Croatian Homeland War – Croatia, the War, and the Future

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Guest Post
By Ante Horvat

Wartime Foreign Information Warfare against Croatia, Croats and the Truth

With President Dr. Franjo Tudjman’s and HDZ’s political victory in 1990, which came after years of greater Serbian political agitation, legal abuses, ransacking of the Yugoslav Federal treasury, clandestine arming of a large swathe of Croatian Serbs, “meetings of truth,” and “spontaneous happenings of the endangered Serbian people” where stages, microphones, amplifiers and TV crews were on site before the “spontaneous happening,” it goes without saying that purges were to take place in intelligence and the police and other government sectors – where people were appointed much of the time based on Communist party loyalty and membership and not qualifications – and they did (it is important to note that more people were purged from the civil service, police and military after 2000 than in 1990 and immediately after – the bulk of those purged were Croatian Communists, not Serbs).

Tudjman would have been not just inept, but insane, if he would have allowed people who either openly supported Milosevic’s policies actively, or those, specifically in the intelligence services, who openly or tacitly supported Milosevic and or did nothing to prevent or expose the illegal arming of Croatian Serbs by Belgrade, to keep their posts. Yet the lie about Serbs being fired simply for being Serbs prevailed during the war, and was yet again repeated at the ICTY despite more Croats being fired from the government and security apparatus than Serbs.

Due to Tudjman’s and Croatia’s impossible international and domestic situation in the face of Serbian diplomatic and military supremacy, Serbia’s continual overt threats of violence to achieve its goals of “uniting Serbdom,” and Tudjman’s agenda of burying the WWII created Red-Black divide, it would have been unwise to crack down on the former regime members. Tudjman correctly chose to drive a wedge between them to use the professional abilities of those who switched to the Croatian side to help the cause for democratic state-building and deal with the criminals among them at a later date while leaving those who awaited the Yugoslav People’s Army “liberators” to take Zagreb, stare at the wall and wait for Godot with a red-star cap, forever.

There were larger priorities at hand and a statesman must choose his battles carefully, based on timing. Those left waiting for a red-star capped Godot undoubtedly had people knocking on their doors – people from foreign governments and their respective intelligence agencies.

Those same foreign governments were, to help legitimize their deliberate misrepresentations and bad, self-compromising and hypocritical policies, simultaneously were pumping money into a two pronged NGO strategy – one to promote an entirely parallel reality via NGOs they formed or funded to help form offshoots, the second, to allow journalists, diplomats and politicians to quote that parallel reality put forth by said NGOs and their subsidy recipients as if it was truth to influence or change domestic and international political opinion, and political outcomes.

Spearheading the charge of NGOs in Croatia during the 1990s was the Open Society Institute (OSI), owned by self-described “humanist” and known currency speculator and billionaire extraordinaire George Soros.

According to the October 1, 1996 Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) investigative report compiled by F. William Enghdal, Mark Burdman, Elisabeth Hellenbroich, Paolo Raimondi, and Scott Thompson:

… Soros is friends with former Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, the former U.S. ambassador to Belgrade and the patron of Serbian Communist leader Slobodan Milosevic. Eagleburger is a past president of Kissinger Associates, on whose board sits Lord Carrington, whose Balkan mediations supported Serbian aggression into Croatia and Bosnia.
Today, Soros has established his Foundation centers in Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, and a Soros Yugoslavia Foundation in Belgrade, Serbia. In Croatia, he has tried to use his foundation monies to woo influential journalists or to slander opponents of his shock therapy, by labeling them variously “anti-Semitic” or “neo-Nazi.” The head of Soros’s Open Society Fund—Croatia, Prof. Zarko Puhovski (iiiiiivv), is a man who has reportedly made a recent dramatic conversion from orthodox Marxism to Soros’s radical free market. Only seven years ago, according to one of his former students, as professor of philosophy at the University of Zagreb, Puhovski attacked students trying to articulate a critique of communism, by insisting, “It is unprincipled to criticize Marxism from a liberal standpoint.” His work for the Soros Foundation in Zagreb has promoted an anti-nationalist “global culture,” hiring a network of anti-Croatian journalists to propagandize, in effect, for the Serbian cause.
These examples can be elaborated for each of the other 19 locations across Eastern Europe where George Soros operates. The political agenda of Soros and this group of financial “globalists” will create the conditions for a new outbreak of war, even world war, if it continues to be tolerated…

Glenn Beck, the controversial American conservative radio show host and figure, once listed seven steps used by Soros to achieve his political objectives in foreign states (readers can judge for themselves using Croatia’s wartime and post-war examples, as well as multiple other examples in other areas of Europe and the world, to test the accuracy of Mr. Beck’s hypothesis):

Form a shadow government using humanitarian aid as cover.

Control the airwaves. Fund existing radio and TV outlets and take control over them or start your own outlets.

Destabilize the state, weaken the government and build an anti-government kind of feeling in the country. You exploit an economic crisis or take advantage of an existing crisis — pressure from the top and the bottom. This will allow you to weaken the government and build anti-government public sentiment.

Sow unrest.

Provoke an election crisis. You wait for an election, and during the election, you cry voter fraud.

Take power. You stage massive demonstrations; civil disobedience, sit-ins, general strikes and you encourage activism. You promote voter fraud and tell followers what to do through your radio and television stations. Incitement and violence are conducted at this stage.

Outlast your opponent.

While violence was not conducted, it goes without saying that Mr. Beck’s breakdown of the Soros election-engineering model in Croatia was applied, and Mr. Soros credited himself with mobilizing civil society in Croatia to change government in his book “Open Society.”
Who else, one may ask, was funded by Soros? The recipients of generous funds include Milosevic’s unofficial rag in wartime Croatia, Feral Tribune, which simply recycled the prior week of Belgrade propaganda, as well as the bizarre Marxist magazine Arkazin, the Alternative Information Network of Former Yugoslavia, and a host of other media houses that failed on the market after OSI (Open Society Institute) ceased subsidizing their second rate agitprop, because they had no readership.
Is it just these organizations that had or have ties with Soros?
No. Croatia’s President Ivo Josipovic met with him and praised him, and was quoted in dailytportal in 2010 after meeting with Soros that he would reactivate OSI in Croatia, which he did in 2011:
Croatian President Ivo Josipovic met in New York on Thursday the billionaire George Soros to discuss the situation in Croatia and in Southeast Europe and plans to renew activities of Soros’s Open Society foundation in Croatia.   After the meeting, Josipovic told Croatian reporters that Soros was familiar with the situation in Croatia and the rest of the region and that he was interested in some information regarding the activities and financing of his projects in the region.
USAID http://www.forum.hr/showpost.php?p=43914088&postcount=8074
National Endowment for Democracies
NDI https://www.ndi.org/files/1001_ww_newdemocs.pdf
VOA http://www.hri.org/news/usa/voa/2000/00-02-11.voa.html
International Crisis Group http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/about.aspx
Human Rights Watch: http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/HRW.html
http://www.ex-yupress.com/vjesnik/vjesnik15.html
OSCE http://www.osce.org/zagreb/19519

De-Croatization Under the Slogan of De-Tudmanization

The massive and nontransparent subsidizing of both the Social Democratic Party in the Parliamentary elections and the Croatian People’s Party member, Australian Croat check “misplacer,” YPA General Veljko Kadijevic collaborator, and the apparent ICTY perjurer Stipe Mesic, and Western NGO pro Mesic media jihad in the Presidential election cycle of late 1999 into 2000 was convincingly a continuation of Soros’s and foreign centers of power jihad to bring back the pre-1990 anti-democratic political elite structure. The reason was simple – they had no interest in promoting Croatia’s national interests, and were, and remain, interested only in power and the possibility to get wealthy in the process.
The agenda was at this point, open: it was for a softer renamed Yugoslavia, minus Slovenia plus Albania, as was clearly outlined by Soros as he championed it publicly.
The first order of business was to attack Croatia’s Homeland War, and by default, everyone who participated in it and who helped build the Croatian state. As Franjo Tudjman was the statesman who led Croatia and its police and military forces to victory, saving the B&H Croats from being killed en mass or ethnically cleansed; the phrase to de-Croatize was “De-Tudjmanization.”

The Information War Against General Ante Gotovina

The most odious information warfare campaign was against General Ante Gotovina. Indicted in an ICTY indictment that was more or less built entirely on the agitprop of multiple Serbian military and political joint criminal enterprise participant Savo Strbac and his sham NGO called “Veritas,” whom the ICTY was working with since 1993 in a blatant conflict of interest that no major Western media outlet ever reported on to date.

http://mprofaca.cro.net/poa.html

Reference/source notes:

ii – It must be noted that Prof. Puhovski, a Tito regime false witness in the show-trial of the Croatian Spring participants, in particular Duško Čizmić Marović, chaired the Lustration, Public Debates on the Past und the Rule of Law Seminar in Zagreb, 17-20 February 2005, and published several articles on the topic of lustration in Croatia, more or less advocating at best a very soft form of it.
iii – Zarko Puhovski testified against Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markac and Ivan Cermak at the ICTY, claiming that the Operation Storm effects were “tantamount to ethnic cleansing.” His testimony at the ICTY, as well as the “evidence” provided by Soros-funded HHO, were thrown out of the trial due to unreliable research methodologies.
iv – Here is a transcript of Luka Misetic’s cross examination of Professor Puhovski – no comment is necessary:http://www.icty.org/x/cases/gotovina/trans/en/090217IT.htm.
v – Professor Puhovski also, along with current Croatian Ambassador to France Ivo Goldstein Jr. (who was sent to the post in 2012 despite not possessing the ability to fluently speak the language, but did not forget to bring a picture of Tito for his office wall), formed the Udruzenja za jugoslavensku demokratsku inicijativu (UJDI) [The Associations for the Yugoslav Democratic Initiative], a political front party for the Yugoslav People’s Army General Staff that was against Croatian independence, in addition European and NATO integration, two of HDZ’s stated political and strategic objectives.
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About the author: Ante Horvat was born in the USA in 1970′s. He has recently moved to live permanently in Croatia and although spending most of his life in the USA he had made several temporary residence visits to Croatia during that time. His education and professional development in history and international relations also spans across the two continents. He is an active observer of and participant in the development of democracy in Croatia since the early 1990’s and its correlation with the developed Western democracies.

