List of Serbian returnees wanted

List of Serbian returnees wanted

According to a statement from the General Council and the Association of Defenders, Disabled and Widows of the Civil War, there will be demands for checking up on all returnees to make sure that no one who participated in the aggression on Croatia will be receiving housing.

At a meeting on Friday, the Croatian Government reached an agreement to build 3,600 apartments for returnees by the year of 2011. The apartments are for those who previously had property rights for used and will have a protected price of 2.54 kunas per square metre in which they will be able to live for the rest of their lives. However, their children will not be able to inherit the apartments, which will become state property once the initial returnees have passed away.

The Croatian General Council and the UBIDUR have proposed to the Government to have, in the same way, offers for apartments to be given to Croats as well, who had their properties taken away from them during the war and have yet to find adequate housing.

The decision made last week regarding the apartments for Serbian returnees was not taken very well by the mayors of several cities in which the apartments are planned to be built. The mayors of Rijeka, Zagreb, Split, Siska and Petrnije have all protested the fact that the Government passed this decision without consulting with the local administrations of the cities in which the apartments are projected to be built in.

The Serbian Democratic Forum stated that this plan shows that the Croatian Government has a rigid and indifferent opinion regarding the Serbian return effort.

“The proposal for solving the housing question which calls for people to wait another five years for a home and be able to use the apartments until they die without the possibility of their children inheriting the property, does not show a goal for a humane and just solution for the suffering of the refugees, but rather further punishes the returnees and does them a greater injustice,” the SDF stated.