BELGRADE (Reuters) – Arien Stojanovic Ivkovic, 31, a Croatian doctor who lives in Belgrade with her Serbian husband and a three-year-old daughter, was given one week’s notice to leave the country last week and told she was a security threat.
She said a police officer called and said there was a problem with her residence.
“When I went to the police station I was given a piece of paper that said I was an unacceptable threat to the security of Serbia and its citizens. I was given one week to leave,” she said.
“How can you pack up a life in a week?”
Stojanovic Ivkovic is one of about 20 Croatian citizens who have been ordered to leave Serbia in the past three months, according to Croatian embassy data. Dozens of others have been refused entry at the border.
Relations between Croatia and Serbia, which fought a bitter war in the 1990s, have been strained in recent months after a wave of anti-corruption protests, which Serbian pro-government media have accused Croatia’s security service of backing.
Stojanovic Ivkovic said the only thing she can think of that may account for her being identified as a security threat after 12 years of living in Serbia was her support for the student-led protests, which included attending several rallies.
“However, we do not know if this is the real reason,” she said. “We as a family we do not deserve this.”
She has filed a complaint and hopes she will be allowed to stay with her family.
Serbia’s Interior Ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
“We are extremely worried that in three days last week we had five cases of expulsion (of Croatian citizens),” Hidajet Biscevic, the Croatian ambassador to Serbia, said. (This story has been corrected to rectify the spelling of the doctor’s first name to ‘Arien’ in paragraph 1)
(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; Additional reporting Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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