Next Post: Psychological Operations And Information Warfare Against Croatia And Croats – Part IV: Foreign Intelligence Agencies, Capabilities, and Croatia

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Guest Post
By Ante Horvat

Foreign Intelligence Agencies, Capabilities, and Croatia

The revelations last year by Edward Snowden – and the brave reporting by Glenn Greenwald and his colleagues at The Intercept, as well as in quality independent blogs such as Washingtonsblog.com – shine a bright light on just how massive, invasive, many times in most countries, blatantly unconstitutional, and illegal surveillance has become in the world today with borderline psychotic government obsessions to control internet discourse on politics and geopolitics.

Information management is power, as management equates to control.

While the internet was not what it is today in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, signals intelligence was a key component of intelligence for all states – the pervasiveness of Internet usage has only exponentially increased its usefulness to further these goals.

Yugoslavia, which broke with Stalin earning it a false reputation as some moderate Communist regime and not a police state, due to Cold War realities managed to receive many perks.

One of those is UDBa crimes not being touched with a ten foot pole by Western governments unless the murderers were too sloppy.

Or, as was the case with the Croatian Six, a Western intelligence agency and national police would collude with UDBa to frame law-abiding citizens of Croatian descent for trumped up, UDBa planned and planted “terrorism” charges. In the case of Chicago’s Bozic family, UDBa’s attempted murder of Mrs. Bozic after she told her husband’s would be UDBa assassins that came knocking on her home door that he had left early for work that day, the Cold War perks for Yugoslavia led to a total gag on the investigation after 24 hours with no valid explanation, no further investigation, nor justice, to date.

Yet, even with the repressive domestic police state apparatus, and an aggressive foreign intelligence apparatus targeting dissenters in the West for murder, Yugoslavia was of many nations to be sold the intelligence and law enforcement Google before Google – PROMIS software.

The controversial software – which tracked cases in legal systems, but also intelligence operatives, assets, intelligence targets, and built matrices of relationships between everything in the system if there was any connection – was sold by the US to over 80 nations in the 1980s after being stolen from Inslaw Inc..

It is known that the sold pirated versions – which made it to over 80 countries – had exploits to allow for information extraction.

Which means that the U.S. – and its Five Eyes allies – potentially almost certainly had back door access to all of the not just judicial files, but also intelligence agencies’ files which in the case of Yugoslavia and other nations in the Eastern Bloc, including repressive secret police agent lists, informants and snitches, and the names and dossiers of all civilians under surveillance, which in Croatia’s case, was one third of its population.

This opens several questions.

The first is that with the fall of Tito’s Yugoslavia, why haven’t Western governments, other than Germany, aggressively called for UDBa operatives who engaged in state sponsored terrorism, to be held accountable, as well as for insisting that European states that were under Communism, to push through vigorous lustration laws such as in Germany upon reunification and Poland after it regained true independence?

The second is why, after 1990, this information which the U.S. and more than likely other Five Eyes have on the inner-workings, employee lists, informant and snitch lists, and innocent victims’ dossier lists, have not been shared with Croatia’s (or other Central, Eastern and South Eastern) European post-Communist states?

Could it be that all of those former regime elements, who were loyal to Yugoslavia and their own power within it and who were also trained operatives, were recruited by foreign governments for subversive activities?

All signs point to yes.

____________

About the author: Ante Horvat was born in the USA in 1970′s. He has recently moved to live permanently in Croatia and although spending most of his life in the USA he had made several temporary residence visits to Croatia during that time. His education and professional development in history and international relations also spans across the two continents. He is an active observer of and participant in the development of democracy in Croatia since the early 1990’s and its correlation with the developed Western democracies.

http://inavukic.com/2014/04/02/psychological-operations-and-information-warfare-against-croatia-and-croats-part-ii/

http://inavukic.com/2014/03/30/psychological-operations-and-information-warfare-against-croatia-and-croats-part-i/

“We have asked Ina Vukic,
our worldwide reputable analyst of the
Croatian reality and the work of the
young Croatian state to provide an
answer to the few questions we had
on the matter of celebrations of 10 April 1941
anniversary,” Boka Cropress, 16 April 2014, Page 12.
Title of article under photo – Ina Vukic:
I do not celebrate 10 April, I celebrate 25 June
as symbol of Croatian independence

The Independent State of Croatia, often referred to simply by the abbreviation NDH, under Ante Pavelic, was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany and Italy established in part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. So too was Serbia under Milan Nedic. However it needs to be pointed out that the NDH Pavelic’s regime was not a product of democratic election or referendum but rather an installation of government, which was not supported by all of the Croatian people and, hence there existed three opposing sides: pro Ustashe, pro-communists and those who wanted neither one or the other, were politically neutral, but did want independence. Since WWII there have been and there are Croats who celebrate 10 April (1941) as a celebration of Croatian independence, but there are and have been many more who do not and did not celebrate this date. I belong to the latter. The regretful fact is that the anti-Croatian propaganda throughout the world chooses to promote more the former than the latter! I feel privileged to have been asked about my thoughts on 10 April and its meaning for Croatian independence. I have translated the short interview with me published in the Australian “Boka Cropress” newspaper.

Boka Cropress: What does celebrating 10th April mean to you?

Ina Vukic: Personally I do not nor have I ever celebrated the 10th of April but I do regard it as a historical symbol from 1941 which has a large meaning in a victory, however minor by some comparisons. of the Croatian people over the Greater Serbian-hegemonic Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the oppression of the Croatian people inside its legitimate and historical territory. Sadly, that meaning of the 10th of April has been lost and it has, I would say, sold itself to an eternal “conviction or biased judgment” with the mere moment of decision as to the date of the declaration of NDH (Independent State of Croatia); for choosing to use the power of Nazi Germany as the vessel that would enable an “easy” proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia (as there were many against it at the time).

While the NDH was not founded on the wish to “kill”, the decision to declare or establish the NDH under the protection or alliance with Nazi powers that had at that time entered Croatian territory, in my eyes, represents a very bad moral and political decision made by the NDH leaders. The truth is that during NDH there were a large number of crimes committed and they were committed within the context of historical facts – from Pavelic’s alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to the Yugoslav communist-antifascist movement, Serb Chetnik intrusions and the support of the Allied forces including communist Russia. It is clear that these crimes were not committed by one side only – NDH, and it is clear why NDH is falsely accused of them all.

It’s necessary to understand that despite all the Serb-communist or antifascist thrust filled with lies that equates NDH with WWII Nazism (and not with the pure and just plights for freedom) 10th of April has an important meaning to many of those wanting a Croatian statehood independence, especially many living in the free “West” before the establishment of today’s free Croatia. That was the day of Croatian gatherings and thanksgiving to those who had throughout the history (not only since 1941 but also before) advocated and sacrificed for the Croatian freedom and state independence, a day of remembrance of the 1941 proclamation of Independent State of Croatia, remembrance of the heroic battles fought by its defenders and a day of prayer for all the Croats who were murdered by the Serb Chetniks and Yugoslav communists during and after WWII just because they wanted a Croatian state.

The Serbs and the Yugoslavs and the communists did not rise in 1941 against NDH because of “Ante Pavelic’s regime” but because they did not accept any form, not even the most democratic form of a Croatian state. Although these same opponents of NDH to this very day hide and try to circumvent the fact of the political WWII state regimes the truth is that by May 1942 Serbia had been one of the first European countries to declare itself officially and with sinister pride as “Judenfrei” (Jew free) and had by then under Milan Nedic’s regime exterminated some 94% of its Jewish population!

I hold that with the establishment in 1991 of today’s independent Croatia the Day of Croatian Statehood that is celebrated on 25 June is the symbol of absolute victory of the Croatian people for a lasting and democratic freedom than what 10 April symbolizes because in 1990’s Croatian people had without anybody’s help and in unity defended their right to self-determination and freedom.

And hence, celebrating 10 April (1941) represents a marking of a historical fact that is placed only as one of many attempts in history to achieve freedom for Croatian people and not as important as 25 June (1991) is. At the end of the day, why should Croatian people be different in this to any other people of the democratic and free world? Why should the Croatian people as a whole permit that their honourable intents for freedom via NDH remain muddied by the events in WWII that have more to do with individual criminal pursuits during WWII and with certain policies and laws brought about during those rapturous and politically explosive times for political power in Europe rather than uplifting the history with the real idea for freedom for Croatian people if we do not expect that from other nations who have, for example, branded their history of colonization and imperialism with equal if not greater criminal undertakings via their state establishments?

I do not celebrate 10 April; I celebrate 25 June as the symbol of free and independent Croatia.

