Press conference
4 July 2011, Peace Institute Library, Ljubljana

The editors of the book titled “Stories of the erased people”, which was published by Sanje, are Uršula Lipovec Čebron and Jelka Zorn. The book is composed of 27 stories that were written by the erased people and students of the Faculty of Social Work and the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts. Stories are about courage, innovation, survival strategies and hope, and they reveal new or less known aspects of the erasure and its consequences.

The reason for the travel of the erased people to Strasbourg was the public hearing of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights on the case Kurić and others vs. Slovenia on 6 July 2011. The seven-member Chamber of the European Court noted on 13 July 2010 that the Republic of Slovenia due to long-standing failure to implement the decision of the Constitutional Court violated Articles 8 and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (which protect the right to respect the private and family life and the right to effective remedy). The government of the Republic of Slovenia requested for the Grand Chamber to decide on this case and for this purpose the European Court issued public hearing. The appellants, their attorneys, the erased and other individuals that have been involved in the preparation of the application to the European Court, legal experts from the Peace Institute and some journalists and photographers attended the hearing. The travel of the plaintiffs, other erased people and their supporters to the public hearing in Strasbourg was organized by the Peace Institute.