On 26 February 1992, the Slovenian authorities illegally erased 25,671 people, including 5,360 children, from the permanent population register. The consequences of the erasure were terrible. People lost their jobs, social and health insurance, education opportunities, many were deported and separated from their loved ones, and others lived under the daily threat of deportation.
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the erasure, the Civic Initiative of the Erased Activists (CIIA) and Amnesty International Slovenia called on the Municipality of Ljubljana to commemorate this serious violation of human rights at the beginning of Slovenia's independent path by naming a street or other public space.
The erased activists - organised in an association - had been working in the area of the former Rog factory, when it was a self-organised area, for more than 15 years. At the time of the renovation, they, together with Amnesty International Slovenia, approached the newly established institution Center Rog with a proposal to name the area, which the public institution also supported with a letter to the founder MOL, and the City Council. The Ljubljana City Council responded in March 2022 by deciding to designate the green areas between the buildings of the Rog Centre as the Park izbrisanih.
At the end of 2022, Center Rog launched a public competition for the erection of a memorial, as there was a desire on the part of the erased activists to erect a permanent monument. Eight proposals were submitted to the public competition, with the wish of the tenderer that the memorial should not be a traditional monument, but rather an object that could also serve as a useful urban street furniture.
The expert jury unanimously selected the conceptual solution by internet artist Vuk Ćosić, architect and scenographer Aleksander Vujović, and designer and eco-activist Irena Wölle.
The monument was inaugurated on 24 October 2023, just a few days before the official opening of the renovated Center Rog.
The honed concrete memorial in the shape of the letter Ć illustrates that the target of illegal erasure was mainly (but not only) people with links to other republics of the former Yugoslavia, where the letter Ć is known and often part of surnames.
The authors of the monument say that this typographic element is a meditative instrument, intended for play, rest and reflect on society. They have chosen the letter Ć in Times New Roman font, which they cite as the font of bureaucratic documents of the period, as the font of erasure.
For more information on the illegal erasure from the Register of Permanent Residents of Slovenia, see Amnesty International Slovenia and the Peace Institute.