There have been and there always will be those in the “West” and in Croatia who will criticize those who celebrate 10 April; regardless of that, whoever wishes or whoever wants to celebrate 10 April as a symbol of independence as far as I am concerned – let them be – just as I hold no judgments against, for instance, a British person when he/she remembers with fondness the history of British nation despite its devastating murderous sprees across colonised foreign lands in history for power and harnessing of riches from the colonies, from indigenous lands, resources and people, or against a Belgian when he/she celebrates his/her national day, which is soaked in dark colours of genocide in its African colonies, or some Russian his/her Victory Day – soaked in blood of some 30 million innocent victims of Stalinism … At the end, among those nations that were similar to NDH in WWII, NDH was not a greater murderer than what they were, and Croatians have never, like Americans, celebrated the dropping of any atomic bombs nor can they be compared to Israelis, who after the Holocaust tragedy to today are seen by many as hangmen of the Palestinians – and so, who has the right to judge those who celebrate 10 April in the name of independence and self-determination?

Boka CroPress: When we talk about or mention the WWII Independent State of Croatia, how do we place ourselves in relation to the crimes that were perpetrated then?

Ina Vukic: Personally I hate and condemn all crimes in the world, which have always and which are occurring to this day. In accordance with the measures of humanity there is no justification for crime; not in today’s world even though, to regret, we still find attempts to justify crimes from history – even genocide. Evidently, numerous crimes of extermination of various peoples in history (except the Holocaust) have become a political tool to which punishment does not belong! And hence, the world has been brought into a contemptible reality in which differing standards of tolerance for enormous historical crimes exist. The Communists will say, for example, that the crimes against innocent people were necessary for “freedom”! Members of nations who had in centuries past engaged in brutal extermination of indigenous people in the countries they colonised, might shrug and say something like: “yes, it was horrible but necessary in those times of promoting and creating prosperity for the people of our country and for the enlightenment of the indigenous people in those wild lands!”

In such political wilderness of the world, where the innocent victim of crime often represents a negligible value, it is important to fight for justice for victims. Because, there is nor has there ever been a lasting or real reconciliation without the real, the true justice in the eyes of humanity, regardless of how much politicians try to convince us that it’s not like that, that the horrors of certain crimes can be overcome without condemnation, without justice. That kind of reconciliation without justice for the victim is very dangerous because it implies forgiveness and/or forgetfulness, which in reality feed the possibility of the same crimes being perpetrated in the future.

In relation to the crimes perpetrated in NDH (and soon after WWII) Croatia has always been and remained a victim of discrimination against innocent victims. That is, the crimes of the Holocaust have been processed and perpetrators pursued but those – the communists or antifascists as they like to be called now – who perpetrated equally horrid crimes against innocent people and their crimes have persistently been swept under the carpet, hidden, or their crimes, if recognized, even justified as ‘necessary’! I believe that this is where the roots lie of the widespread plight for justice among Croats after WWII to this day and in this plight we can often see emotions of guilt, anger and pain.

The crimes that were perpetrated within NDH during WWII are an undeniable fact and this fact must be acknowledged with regret even though the Croats of today are not responsible for those crimes. However, it is essential to include in those crimes the crimes committed by the communists and the Partisans, who more and more like to refer to themselves as antifascists even though they fought for Yugoslavia and not the freedom of Croatian people. Therefore, it is essential to recognise and accept as fact all crimes – including those perpetrated in the NDH – as something that is repugnant and unnatural to humanity.

It is morally wrong to judge the crimes committed in the name of NDH without, in the same breath, judging the crimes committed by the communists of those times.

In the matter of crimes of WWII many automatically think only of the crime of the Holocaust, which is unacceptable in today’s world – absolutely unacceptable. If we are people that seek and pursue justice then we must confront, or place in the same basket of historical horror all of the crimes perpetrated against innocent people regardless of who the perpetrator was. It’s not without a reason that those who had in Croatia justified and defended communist crimes, or those who still do, had not welcomed with open arms the relatively recent unshakable research findings by dr Esther Gitman of the rescue and survival of Jews in NDH, including the enormous role Blessed Aloysius Stepinac played in the rescue of the Jews. The communists had hidden the truth about Stepinac’s goodness after WWII and falsely convicted him, as they did other Croatian rescuers of the Jews, as Nazi collaborator – and even today, despite these and other similar findings – they keep to their false convictions like cowards that deserve the harshest of punishment and ostracizing through processes such as Lustration would be!

How to place ourselves vis-à-vis the crimes committed during NDH? The only answer is – with the harshest of judgments! All crimes are a profound anomaly of humanity and only through judgment can we place them where they belong: into a sad history that still needs clearing and that still needs to be woven with the full truth! If I had governing power in Croatia of today I would demolish to the ground all the monuments raised to mark the so-called communist-antifascist battles during former Yugoslavia, I would leave Jasenovac and other monuments to the victims of the Holocaust and I would build equally large monuments to the victims of communist crimes.

Boka Cropress: What is the main message for the young generation in relation to the celebration of the historic 10 April?

Ina Vukic: I believe that I have laid out the main messages for the young in my answers to the above questions. Nevertheless, I think that the most important thing for the young is to separate that date from 1941 of NDH declaration from the intent to achieve an independent Croatia. If they manage to achieve this then 10 April will become less important because it is a strong reminder that NDH was a failed attempt at creating an independent state of Croatia.

The liberation process and the defensive (Homeland) war of the1990’s were successful because the majority of people believed in freedom and wanted freedom for centuries before 1941, just as they did after NDH, as best demonstrated by the 1970’s Croatian Spring uprisings, and also because of the efforts invested for freedom from the diaspora where there were more of those that did not than those that did celebrate 10 April – but none wanted to live as Yugoslavs.

And so, today’s Croatia’s independence is the act and achievement of a far greater section of the Croatian national body of people than what is represented by the followers of “Ante Pavelic’s” NDH and, since we are talking about celebrating Croatia’s independence, I think it fairer and more proud to accept that fact and celebrate 25 June because that date truly includes all who had in any way fought for Croatian independence without the defining and morally unacceptable reliance upon any foreign power and might – this independence and democracy of Croatia created in 1990’s is the product of the work of the Croats!

William Hague and Angelina Jolie in Srebrenica, March 2014

Author of original text in Croatian: Vedrana Milas, Objektiv, 23 April 2014
Translated into English: Ina Vukic

In late March 2014, the International conference “Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict – A Stronger Role of Regional Security Forces on Peace Support Operations” was held in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was organised by the Ministry of Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with support from the Embassies of the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Norway. The establishment of a centre for education of preventing sexual violence in armed conflicts was announced at the conference and a new model of training soldiers and the police from the region who will be sent on peace missions was also presented.

This is a part of the Global campaign against sexual violence in war initiated in May 2012 by William Hague, chief of British diplomatic services and Angelina Jolie, actress and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. The initiative for the campaign arose from the movie “In the Land of Blood and Honey”, which talks about the rapes in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (during 1990’s war). Shocked by the small number of convictions for rape given the scale of the crime, British Foreign Secretary Hague had on 1st April stated for BBC: “I believe that our plan is to see that new international standards for investigation and prosecution of perpetrators of war crime of rape are brought about and help not only in the prevention of such crimes but also help the judicature with more efficient processing of the already committed crimes.” (Furthermore, Hague stated for BBC: “…I think we can do something, if we succeed and create the right international standards of investigation and prosecution so that people really are punished that justice is done when at least some of these crimes are committed …” ).

The processing of war crimes of rape is a key problem in Croatia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in other countries of the world who have been through wars and this initiative should contribute to a more efficient processing of war crimes of rape. Because of the inefficient judicature many victims of rape in Croatia, especially in the city of Vukovar, are forced to watch their rapists move freely, which has convicted the victims to a lifelong trauma. How large the problem is can be evidenced from the Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy at NATO Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic’s statement after the completion of the above conference in Sarajevo: “I am deeply ashamed for the fact that victims of violence on Croatian streets are forced to cross to the other side of the street in order to avoid encounter with their rapist”.

In the meantime, on 24th September 2013, at the sitting of the UN General Assembly a Declaration to End Sexual Violence in Conflict was made and a new international protocol on investigation and documenting of sexual violence in armed conflicts was completed and which will be presented at the “Global Summit To End Sexual Violence In Conflict” in June of this year in London by William Hague.

The road to the first codes against rape in war has been long and torturous, from the 19th century American Civil War (The Leiber Code) through Geneva Convention 1949, Nuremberg trials and Military courts in Japan, which saw the word rape mentioned for the first time in a judgment, although only in the category of crimes against humanity. It was only at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR) that rape in conflict had been defined as war crime. The turning point is found in the ICTR Akayesu case where it was said that rape or sexual violence can be treated as genocide, if it is proved that the intention was to physically or psychologically destroy a certain group of people of a part of that group of people. The ICTY judgment in the case of Furundzija from 1998 represents a novum (a new thing) in the international court practice because that was the first judgment passed exclusively for the war crime of rape.

But, what was Croatian Minister for Foreign Affairs and European Affairs, Vesna Pusic doing in Sarajevo? The same woman who two years ago had no time for the raped women of Vukovar but instead invited them to march at the head of Split Gay Pride parade with the following words: “I would, however, expect these women, as victims of violence, to show solidarity with all other victims or potential victims of violence and I expect for them to be in the front rows at Split’s Pride!” Yes, Vesna Pusic had in the year of 2012 sent a message to the victims of war crime of rape that the war crime is identical to the potential dangers for the members of a different sexual orientation!

