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Germany: Yugoslavs to be deported

01 March 1994

A plan by Germany to deport tens of thousands of people back to Serbia via Romania has been put on hold after protests and the reservations of the Romanian government. Germany announced that from 10 March it intended to begin expelling refugees from Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro. The first of those to be expelled, from the North Rhine-Westphalia Lande, were to be flown to Timisoara in Romania where they were to be put on buses and driven to Serbia. The Lande Interior Ministry made an agreement with the Romanian airline TAROM to transport deportees on flights of four Boeing planes on 17, 21, 24 March. This indirect route via Romania by-passes the UN ban on international flights to Serbia, and the normal obligation to return refugees directly to their country of origin. It was also being planned without the agreement of the Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade.

This programme of repatriation of refugees considered "illegal" involved ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Serbs, Montenegrins, and people of mixed nationality. The Serbs to be returned included those from Bosnian Serbia and the Republic of Serbian Krajini who still have Yugoslav passports because they could not accept new ones from the Bosnian Muslim government in Sarajevo. It did not affect refugees from Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina. Some of the refugees from Serbia and Montenegro fled to Germany to avoid military service. Yugoslav officials say that planned deportations could involve between 200,000 and 300,000 refugees.

This move appears to be part of a much larger scale repatriation plan for refugees from the former Yugoslavia involving a number of West European governments. These governments are keen to deport refugees defined as "illegal" as soon as they can declare "safe" areas for them to be returned to.

Reuters, 7 & 8.3.94; Tanjung news agency, 8.3.94.