Serbia Pays €700,000 in Communist-Era Compensation

The higher court’s rehabilitations department in Belgrade.

The Serbian Ministry of Justice told BIRN that a total of 737,804 was paid between January 1, 2014 and July 31, 2015 to people who were judged by the country’s higher courts to have had their rights violated by the Communist-era authorities.

“The vast majority of these payments refer to requests filed in 2014, but this amount also includes ones filed in 2012 and 2013,” Tijana Varagic, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, told BIRN.

Serbia adopted a rehabilitation law in 2006, allowing people or the surviving relatives of those who claimed to have had their lives threatened or freedoms abused by the Communist regime to appeal to have their names cleared.

Those who are successful can then apply to have seized property restored to them, or to be awarded compensation.

The ministry said it had received 1,106 such compensation requests between January 1, 2014 and July 31, 2015.

Under the rehabilitation law, which expires next year, plaintiffs can file a rehabilitation request to more than 25 higher courts in Serbia. The total number of rehabilitation requests filed so far remains unknown.

At Belgrade’s higher court alone, there have been 3,416 rehabilitation requests so far, and 1,487 of them have been approved, the court told BIRN.

Following the democratic changes in Serbia in 2000, a number of laws were introduced aimed at restoring justice for those who were persecuted or had property expropriated during the Communist period after WWII.

During 50 years of Communist rule, the royal family was ousted and its property confiscated, while some of its supporters were killed, imprisoned or expelled from the country. In these cases, the state also confiscated their property and often labelled them traitors.

After King Peter II, the last Yugoslav king, was rehabilitated in September, the descendants of the former Karadjordjevic royal family now have no legal obstacles to seeking the return of their confiscated property, which according to media reports is worth tens of millions of euros and includes villas, houses, land, furniture and pieces of art.

However, the most controversial rehabilitation was the one of Chetnik leader Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic, executed for high treason and Nazi collaboration in 1946. His family also plans to seek the return of its confiscated property.

Not long after Mihailovic’s name was cleared, the Belgrade appeals court ordered the start of the rehabilitation process for Milan Nedic, the leader of a Nazi-backed puppet government during WWII, who was branded a war criminal by the Yugoslav Communists.

The rehabilitations however have again highlighted divisions within Serbian society over the royal family and the country’s Communist past.