The Croatian public was flabbergasted; numerous Homeland War associations, public personalities and ordinary citizens asked for Minister Pusic to step aside, but their voice was hardly heard, press silence covered up this most embarrassing gaff by a Minister since the day of Croatian independence. All these women wanted to ask Minister Pusic was to work on the internationalization of the problem of raped women, to use her bilateral meetings with her colleagues from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the countries in which members of the former Yugoslav Peoples Army and Serb paramilitary formations live or are hiding, and whose victims they themselves were. What mistakes did these women make, then? Perhaps in the timing because Serbia had in the same year received the status of EU candidate. Did Mrs Pusic cold-bloodedly assess that the moment for receiving the victims of rape was not convenient (?) – we will never know for sure.

This was not the first time that Minister Vesna Pusic was instrumental to war crime of rape: in 2006, in the Croatian parliament she accused the then president of the Constitutional court, Vice Vukojevic, for the raping of a Muslim woman in a camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even though she found out about that “case” back in the late 1990’s when the former President, Stjepan Mesic, pulled a book out of somewhere, authored by the alleged victim, Pusic suddenly became interested in the case only in 2006, immediately after Judge Vukojevic’s testimony at a German court in the case of Krunoslav Prates for the murder of the Croatian emigrant Stjepan Djurekovic. After the 2011 investigation by the Swedish, American and Bosnian authorities confirmed that the woman does not exist, that the book was clearly a product of the Bosnian secret service AID, Pusic went all quiet. She had not even apologised for the five-year hell the Vukojevic family went through. While the manipulation with the crime of rape has in this case had the aim of compromising the credibility of Judge Vukojevic as a witness, the invitation to the women victims of rape to place themselves at the front of the Gay parade had its function in building her own popularity in the EU bodies and in collecting political points with the gay population. Does one really need to explain that not a single politician who has even a little of political intelligence – and a seed of humanity – would ever enter into manipulation with victims of any crime, and especially not with crime of rape.

Many praiseworthy initiatives would find it difficult to achieve success were it not for the efforts and promotion by public personalities from political and arts circles, because these people are the ones who ensure global visibility of projects and eventually – the finances. Sadly, the importance of living the values one preaches is sometimes lost in people involved with a certain project, i.e., that their moral integrity is at least – solid. Of course, this is especially important for campaigns associated with human rights.

The initiator of this project, Foreign Secretary William Hague, is a man of a flawless political biography and some initiatives such as his book about the life of the philanthropist William Wilberforce (the leader of the movement to abolish slavery in most countries of the British Empire in the 19th century who needs to be thanked for the Laws passed to abolish slavery) and his 2010 – when he was appointed a Secretary in David Cameron’s government – statement in which he said that he would seriously engage himself with the area of human rights – speak enough of his integrity.

The nomination of Angelina Jolie as UNHCR special envoy is a good choice because besides being a well-liked actress she has shown a characteristic of humanity by adopting several children from different countries. But, a person like Vesna Pusic, who has profoundly compromised herself on the issue of war crime of rape, does not represent a good choice – for sure! Is the British Foreign Secretary Hague aware of the fact that by nominating Vesna Pusic as one of the global promoters of the project the whole project is compromised? His duty as an initiator is to ensure that the people involved with the project are persons in whom the victims of war crime of rape must have trust. Minister Vesna Pusic is not that person – for sure!

“It is a terrible realisation that we will not be able to punish some criminals because many who had suffered rape – especially men – do not want to speak, do not want to go through the trauma of court testimony,” said Marija Sliskovic, the president of the Croatian “Women in Homeland War Association”, for Objektiv. “That is why I think that the initiative started by the British Foreign Secretary Hague is something truly very important and big. We, in Croatia, have already contributed to this initiative by uncovering most of the criminals through our collection and published testimonies. All those who engage with the issue of rape as war crime must not stop until the very last accessible criminal is not processed. We need to look up to the Jews who, even though decades have passed since the Holocaust, are not stopping until the last living criminal against Jews is found. They know best what true suffering is.”

Click on Banner image to enlarge

Guest Post
By Ante Horvat

The former Yugoslav regime elements and their children spearheaded subversive activities against the facts, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) Croats from the 1990s, through to today.

While overtly Yugoslav nationalist in their rhetoric, still to today expending taxpayer resources celebrating the Communist “liberation” and 1945 Partisan (private property) “liberators” of Croatia, they were the first to declare any opponents of their sham anti-war agenda as “nationalist,” “primitive nationalists,” etc. – blaming “nationalists” on “both sides” for the war, and not the marriage of greater Serbian fascism and retrograde Yugoslav Communist Titoism and the detailed Serbian General Officers plan for aggression, beginning with the reorganization of Territorial Defense in the mid 1980s, through to the ‘Yogurt Revolution,’ trampling of the SFRY Constitution, quasi-legal attempt at Kosovizing Croatia and the rest of then Yugoslavia, and of course the Rampart (RAM) Plan, with the explicit order to target civilians to demoralize ‘enemies,’ and overtly stated goal of creating a Greater Serbia at the expense of most of Croatia and the whole of B&H, with access to Croatia’s coastline.

Among the more vocal propagandists in the front of the charge was none other than Croatia’s current Minister of Foreign Affairs, and unofficial Shadow Foreign Minister of Serbia, Vesna Pusic, sister of UJDI (Association for Yugoslav Democratic Initiative) co-founder and current GOLJP head (Citizens Committee for Human Rights), Zoran Pusic.

Vesna Pusic helped form Erasmus Gilda in 1993, a declaratively pro-European organization, along with Slavko Goldstein, and other post-1990 self-styled “human rights” activists (the systematic violations of human rights before 1990 was apparently not a problem to them as they were silent and remain silent about them) and disinformation luminaries who all just happened to be against Yugoslavia joining the European Community prior to the first free elections in 1990, because the EC was a free market economy.

Along with the previously mentioned outlets like Arkazin, Feral Tribune and others regurgitating Belgrade’s propaganda on a weekly basis, Erasmus gatherings, published articles and their eventual failed magazine that generous USAID funds could not save, touted the line and gave the anti-fact agenda political legitimacy as they included many academics who rose to prominence within Tito’s Yugoslavia.

Here was yet another case of foreign aid subsidizing another controlled opposition – who foreign governments would openly put into power in 2000, and again in 2011.

The main propaganda agendas of these foreign-subsidized controlled opposition fronts, and foreign-financed controlled opposition political actors, as well as Belgrade’s propaganda, was during the war and remains the following, in no particular order:

Push the “all sides are guilty” and “civil war” lie to spin Serbia’s aggression and the moral responsibility of the Western powers that overtly and tacitly supported Serbia’s aggression diplomatically and through domestic media filters and planted stories;

Equate Croatia’s defensive war effort with Serbia’s offensive aggression;

Equate Croatia’s defense of B&H in 1992 and the HVO’s defense of B&H Croats in the face of Serbian and later Muslim aggression with Serbia’s aggression against Croatia;

Push the Karadjordjevo fable and “Tudman divided B&H” myth;

Criminalize any and all symbols of Croatian statehood (the Kuna currency, Croatia’s Grb, etc.) by tying them to the Independent State of Croatia (WWII NDH);

Look for “Ustashe,” if you can’t find them, make them up;

Blow any Croatian backlash or isolated criminal act during wartime out of proportion and tie it to the highest levels of power while entirely ignoring the top-down, bottom-up systematic war crimes by the YPA/Yugoslav Peoples Army and VRSK/Army of Serbian Republic of Krajina (see the Zec family politicization since 1991, with the recent street naming ruse);

Lobby for “Krajina” political legitimacy at Western embassies and in Western capitals while domestically attack the government for being weak for not defeating “Krajina” while simultaneously claiming the “Krajina” is too strong to fall and Serbia will get involved if Croatia operationally engages it, implication being that it is better to leave it alone and recognize it;

Criminalize the Homeland War, all Generals, and all Veterans, with phrases like “turbo-Generals,” “Oluja/Storm was ethnic cleansing, “fake veterans,” “drunk veterans,” “gambling veterans,” etc. – anything to do with the Homeland War, the men who led it or the men who fought in it must be all negative, all the time with qualifiers regarding “our crimes” at any opportunity, all under the banner of “de-Tudmanization”;

Sack competent wartime and intelligence commanders whenever possible;

Collaborate with UK, US and other foreign intelligence agencies in maligning not just General Ante Gotovina and all associates, but the Homeland War itself and actively wage information warfare against it;

Legitimize ICTY political prosecutions and show trials of Croats from Croatia and B&H and applaud all politically-charged, logical acrobatic convictions based off of cherry-picked misquotes out of context, evidence suppression, and constructing events entirely out of chronological order;

Stay silent on Momcilo Perisic, Franko Simatovic and Jovica Stanisic’s acquittals, as well as no ICTY convictions of any Army of B&H commanders for the systematic war crimes and gunpoint ethnic cleansing of Croats in Central Bosnia and North Herzegovina between October 1992 and the1994 Split Agreement;

Paint Franjo Tudjman as a warmonger and authoritarian; compare to Ante Pavelic and Adolf Hitler when possible;

Push anything and everything Serbian in social and cultural spheres, no matter how low-brow (Baja Mali Knindza, Ceca, Cajke, how to be a Sponzorusa program on RTL, etc.);

Rehabilitate the cult of Tito and Communist Partisan “liberation” and infallibility myth at every corner, with if not daily then weekly stories referencing the “glories” of Tito and the Partisans, and make sure to have a weekly Yugonostalgia session on HRT by airing second rate, low-budget Yugoslav Communist political cinema;

Continually push WWII debates as if it was ongoing to cover up for failed policies and collapsing economy and no actual long-term political or economic strategy;

Frame all political and economic discourse about independent Croatia, especially the Homeland War, in a negative context while simultaneously framing any discussions about Tito’s Yugoslavia in a positive, at a minimum, neutral context;

Demand Croatia “come to terms with its crimes” of the 1990s while savagely denouncing any suggestion of the same in regards to the Communists’ crimes during and after WWII, or that the Serbian community in Croatia do the same in regards to both the 1990s, WWII, and the first Yugoslavia;

Ridicule the very idea of lustration laws being passed; label it “nationalist” to nip it in the bud;

Do everything possible to drive a wedge between Croatia’s diaspora and the Homeland;

Demand that Croatia abide by every single UN, EU, or ICTY demand, no matter how idiotic or how much of a double-standard, especially when they negatively affect Croatia’s sovereignty, national interests, and national security while simultaneously using all means available in defending the CCP (KPH/Communist Party of Croatia) and UDBa Octopus (Yugoslav Secret Police) at the expense of diplomatic relations with Germany and the EU;

Criminalize the very thought of Herceg Bosna or any Croatian legal or political equality, economic freedom, local self rule, or even following the Dayton Agreement as was agreed upon, and always support Sarajevo’s line, or remain silent on the burning Croat question;

Push a pro-London, anti-Berlin and anti-Vienna policy – sign a strategic partnership with the one state that comes in second to Serbia only in terms of damaging Croatia politically and diplomatically (UK) once foreign subsidies and foreign subsidized (and facilitated in foreign media) propaganda bring you to power;

Ignore Central Europe, never speak of the Visegrad Four (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary), and speak only of the “region” to Croatia’s south, not to its north, northeast or west – never even entertain the idea of making the Visegrad Four the Visegrad five, and never demand Serbia meet the same criteria and extra criteria Croatia had to fulfill for EU entry;

Accept money from anyone, including those “capitalist pig” governments who were supposed to submit to the superiority of Yugoslav Socialist Self-Management;

Denounce, decry and try to legally bar the right of Croatia’s Diaspora and Croats in Herceg Bosna to vote while not demanding the same for Croatian citizens of Serbian origin in RS (Serbian Republic) and Serbia, who do not pay Croatian taxes – organize bus transport for them to vote in Croatia;

Thwart any meaningful investment with bizarre regulations, a monstrous tax code, bureaucracy, and torpedo any business investment, including sweet-heart deals, at the strategic and state level through incompetence if they conflict with Anglo-American business or geopolitical interests (see the Qatar debacle).

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Part VI – The next installment will look the new and subtle English-language information warfare against Croatia, subsidized by allies no less.

Croatian Veterans Convention 2014
Photo: FaH (Click on image to enlarge)

On Saturday 17 May the USA marked its Armed Forces Day with pride, respect and celebrations, parades, across the country to pay tribute to the men and women who serve in the U.S. Armed Forces in times of war and peace. The UK will do the same on 28 June. In Croatia, the veterans of the 1990’s Homeland War still find themselves fighting for their rights, for recognition – for the dignity that should be felt across the nation. This is a tragedy that can only be removed through strong retaliation against this injustice.

On Friday 16 May the first convention of Croatian Homeland War veterans and members of their families was held in Zagreb – several thousands of veterans and victims of the 1991-95 war and their guests attended the Lisinski concert hall where the convention was held.

It turned loud and tumultuous as the mere mention of the minister in charge Predrag Matic sparked the gathered participants to loudly boo and whistle in disapproval and rejection.

“We have been witnessing the long-lasting poor governance of the Croatian state, the sale of national resources, the pauperisation of the Croatian people, the stigmatisation of Homeland War veterans and the abolishment of their acquired rights, and now we say that’s enough,” reads one of the conclusions of the convention.

“We say to those to whom the dignity of Croatian Homeland War veterans and the Homeland War means nothing, we will no longer tolerate such an attitude. We demand the prosecution of war crimes against the Croatian people and the revision of cases covered by the General Amnesty Act. We demand the collection of war reparations from the aggressor and that all rights of the veterans and their families be regulated under the Croatian War Veterans Act,” said in his speech Ante Deur, the president of the Guard Brigades Corps, adding that “the veterans will no longer permit that those who had not defended Croatia decide upon their fate”.

The convention voiced demands for the Homeland War to be portrayed in schools in a truthful and dignified way, and directions seeking that Vukovar be proclaimed a place of Special Piety and announcements that the veterans will not allow the arrest of Vukovar heroes.

In his very emotional speech, Djuro Goloski, a 100% war invalid, emphasised that the Homeland War was not a civil war and that the veterans who defended Croatia are not criminals. “We were heroes,” he said. “and today we are treated as a mob.” Goloski accused the current and the previous government of systematically disparaging veterans and restricting their rights.

“We insist that our children have the right to education and work in line with traditional values and the world view of the Croatian people.”

Croatian Homeland War veterans will defend the values of the family as the pillar of every society, say the conclusions that were read out by the president of the Guard Brigades Corps, Ante Deur, whose words were met with standing ovations.

Even though Parliament Speaker Josip Leko was expected to address the convention, it did not happen. Veterans’ Affairs Minister Predrag Matic’s presence was met with loud disapproval, apparently scaring away his communist pro-Yugoslavia parliamentary comrade.

Standing ovations rose to the national football team player Joe Simunic (who is currently a victim of FIFA’s political persecution, banning him to play at the coming World Cup in Brazil, based on his “For Home” chant at a relatively recent soccer match in Croatia) , singer Marko Perkovic Thompson, members of the Initiative for the Defence of a Croatian Vukovar and General Mladen Markac.

Among the guests were Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic and the president of the opposition HDZ party, Tomislav Karamarko.

Nineteen years have passed since the last armed operation in August of 1995 for the defense and liberation of Croatia from Serb aggression. It is a tragic reality that the veterans still find themselves struggling for their rights, for their recognition as a national symbol of freedom and door to democracy. This awful reality has a great deal to do with the politics of equating the aggressor with the victim and the fact that many still call the shots in Croatian government who were against Croatian independence and democracy and who still do not accept it, nor cherish it. Out with them, I say.

Ron Kovic, an American veteran – a son of a Croatian father and Irish mother – whose battles are so well portrayed in his autobiography “Born On Fourth Of July” (and movie of same title) said, quite a few years ago:
“We who have witnessed the obscenity of war and experienced its horror and terrible consequences have an obligation to rise above our pain and suffering and turn the tragedy of our lives into a triumph.
I have come to believe there is nothing in the lives of human beings more terrifying than war and nothing more important than for those of us who have experienced it to share its awful truth.”
And in light of these words and the demands and conclusions from the Croatian Veterans Convention, I conclude this post and say: Blessings to you Croatian Veterans from the Homeland War. Keep fighting for the democracy and the rights under it – for which you lost lives, limbs and homes! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Monument to the HOS
9th Battalion Rafael Vitez Boban
raised in Split, Croatia – 9 May 2014

On 9 May of this year the mayor of the city of Split, Ivo Baldasar (a Social Democrat) presided over the unveiling of the monument to the 9th HOS Battalion Rafael Vitez Boban. Croatia’s communist lot, who boldly call themselves antifascists even though no antifascist organisation in the world protect from condemnation and processing of WWII and post-WWII communist crimes like they do, formed a so-called “Antifascist league”. These two events in Croatia on the same day did not occur by accident.

No Siree!

The communism lovers from various NGO’s are all about calling and labelling members of Croatian defence forces from the 1990’s Homeland War as fascists, maliciously and without any truth, except for communist political agenda, linking them to WWII Independent State of Croatia Ustashe! Some have even gone so far as to say that the monument in Split for a 1990’s Battalion carrying the name of WWII Ustashi Rafael Vitez Boban who formed the WWII Black Legion alongside Jure Francetic is designed to equate WWII fascists (Ustashe) and WWII communists/antifascists and this to them is not acceptable! The WWII Black Legion consisted mainly of Croatian and Muslim refugees from eastern Bosnia where large massacres and atrocities were committed against the population by Serb Chetniks and Yugoslav/communist Partisans. Communists or antifascists of Croatia still sweep under the carpet the communist crimes committed against innocent Croats, the scale of which far surpasses the crimes committed by the so-called WWII Ustashe regime.

There are it seems no limits to where Croatia’s antifascists will venture in order to protect their predecessors from being prosecuted and condemned for communist crimes. While many rejected to take part in creating the independent and democratic Croatia in the 1990’s – as they wanted communist Yugoslavia – they now enjoy and abuse the independence, democracy and freedom which they use to label Croatian veterans and indeed anyone who loves an independent Croatia – a fascist!
On 25 June of this year the televised program “Calender” by editor Vladimir Brnardic sparked Croatia’s antifascists into a new frenzy in which they labelled Homeland veterans as fascists!

Above Video: Croatian TV Kalendar program 25 June 2014, editor Vladimir Brnardic – transcript translated into English:
“Upon the embarkation of the Greater Serbia aggression against Croatia, Croatian Defence Forces (HOS) were founded 25 June 1991 as a military wing of the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP). HSP leader Dobroslav Paraga became its commander in chief, and Ante Paradzik undertook the duty of headquarters chief. Volunteering was exclusively the only criteria to enlist into HOS. Regardless of the label of radicalism that followed them at all times political party membership and nationality were not important. On the contrary, members of other nationalities and émigré Croats and a large number of foreign volunteers fought with HOS. Conscious of the fact that war was inevitable HOS leaders were preparing for the defence much before the eruption of the conflict.

In collaboration with the Slovenian police one of the first military training camps was organised in Zumberak (area between Croatia and Slovenia). From the very beginning members of HOS were active on all crisis battlefields. They were especially prominent in the defence of Vukovar, but also of all Slavonia, Dubrovnik, Banovina (central Croatia) and later in Livno and Bosnian Posavina then Mostar and other parts of Herzegovina.

The murder of HOS chief Ante Paradzik, in September 1991, sharpened the already high tensions between leaders of HSP and leaders of HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), the party in government. In an atmosphere of distrust pressure mounted to abolish HOS, whose members either joined units of the Croatian Army or went to voluntarily defend Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Despite the allegations of extremism it’s essential to emphasise that they fought honourably and not a single one of the several thousand members of HOS has been convicted of war crimes.

Although many HOS members were wounded and became profound war invalids and laid their lives for Croatian freedom their status due to political disagreements, especially with the head of Croatian secret services Josip Manolic, has been devastating, even after the war. It was only in 1996 that HOS was officially recognised and only in 2004, in line with Croatian Homeland War Veterans’ Act, HOS members were recognised as true defenders and a part of Croatian armed forces. It’s interesting that the only formation that retained the HOS name and symbols was the 9th Battalion Rafael Vitez Boban, which is included in the 114th Brigade of the Croatian Army. Those killed from HOS formations still await their memorial symbols and only the city of Split had in 2014, with the erection of the monument to the 9th Battalion of HOS, in a dignified manner paid its respects to the formation that had 46 of its members lay their lives for the defence of the Homeland.”

On 1 July 2014 Damir Markus from the town of Kutina arm of the Association of HOS Volunteers (UDHOS) published a firm statement and plea on the Dragovoljac (Volunteer) website protesting the labelling of Croatian Homeland War veterans as fascists. Indeed, he states that Croatia in the only country in the world that calls its army fascist!

He says: “If we intend entering into history as the only nation which won’t process all war criminals, regardless from which war, in the name of all of us who have defended and created this country we ask you to please ensure that we don’t become a rare state in which its own army is labelled fascist.

The last of the many media outbursts in which formations from the Homeland War, especially HOS, are equated with fascism points to a clear tendency to generally criminalise the values of the Homeland War. For the first time since Croatia’s independence HOS is openly and unambiguously called a fascist organisation, i.e. an Ustashe formation, in the announced lawsuit ‘Antifascist league’ versus the author Vladimir Brnardic, who in his TV program Calendar examines the events from the war. How is it possible that the so-called ‘civil associations’ like that phantom one called ‘antifascist league’, which is well funded from the state budget, openly name-call and vilify as fascists the volunteers who defended the Homeland in 1991 – 1995? In which country of the world is it at all possible for an association or an individual to call their country’s victorious army formations criminal and treat them as fascists?!!

Let alone the fact that we have repeated many times that we have no connection with World War II but that we are a formation founded during our holy Homeland war and in reality are, as are all other Croatian army formations, the answer to the Greater Serbian fascism. It’s becoming more and more evident that our clear responses cannot bring results also due to the fact that the anonymous individuals who hide behind the phantom civil associations are still conducting calls to account from WWII. That is their right.

But, they do not have the right to draw us into their dirty games and it’s scandalous that the institutions of authority permit such things. In any other country the institutions would have long ago gone about sanctioning of subjects who vilify the values of the war for freedom of the Homeland and the formations that reined in that freedom. In our country, regretfully, the situation is reverse. Not only the WWII and post-WWII criminals are not sanctioned but also the terrible crimes committed by the Greater Serbia fascist hordes during the aggression against Croatia have not been investigated. In light of this, the paradox that the Croatian army formations are called, nothing more and nothing less than fascists is possible and that historians like Vladimir Brnardic, who objectively research the Homeland war, are threatened with lawsuits for promoting fascism!?!

Of course we also are contemplating lawsuits but it’s difficult to undertake anything under the law when we do not have the protection of the state and when the ghosts from the past vilify the Homeland War without signing their name to their deeds from within phantom associations. We invite all the state institutions to protect us in this, i.e., to respect the law of the country and to not succumb to the laws of phantom pressures of ghostly associations, who still live for retributions for events that occurred 70 years ago”.

Turning the clock back to 24 February 1990, Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman said: “The advocates of the hegemonic-unitarian or Yugoslav state attitudes see in the goals of HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) nothing except a demand for a rehabilitation of the Ustashe NDH (WWII Independent State of Croatia). They forget, though, that NDH (The World War II Independent State Of Croatia) was not merely a ‘puppet’ creation and ‘fascist crime’ but that it was also an expression of both the political aspirations of the Croatian people for their independent state and of the perceptions of those Croatian aspirations and its geographic borders within the international factors, in this case the government of Hitler’s Germany, which tailored a ‘new European order’ on the ruins of Versailles. Accordingly, NDH was not a mere whim of the Axis forces but rather a consequence of the quite specific historical factors.”

Of course, as one would expect, the 1990’s anti-Croatian independence pro-Yugoslavia communist forces hurled around the world and in Croatia maliciously branding this speech by Tudjman as pro-fascist and “as a beginning of turning the Ustashe into good and patriotic boys”, reiterates Novi List journalist Ladislav Tomicic with a mean spirited slant.

Who benefits from labelling Croatia’s independence defenders of the1990’s as fascists? Certainly not Croatia! No one but communists or false antifascists benefit! Do Croatian authorities truly want such social rot to take hold? It would seem that the answer to the latter is yes and that yes is closely associated with sabotaging growth of democracy and freedom. Why else would authorities tolerate the situation where antifascist organisations and their individual spawns label the country’s honourable veterans as fascists?

Croatian veterans of the 1990’s had sacrificed everything to defend Croatia from Serb and communist Yugoslav People’s Army aggression and atrocities. They sacrificed their lives for democracy and freedom only to find themselves vilified and falsely accused as being fascists, as being an extension of WWII fascism! This is beyond insulting! This is a disgrace for the whole of the Croatian nation! This cannot be tolerated! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Tomislav Josic,
Committee for the defence of Croatian Vukovar
Photo: Patrik Macek/Pixsell

The Croatian parliament had July 15 decided to hand the sensitive matter of whether or not to hold a referendum against the use of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet on state offices in the city of Vukovar to the Constitutional Court.

Referendum supporters say that Cyrillic symbolically represents the utter terror and the horror inflicted upon innocent Croats in Vukovar as they went about seceding from communist Yugoslavia, seeking through democratic peaceful processes their freedom and democracy. The government (whose political predecessors, although a minority, did not want to secede from communist Yugoslavia) evidently has little or no empathy with the suffering of the Croatian people at the hands of Serb aggressor has after months of the parliamentary committee’s dragging out signature verifications objected to the referendum, calling it uncivilized and in violation of the country’s international obligations. It will now be up to the Constitutional Court to decide.

Vukovar, as the world already knows, is a city devastated to the ground through Serb aggression, ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs, mass murders and mass rapes during the war for Croatian independence in 1991. In November/December 2013 the group of Croatian citizens consisting mainly of war veterans “Committee for the defence of Croatian Vukovar” after a series of protests against bilingual signs on public buildings in Vukovar, which included the tearing down of these and consequent unrests and arrest as well as violent attacks against the protesters by members of the police, collected over 600,000 signatures for a referendum aiming to raise to 50% (compared with 33% under the current law), the minimum level for minority groups living in a city or a municipality to enjoy the right to bilingualism on public buildings, institutions. The “Committee for the defence of Croatian Vukovar” group and its many supporters want the city that suffered the most in the war (Vukovar) to be declared a place of special piety.

The Committee’s member and legal adviser, Vlado Iljkic, said last week “with the referendum question we are returning to the standards that were in the Constitutional law regarding minority rights when its application did not create opposition and problems, i.e. it was not detrimental”. He added that minorities realised their rights then based on the Constitutional law based on discretionary powers of local government such as was the case for Czechs in the town of Daruvar and based on international agreements such as for the Italians in Istria.

Expressing fear that pressure had been mounting on the Constitutional Court to declare the referendum question unconstitutional, the Committee for the Defence of Croatian Vukovar leader Tomislav Josic said this week that the referendum question was in line with the constitution and did not encroach on the rights which local Serbs had so far exercised.

If the Constitutional Court finds the referendum question on bilingualism in local communities contrary to the Croatian Constitution, activists who launched the referendum initiative will address the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, leaders of the “Committee for the Defence of the Croatian Vukovar”, said at a news conference in Vukovar on Thursday 24 July.

The Committee’s leader, Tomislav Josic, explained that in Croatia, ethnic minorities could exercise their rights in compliance with three sets of rules: the constitutional law on minority rights, local government statutes and international treaties.

“I expect the Constitutional Court to allow the referendum question, and then let the people of Croatia decide on the matter at the referendum,” Josic said.

Although the Vukovar Committee holds that the survey question was incorrectly formulated, the recent survey (March – May 2014) conducted by the Ivo Pilar Institute shows that a majority of the Croatians would vote against raising the threshold from the current one third requirement to over 50% for enabling minorities to use their language and scrip at public places.
However, when it comes to Vukovar, a marked majority of the respondents, or nearly two thirds (64.4%), are against Cyrillic signs on public institutions in Vukovar.
Also, 38.3% of those polled believe that Vukovar should be permanently exempt from dual-alphabet signs, and 26.1% hold that more time is needed before such a move.

