OSCE Mission and Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights reject contradiction over tenancy rights figures

ZAGREB, 2 June 2003 - The OSCE Mission to Croatia and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights have today clarified the background to the figures recently presented in the media or attributed to these organizations in relation to the number of terminated occupancy/tenancy rights in Croatia.

Both organizations strongly believe that an adequate remedy must be found to compensate for the termination of former occupancy/tenancy rights. However, the figures they use refer to entirely different issues and are, therefore, not in contradiction with each other.

The OSCE Mission cited official Government figures referring to judicial terminations of occupancy/tenancy rights through the initiation of more than 23,700 individual court proceedings, many by the Government itself, in areas that remained under Government control during the 1991-1995 conflict.

Termination proceedings were initiated in 85 municipalities. Seven large cities (Zagreb, Osijek, Zadar, Karlovac, Split, Sisak, and Rijeka) account for two-thirds of all cases, with Zagreb alone accounting for 20 per cent of all terminations. The vast majority of them were initiated and completed during the conflict, on the basis of the court determination that the families' absence for more than 6 months was unjustified. However, a significant number of terminations were based on the suspicion of "participation in enemy activity."

For its part, the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (HHO) did not discuss official Government figures but said it expected a low number of requests by former tenancy rights holders, for the return of flats or an adequate substitute, estimated at no more than 10,000. The HHO sees this as a consequence of the policy carried out toward returnees in the past decade and the lack of political will in the region to make return possible and sustainable.

The OSCE Mission would also like to point out that an unspecified number of families had their occupancy/tenancy rights terminated automatically on the basis of a three months absence, by the Law on the Lease of Flats in the Liberated Territories, adopted immediately after Operation Storm in 1995. The Government has not provided official figures for terminated occupancy/tenancy rights in the Areas of Special State Concern although it is clear that, based on the number of applicants filed with the local housing commissions since 1999 from former occupants, there are several thousand such cases.

It must also be noted that the process of termination of occupancy/tenancy rights through court procedures is not yet over, with more than 860 original termination proceedings still ongoing, the greatest number of which is in Zagreb and Split involving Government-owned property. Enforcement of final court judgments of termination are also continuing at the present time including the eviction of families whose rights have been terminated, thus resulting in new displacement.

Moreover, Government ministries and the State Attorney continue to seek termination of occupancy/tenancy rights of all family members on the suspicion of "participation in enemy activity," in contravention of decisions in 1999 and 2000 by the Constitutional Court that this provision could only be applied constitutionally if there was a criminal conviction.