Every journalist, in normal circumstances, if his or hers journalistic feeling is at all alive, would greet the case of 60-year old (disabled) pensioner Milos Stojic with the conclusion:``Terrific story!" You will recall, the man in question is a mathematics professor from Karlovac who was at the beginning of '92 thrown out of an apartment in which all of his belongings remained; property, mementoes, decades of life; to this day, in spite of appeals, complaints, petitions, knocking on numerous doors - he is still on the street, at mercy of good people and friends who dare to offer from time to time their own bed for a night of peaceful sleep.
Despite all the accidents we write about, anyone still deserving to be called human will find it hard to face Stojic. Even if one tries to suppress emotions, there remains a real-surreal picture of a man wearing somebody else's coat and somebody else's hat, a man without a house and a home (still, he is not a refugee), who will after having sought even a tiny piece of justice in supposedly democratic Croatia, continuously, while talking about the last three years of his life, keep repeating:``I don't know if in these circumstances, when all this evil is taking place, it is worth mentioning at all."
Here is his biography in short. He was seven years old when Germans, in the second world war, killed his parents and his brothers; he survived 17 wounds and even today has six pieces of steel in his body. After the WWII, a commission concluded that he had a 80% disability; and that is how he started his life.
He supported himself by working throughout his education, graduating from the Teaching Academy and then from the Department of Sciences and Mathematics at the Zagreb University. With pride, even today, he talks about the generations of pupils in whom he reduced the fear of mathematics and to whom he made the world of numbers more accessible. In 1977, after a work related traffic accident, he became an invalid of the first degree with a 100% body damage. Not without bitterness, these days he contradicts his mathematical logic with the sentence:``Although 100% is the maximum, when I add everything up I am disabled 180%."
None of this prevented the authorities to terminate his status as a civilian invalid, starting with 7/1/92; this to a man who is a victim of fascist terror in the WWII. His appeal has not been considered to this date. Retired professor Stojic, after the death of his wife in December of 1991, while he was still in a hospital, upon the release from the hospital ( since the WWII he has been taking daily a ``handful of pills") in January of 1992 found out that his apartment had been broken into; a note reading ``Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic of Croatia" was attached to the door.
Again, Stojic repeats his rhetorical question, ``is there any point", and tells about his journey from door to door, seeking justice, while being looked down upon even by Caritas [Catholic humanitarian organization] and Red Cross; the journey has lasted for more than three years while tenants keep changing in his apartment from which all property, worth 200,000 DEM had been stolen (he had searched for days for his mementos and photographs in rubbish containers around the apartment building); all this with a legal backup from a ``decree about temporary apartment usage" issued by the the Croatian Ministry of Defense's Karlovac Commission for Accommodations.
While he sleeps in parks, parked train cars and while he randomly wonders in his neighborhood where he is accosted by (to this date unidentified) bandits with words :``I fuck your Serbian chetnik mother. We'll slaughter you all", to which he responds by offering his neck while screaming:``Here cut my neck if you think it will do any good", in the meantime, the authorities have been working on his case.
Already mentioned Karlovac Commission for Temporary Accommodations has issued a document with a signature of Mijo Laic, stating that the Commission placed a refugee family into Stojic's apartment. In the document issued on 6/3/92 it is written:" When, with help of UNPROFOR forces, the implementation of Vance peace plan begins and refugees return to their villages, the cases of the people thrown out of communally owned apartments will be considered.[ in socialist Yugoslavia all apartments were nominally owned by the "society". In practice that meant that the apartment was initially bought by a company, which would confer lifetime right to use the apartment to one of its employees. The right to use an apartment could also be inherited and the tenant was in general free to exchange or rent the apartment, but could not legally own it. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the successor states have given tenants a chance to gain an ownership of their apartments by paying a small fee to the state. In Croatia, this right has been denied to the tenants in apartments controlled by the ex-Yugoslav Peoples Army, who were mostly of Serb nationality.] Until then, and taking into account your disability, we ask for your understanding and patience."
That same commission for months refused to issue the decree according to which the Stojic's apartment had been allocated for temporary use (unlawfully since it had not been empty or abandoned). The decree was demanded by the District Court in Karlovac and the Administrative Court of Croatia but the Commission was apparently above all judicial authorities, so that it never delivered the requested documents.
In March of '93 Karlovac county administration, after consideration of the Stojic's case, rejected his appeal and "supported" the decree for temporary use of his apartment which had been given to a refugee from Slunj. The following justification was given:" Refugee family from Slunj, S.I., moved into the apartment at the address ..., according to the decree issued on 7/21/92, which was in turn based on the information that the apartment had been empty. Since the previous tenant in the apartment, Milos Stojic, was at the time obviously using different accommodations and, on the other hand, the refugees had no alternative accommodation, the decree about temporary use of the apartment - until the opportunity for return to the temporarily occupied territory - was issued. Therefore we support this decree as an optimal solution for the problem."
Administrative Court of Croatia annulled that decree despite the fact that even after "two requests", the Karlovac county administration failed to provide the relevant documents. Otherwise, Stojic would, due to deafness of the competent Karlovac authorities, have to wait forever, as he has been waiting anyway!
A letter sent on December of '92 by an advisor in the President's office [president of Croatia], Vladimir Subat, to the Karlovac county administration, local government president and the above mentioned president of the Commission for Temporary Accommodations, Mijo Laic, demonstrates how this case is viewed by numerous functionaries:" (Although) I sincerely share the resentment of the citizens of Karlovac and the surrounding areas regarding the injustice inflicted on the people of Croatian nationality, since I myself, in the period starting in 1945, actually since the so-called Calvary of the Croatian people in May of '45 and ending with the democratic elections, passed through many dungeons and places of execution and with my own eyes witnessed crimes against Croatian people; nevertheless, I cannot support any discrimination because we, above all, have a duty to ask what kind of person someone is, rather than what their nationality is. Therefore, even if the mentioned Milan Stojic expressed his support of cursed Yugoslavia, from which we have with the God's help and courage of Croatian heroes forever been freed, I still could not change my opinion.
"Therefore, Mr. president of the Karlovac local government and the Commission for Temporary Accommodations, I sincerely urge you to do two things: return the apartment to Stojic and engage the Croatian police to find the above listed property and see that it is also returned.
Only by doing that can we show and prove to the world community that we are men of the truth and justice and that Croatia is irrevocably dedicated to pursue a just peace which can be achieved only through equality and a true freedom which can only exist if every individual is allowed to enjoy his property and human rights."
In spite of the Court's decision, good intentions backed up by personal suffering like Subat's and courage against cursed past, despite Stojic's words in an old plea:" Premeditated and systematic crime campaign against me will not diminish or erase crimes committed against others, independently of myself, but can only increase and multiply total evil, misfortune and suffering ..", the case still isn't an inch closer to its resolution.
Milos Stojic, who is homeless, sick and tired cannot even withdraw his money deposited in Croatian banks. All of his saving certificates, together with the rest of his property, were in his apartment. Behind the tellers of Zagrebacka, Privredna and Karlovacka banks he keeps finding a wall of silence, lack of understanding and lack of will to help. A man who had everything and who today cannot even get his (own!) money would use that money to buy decent clothes to replace those which were stolen and to buy a new hat to cover scars and wounds which are the sign of his, officially abolished, disability. So that he can feel a little like a man, a citizen of Croatia, equal in something at least.
Since he is already a refugee without a refugee status, invalid whose disability officially doesn't exist any more, bearer of the tenancy rights to an apartment occupied by who knows whom, "owner" of a court decision which cannot be implemented, a man whose past has mostly been stolen and whose future is mostly gone.