The above Ivo Pilar Institute research clearly demonstrates that people of Croatia are overwhelmingly aware of the need to address Vukovar as the city that is the victim and symbol to be remembered of brutal Serb aggression. It’s a pity that the government doesn’t recognise, or rather – accept, the pulse of the nation it governs. There is absolutely nothing uncivilised about the plights for justice for the victims and the memory humanity owes them regardless of the fact that the Croatian bizarrely out of touch government would like to argue differently. Any international obligations a country “owes” to a civilised world is to uphold the will of the majority of its people while upholding rights of minorities to a degree that does not threaten sovereignty, its sovereign rights and duties to abide by the will of its people and to respect the memory that shapes its nation. Once those aspects are in place everything else can follow, including reconciliation of the past. I trust that the Croatian Constitutional court will reiterate such rights and obligations towards Croatian people and rule the referendum question valid. Indeed, if one digs into the arrangements for ethnic minority rights within leading EU Western European member states one can easily come to the conclusion that newer member states from Eastern and South Eastern Europe are “forced” to adhere to standards regarding minorities the “old” member states do not meet, nor are – to my knowledge – contemplating on meeting. The Ivo Pilar Institute survey on referendum regarding Serbian Cyrillic script in Vukovar has given unquestionable merit to the pursuits for Vukovar’s victims’ justice led by the Committee for the Defence of Croatian Vukovar. It is no longer a matter of the Committee and its supporters but a matter considered worthy across Croatia and this is a most timely message for the Constitutional Court that was founded on the blood of Victims of Vukovar – of Croatia! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Tribute to Violeta Antolic – Vicky
Original photo collation by Goran D.

She was barely 21 years old when she left her three-year-old son in the care of others at the bomb shelter in Vukovar, took a rifle into her hands and went shoulder to shoulder to the front-line with her male veterans, the heroes of Croatia’s Homeland War, to defend the city from Serb aggression, beastly destruction of anyone non-Serb, of their homes, infrastructure, community and religious buildings…Violeta Antolic – Vicky defended Vukovar’s Sajmiste to the last minute, until ethnically cleansed and devastated Vukovar fell into Serb occupation (November 1991), only to end up in a Serb concentration camp – as a courageous defender she was the only woman in HOS (1991 Croatian Defence Forces arm of Croatian Party of Rights made up of volunteers from Croatia and abroad) fighting the enemy on equally strong and determined love for freedom as her male veterans. She endured all the imaginable and unimaginable horrors of war; she was a heroine the kind of which one rarely sees in battlefields only to die in a fatal car crash in Zagreb, in her free Croatia, on Tuesday 29 July 2014.
“The first line of defence was at Sajmiste, the place where I grew up and where I lived. When I arrived (to HOS local headquarters) I said that I did not want to be someone who is entrusted for First Aid, that I did not want to be nurse or a cook,” said Violeta in an interview two months ago for Oluja (Storm) magazine.
Here is some more of Violeta’s story of courage, suffering and determination for freedom:
“When they started shooting at our home from the barracks, we had to run into our neighbour’s cellar. The army started to come out of the barracks and we were not aware of this. They also started to shoot at my son, whom I was carrying in my arms. As we broke through to Olajnica my three-year-old son screamed and cried: mama, mama. The shelter was full of men and women.

I felt safer but everything in me burned with rage.

I thought: they shot at my son – I’ll strike back.

In a coincidence, the boys from HOS formation were passing by. I asked if they had a gun for me, because I had no money to buy one. They gave me a Kalashnikov. Street battles ensued that night. They captured one of ours. Sajmiste echoed from his screams. I froze then, but I decided to remain at Sajmiste. We found clean clothes in houses and brought water from the well. That’s how we kept ourselves clean. A sniper fatally hit our first commander Vladimir Derek-Sokol at that spot. We did not go out for water any more. Things were getting worse and worse. When Vukovar “fell” we withdrew from the front lines.

The stench of death was in the air; the city had collapsed under the final defence.

The Serb paramilitary and local Serbs took the few people that remained to Velepromet. After that I dressed in civilian clothes and went to get my son, and with my child was taken to Velepromet. They separated us into male and female columns. They pulled out my stepfather and beat him.

They separated me from my son; I thought I would go mad. I pleaded with them to return him to me.

They laughed and giggled at me saying that they would take him to Belgrade and place him in an orphanage. Luckily a friend of mine took my son. Soon after four men came and took me away and beat me with batons, rifles, sticks and feet. My first neighbour who drove his fist into my face first hit me. He was younger than me. Predrag Marusin-Pedja hit me after the main gendarme Nenad Zigic gave him approval for that. Pedja was a dear young man before the war. I think he was an artist. If the situation were reversed I would never let a hair fall from his scalp. Miki Ikac and another enemy man were there too.

The four of them took turns in beating me. They beat me with batons, rifles, sticks and feet. I collapsed, lost consciousness and then they dragged me into the ‘room of death’ in which they had murdered four people on the same evening. They weren’t sure if I was at the front line as I lived in Sajmiste. A Serb woman had previously seen me in uniform near the hospital and it was probably she who revealed my identity.

A man returned with his face slashed, another was forced to eat bullets, and the hands of many were tied with barbed wire.

I remember how they ridiculed and giggled when they took a young man. He said: let me just get my tennis shoes. They replied: you won’t need them where you’re going.

Ljubce Atanasov saved me from certain death. He said I should be as silent as possible. When they started to beat me again, he yelled at them. He set up guard and did not allow anyone near again. One day a real Chetnik arrived, as from a movie, ripped from a mountain, bearded … I stood before him with my face all beaten up and swollen. He took out a knife and said to me – oh, you’re so swollen, I bet your tooth aches. Come on, open your mouth so I can pull it out and it won’t hurt any more. I put my hand to my mouth and kept saying my tooth did not hurt.

After that they transferred us to a military base in Mitrovica (Serbia, concentration camp) where we waited for a prisoner of war exchange. Luckily I was in the first exchange group and came out at the same time as dr. Vesna Bosanac. My recovery time did not last long. In May, together with the 204th Vukovar Veterans Bridage I went to Suica in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When the air attack occurred I shot at the plane with anti-aircraft weapons, saying to myself that I could finally confront the plane that had shot at me when I was in Vukovar…”

Violeta Antolic – Vicky earned the rank of Sergeant Major during the war.

An amazing photo-video tribute: “Violeta Antolic –Vicky: goodbye my friend”

Violeta’s tragic death in a car accident barely attracted a few lines on back pages of mainstream print media in Croatia. No doubt, the culprits for such a shameful display are those who still sit in high positions of power, pining for communist Yugoslavia, making sure Croatia’s heroes and heroines are kept away from widespread national show of pride. Never mind – God is great! For Violeta’s funeral will come in the days of celebrating 19 years since Operation Storm (5 August 1995), which freed much of Croatian territory from Serb aggression and set the path to freedom and democracy.

I will end this post with the words of 1LT Anne (Sosh) Brehm, US Army Nurse Corps/WWII:
“Let the generations know that women in uniform also guaranteed their freedom. That our resolve was just as great as the brave men who stood among us. And with victory our hearts were just as full and beat just as fast – that the tears fell just as hard for those we left behind”.

Screenshot from movie “The Heroes of Vukovar” -
Violeta Antolic – Vicky

Rest in God’s peace, Violeta – Vicky!
Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Defending freedom – Croat defenders 1991 – 1995

Croatian War of Independence (1991 – 1995) – The Storm Of Victory
Video tribute to Croatian veterans and Operation Storm with “Brothers in Arms” – Dire Straits music:

Today, August 5, Croatia commemorates the Day of Victory and Homeland Gratitude and the Day of Croatian Defenders, the day when 19 years ago its military and police forces regained control of most of the Serb occupied territory in the legendary military offensive Operation Storm.

Operation Storm restored Croatian sovereignty over nearly a fifth of the country’s territory, occupied by Serb terrorising, murderous rebels backed by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) from Serbia in 1991. Operation Storm, along with Operation Flash (Western Slavonia part of Croatia) successfully launched in May 1995, crushed the Serb forces and thus ended the military part of Homeland War in August 1995.

After the four years of occupation, shelling attacks and ethnic cleansing of Croats and other non-Serbs from the Serb-held areas, and many rounds of failed peace talks and initiatives, Croatia had no other choice but to liberate its sovereign but occupied territory with its own military force.

Operation Storm was launched at 5am on August 4, 1995, and within the next 84 hours nearly 10,500 square kilometres or 18.4 % of Croatia’s territory was liberated. A 20-metre-long Croatian flag was displayed on the fortress in Knin, the heart of the Serb rebellion, at noon on August 5.

