croatia through their deletion from voters’ lists and places of residence, so we suggest a revision of all decisions, especially given the fact that the deleted individuals were not given the right to appeal the decision of the Ministry of the Interior, but instead could only initiate administrative proceedings that require financial expenses as well.

For the Croatian Helsinki Committee

Ivan Zvonimir Čičak
President