[LINK] "Visas Eased, Except in Muslim Areas"

[rfmcdonald]

Vesna Peric Zimonjic's IPS article highlights the fact that the recent acquisition of European Union by Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia has a very unequal effect on the region.

Before 1991, former Yugoslavs enjoyed visa-free travel since the mid-1960s, unlike the nations of what used to be communist Eastern Europe. Generations of Serbs grew up travelling freely abroad, but the young now are almost completely unaware of the benefit.

"It was ok to go to Italy for a weekend when I was young," Bogdan Stevovic (54), a Belgrade teacher, told IPS. "However, my 19-year-old son does not know what it looks like. For a week's holiday in Greece he had to queue the whole night in front of the Greek embassy just to submit his visa request in the morning."

[. . .]

[Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo] were omitted from the EC list for visa-free travel. "These countries have not yet fulfilled the conditions," the EC said in its statement. That meant they had not introduced biometric passports, secured their borders or engaged in a fight against organised crime. Visa-free travel for them could be re-examined by mid-2010, the EC statement said.

There was fierce reaction in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the EC move was viewed as a political message primarily for Bosniak Muslims, who are the largest ethnic group, that suffered the biggest losses in the 1992-95 war, mostly at the hands of Bosnian Serbs.

"It's further discrimination against us Bosniaks," Sarajevo resident Mirsad Juzbasic told IPS on the phone. "It's a shame after what happened here during the war. We'll remain in a kind of a ghetto."

It's different for Bosnian Croats and Serbs. Both are able to obtain passports from their ethnic mother countries, meaning they can hold dual Bosnian and Croat, or Bosnian and Serb citizenship.

Many Bosnian Croats opted for Croatian passports as far back as the mid- 1990s because Croatia was exempt from the visa introduction in 1991.

Bosnian Serbs have realised now that it's easy for them to obtain Serbian passports. "The only problem is we have to wait for Serbian citizenship for 15 months," Jelena Stojkovic (24) told IPS on phone from Banja Luka, capital of Republika Srpska, the ethnic Serb entity within Bosnia. "But it will be good for us. We can see what Europe looks like now."

Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who declared independence in what Serbia officially considers its southern province in February 2008, are regarded by Serbia as its citizens, but Serbia is unable to provide biometric passports because it has no jurisdiction over the province – even if the ethnic Albanians would want to travel on a Serbian passport.