Narrator: Vid Varga was born in Croatia and has lived in Slovenia most of his life. He moved to Austria in 1989. He explains--through an interpreter-- that when he went to renew his documents in 1992 in Slovenia, he was told that he couldn't do so because he wasn't a citizen:

When Slovenia became a country it offered automatic citizenship to ethnic Slovenians, and gave other residents six months to apply. 171 thousand people born in other ex-Yugoslavian republics—Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro—became Slovenian citizens. 18,000 did not and were barred from social services, jobs and housing. The Slovenian government purged these people from the national registry without much fanfare. So, each person found out individually—when renewing documents, or registering for unemployment. It took 10 years for these "Erased" to realize they were not alone, and become organized.

In 1999 and 2003, the Slovenian courts ruled that the erasure was unconstitutional, but many are still without rights, or they spent years in limbo waiting for them. So this caravan is an effort to engage the rest of the world—to make this a European issue.

Several Erased people were in the audience at a panel discussion on Tuesday in Paris. The whole discussion was translated between French and Slovenian. The Slovenian Ambassador to France, Janez Šumrada, was also in the audience, and stood up to correct what he called inaccuracies presented by members of the panel:

Narrator: As the Ambassador started to translate himself into Slovenian, panelist Jelka Zorn, who is on the faculty of Social Work at the University of Ljubljana, started to argue with him.

Narrator: Many in the audience cheered

Narrator: And then several people rushed up to the Ambassador, speaking angrily, holding up their ID cards.

Narrator: The Ambassador excused himself and quickly left the building.

Narrator: Andrej Kurnik is one of the caravan's organizers:

Narrator: Eleven Erased have sued the Slovenian state in the European court for human rights. In Paris on Tuesday French deputies vowed to write a letter to President Jacques Chirac about the situation:

Narrator: Ambasador Šumrada says that Slovenia is preparing a law to regularize those who are left. The law will be presented to parliament. He says that it wasn't done before because previous governments lacked the political will

Narrator: And again, he is quick to minimize the number of people this is affecting:

Narrator: Regardless of the numbers—of who is in or out of status today—there are many like Asim Skopich who want some kind of recognition. He finally got citizenship in 2003, but it didn't change much for him he says, because by that time he was too old to find a job: