Plaintiff’s written statement — 15 October 2025

Full translation of the author’s two-page written statement in case P2.1435/24, dated 15 October 2025. Its legal characterisations and personal account are those of the plaintiff. The hearing record of the same date records receipt of this statement and delivery of a copy to the defendant’s representative.

Public PDF, 2 pages

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BASIC COURT IN NOVI SAD
Case number: P2.1435/24

PLAINTIFF’S STATEMENT

Dear Court,

I did not bring these proceedings on a whim, but because of a grave and deliberate injustice whose scope goes beyond a family dispute and reaches into fundamental human rights.

Everything carried out against me in 1979 was unlawful and constitutes forced assimilation. A five-year-old child, born to a Croatian mother from Dalmatia and a Hungarian father, was torn away from his origins and identity and entered in the civil registers under a false, “assimilated” identity. My language, culture and right to belong to my own people were thereby forcibly taken from me.

This concerns a child who neither knew nor could have imagined the hell that awaited him, and who had no possibility of defending himself. That is what makes this case monstrous: what happened to me happened to an innocent person who then had no power to protect his right to his origins.

The result is a void adoption — a legal forgery, a legal Frankenstein — founded on violations of the 1976 Adoption Act of the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. Clear statutory conditions were not met:

• My mother was alive and accessible, yet her consent was never sought.
• My father was known and recognised in the probate proceedings, yet the Centre falsely described him as “unknown”.
• The guardianship authority lacked jurisdiction when the adoption decision was made.
• The adoption was dated just seven days before my fifth birthday, when full adoption would become legally impossible.
• In addition, Article 7 of the Act was violated: “Several persons may not adopt one person.” Nevertheless, another — a second — adoption was carried out in 1984, which was void from the outset, because one child cannot be adopted twice. The very paradox of the unlawful adopter from 1979 consenting to a new adoption in 1984 reveals a clear modus operandi: the law was broken and adapted to the interests of institutions and individuals, rather than the child.

From the moment I realised as a child that I was “adopted”, right up to today, not a day has passed without my asking myself: “Why me?” That is the invisible burden — the handicap of those who are rejected and belittled. It is a pain that destroys childhood and humanity. When the monstrous behaviour of the unlawful adopters is added to this, it becomes clear that this was not “care for a child”, but an atrocity against a child, with elements of forced assimilation.

At the end of 2021, when I finally obtained the evidence and the truth, I understood the full extent of the crime: my origins had been falsified and my identity rights trampled underfoot.

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My statement is not only for the court. It is for history, the archive and international institutions. This case is a test of truth and justice: can an obvious violation of human rights and forced assimilation of a child continue to be concealed, or will it finally be acknowledged that in 1979 the legal order deliberately trampled on its own laws and the fundamental rights of a child?

To ask me to “swallow it” and remain silent — after everything — is to ask me to reconcile myself to lies and violence against my own identity. I will not and cannot do that. If necessary, let the heavens fall — but the truth must remain on the record.

Novi Sad, 15 October 2025.

Official name: Milan Petrović

Milivoj Miletić (paternal family: Lakatoš)
Officially, unlawfully:

• entered as Milan Vasić in 1979;
• renamed Milan Petrović in 1984.

Signature: ______________________________