The gratitude to the veterans and Croatian leadership at the time championed by Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman is immense. They should forever be remembered, celebrated and raised to the pedestal of eternal gratitude of the Croatian nation. Their resolve to fight off communist Yugoslavia venom was astonishing; the kind of resolve and bravery that pours hope and joy of freedom. In that light and in expressing my personal and deep gratitude to all those who fought in the battles for freedom, to all those who worked for freedom in the background, to all those who lost their lives for Croatia’s freedom, I have collected a series of screen shots from Operation Storm documentary films and turned them into photographs (please click on them to enlarge and enjoy). Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Croatia destroyed by Serb aggression
and on its knees
by August 1995

Croats forced to leave their towns
in their hundreds of thousands
by August 1995

Croats fled their destroyed towns
under threats of death
and concentration camps
before August 1995

Operation Storm begins
4 August 1995

Croat wounded soldier
attended to by mates

Operation Storm 1995
Croat soldier in action

Operation Storm
Determined to be
finally free

Croat veterans charge
in 1995 Operation Storm

Operation Storm
5 August 1995
Croat soldiers circle
Serb occupied area

4 August 1995
Operation Storm
Croat defenders plan
liberating battles

Swift, determined, strong
Operation Storm 5 August 1995
Croat soldiers close in

Victory and liberty
Operation Storm veterans
complete their task

Croat Operation Storm
defenders enter liberated
town of Knin

Operation Storm a swift
and determined action
for freedom

Victory! Streets in
Croatia celebrate
Operation Storm

Croat soldiers liberate Knin
August 5, 1995

Tears of joy -
Croat soldiers after
Operation Storm

Operation Storm
veteran receives
a hug of gratitude

Operation Storm liberates
town of Knin from Serb
occupation and Croatia';s
president Franjo Tudjman arrives the next day
6 August 1995 to
personally shake the hands
of the heroes

Franjo Tudjman in liberated Knin
August 6, 1995

Franjo Tudjman kisses the Croatian flag
in liberated Knin
August 6, 1995

Croat veterans in Knin
August 6, 1995

Franjo Tudjman with his
Operation Storm team of
Croatia’s heroes
6 August 1995 in Knin

7 October 1991
bombing of Zagreb
Photo: Hrvoje knez

While Croatia celebrates its Independence Day on 25 June today, 8 October is also a day for celebrations and so is 30 May. It’s a national holiday that marks the final “administrative” step in Croatian Independence, a day when Croats celebrate the unanimous decision of the Croatian Parliament to terminate the link between Croatia and Yugoslavia.

The Croatian referendum on independence was held in May 1991, with 94% of voters supporting Croatian independence from communist Yugoslavia. On 25 June 1991 the Croatian Parliament proclaimed the Croatian independence and seven days later, on 7 July, Croatia and Slovenia signed the Brioni Declaration in which the two countries agreed to suspend all declarations and acts passed by the Croatian and Slovenian parliaments related to those states’ secession from Yugoslavia for a period of three months. On 8 October 1991, the Croatian Parliament decided to end relations with Yugoslavia, in the Decision on the termination of the state and legal ties with other republics and provinces of Yugoslavia. That session was not held in the House of Parliament but instead in the basement of an INA (Oil and Gas industry company) building, because of fears that the Yugoslav army bombing of the Croatian government headquarters – Banski Dvori – that occurred the previous day – 7 October 1991 – may be repeated.

Croatian newspaper
Vecernji List 8 October 1991
covers the bombing of the
heart of Croatia: Zagreb

Vecernji List 8 October 1991
Zagreb bombing by
Yugoslav Army

On October 7, 1991 two Yugoslav Air Force jets bombed the Croatian government headquarters in Zagreb where President Franjo Tudjman was having a meeting with Yugoslav Presidency Chairman Stjepan Mesic and Yugoslav Federal Prime Minister Ante Markovic. Two missiles hit the government building while four more struck nearby buildings. Tudjman, Mesic and Markovic escaped unscathed, having left the conference room just minutes before the attack. The attack left one person killed and four slightly injured, as well as extensive property damage.
The attack on Zagreb’s Gornji Grad–the historic “upper city” of Hapsburg mansions, stately villas and a medieval cathedral–shattered any remaining thoughts that the renegade Yugoslav forces would heed a European ultimatum to stop fighting or face crippling economic sanctions.
Broken glass carpeted the square stretching between the Parliament building and the Ban’s palace, and roof tiles were torn off the district’s 14th-Century cathedral, St. Mark’s.
The attack caught many Croats off guard, since residents had come to ignore the air raid sirens that wailed repeatedly throughout the day. Bomb shelters filled quickly after the rocket strikes, and many residents were still taking cover hours later.

Ban’s Palace/Banski dvori
Zagreb Croatia today

St Mark’s church
Zagreb Croatia

“What do they want, that we all be killed?” cried Croats as they huddled in suburban shelters.
The U.S. Consulate in Zagreb urged all Americans, including journalists, to leave Croatia.
The attack followed a warning from a regional Yugoslav army commander, Gen. Andrija Raseta, that the capital would be hit if Croatian national guardsmen refused to end their siege of federal bases in the republic. By this time the Yugoslav army in Croatia had suffered mass desertions and Croatian forces surrounded several barracks and cut off power and supplies.
On that weekend Franjo Tudjman called for a full mobilisation in Croatia after the Yugoslav army forces moved to within 10 miles of Zagreb and executed a major assault on the strategic city of Karlovac, severing the Croatian capital from its seacoast.

The attack on Zagreb was obviously an assassination attempt against Franjo Tudjman and meant to strike at the heart of the Croatian Government that wanted out of Yugoslavia. By then, hundreds of people had died in Croatia since the declaration of independence in June. Some estimates had in that month of 1991 put the toll at 2,500 and hundreds of thousands non-Serbs had been ethnically cleansed from their homes. Ethnic Serbs in Croatia, who numbered 12 percent of Croatia’s population together with Serbian Serbs, opposed Croatian independence and joined forces to wage a bloody and brutal war of aggression against Croatia in 1991 that would last to August 1995, many more thousands lives lost, with the final pieces of Serb occupied Croatian territories being returned under Croatia’s sovereignty in 1998.

“War has been imposed on us and we have to act according to the laws of war,” said Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman at a news conference on the morning of 8 October 1991.

On the same day, the Yugoslav army shelled the outskirts of Dubrovnik, while its troops moved into the nearby harbour town of Cavtat. The outskirts of Zadar were also shelled. To the east, Yugoslav army units and Serbian paramilitary forces attacked the industrial city of Sisak and fought house to house in Vukovar, the centre of which had already been in Serbian hands after two months of aggression, ethnic cleansing, rape, concentration camp tortures.

Croats overjoyed on 7 October 1991 that
Franjo Tudjman survived an assassination attempt
PHOTO: Reuters

Franjo Tudjman died in 1999
The floral wreaths at his grave spell: THANK YOU

Croatia celebrates independence but not without remembering how hard it was won and what incalculable costs in human life and suffering it bore and still bears. Congratulations to all freedom and democracy loving Croatians and thank you, Franjo Tudjman – rest in God’s peace and your people’s gratitude. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Nevenka Topalusic
Croatian Homeland War
Veteran and War-Invalid
Held Onto Her Courage To Her Death

What a tragic and sad week it has been for Croatia.

“I’m here because this injustice is killing me. I went to war so that my children could have a better future but it turns out life is not better for me or for my children. I’m here today explicitly to fight for myself and for my children and I’m not moving from here, they can only carry my dead body from here, I’m staying here…as I say, only my dead body is leaving this place … if need be for years and years until I die, I will be here,” said the Croatian war veteran and hero Nevenka Topalusic on Monday 21 October 2014 standing proud among her colleagues Homeland War invalids in front of the Croatian War Veterans ministry building in Zagreb, where the veterans had gathered in their wheelchairs, propped on walking sticks and frames, in suffering from other terrible injuries such as the debilitating shell-shock and posttraumatic stress disorder – protesting against injustice towards war veterans, seeking that the Minister Predrag Matic and his closest assistants step down.

Tragically, Nevenka Topalusic died on the evening of the very next day (22 October), surrounded by her war veteran colleagues – right there at the protest site! Despite the fact that the serious and critical wounds sustained defending Croatia from Serb aggression in 1990’s left her “chained” to a wheelchair she came to Zagreb to join her brothers in arms for the protest, that is now as I write this post in it’s seventh day.

Nevenka Topalusic was a mother of four children; she was a heroine whose courage and determination for a better life, away from communist Yugoslavia and within democracy, reflects the profile of all war veterans, men and women.

Nevenka Topalusic
Photo: Boris Scitar/Pixsell

“When there is talk of the Operation Storm (August 1995) we can rarely hear that women had participated in the hardest and the fiercest of battles,” says on the Croatian War Veterans’ website.
“Although less in number than men, there were women who charged forth in the front lines, with rifles in their hands. Or they carried their head in a bag, and in their hand a bag with medical supplies and First Aid kits. In spite of those who think that wars are not for women, Croatia has its own courageous female veterans who had acquired the veteran status during the war at the battlefields, not in offices away from them. However, no one knows how many women fighters had given their lives for the homeland and how many of them are 100% war invalids.

Why almost none of those who were at the front lines have received an officer’s rank? Why not a single one has been officially pronounced a hero? No one seems able to answer these questions. But women warriors are the proof that patriotism, courage and heroism have no association with gender.

Even 19 years after the Homeland War had ended tears welled-up in Nevenka Topalusic’s eyes as she recalled how, as the front line she fought with advanced against the enemy in central Croatia (Banovina) she came across the wounded soldiers among whom was her 18 year old son, Dubravko.

Topalusic attended to her son’s wounds and said: ‘Mummy must go forth. This is war’.

Topalusic was a senior nurse and followed and accompanied the 2nd Brigade ‘Thunders’ soldiers in battles; she saved countless lives while risking her own.

Her brothers in arms lay around her, dead or critically wounded. There was nobody to help her in the most difficult moments.

When Nevenka Topalusic died last Tuesday in Zagreb she still carried 28 shrapnel and bullet fragments embedded in her body, was confined to a wheelchair and battled with the consequences of her war wounds daily. But all this did not anger her as much as those who belittled her role in the terrible war”.

Candles for Nevenka Topalusic
at the war-invalids’ protest site
in Zagreb ,CroatiaPhoto: Marko Prpic/Pixsell

With the latter sentiment she joined the Croatian war veterans and invalids in the protest in Zagreb, seeking veterans’ rights that are reportedly being systematically taken away, bit by bit. The protest by the veterans and war invalids is showing no sign of winding down and on the sixth day, Saturday, 25th October, the protesting invalids have finalized and formulated their demands:

Besides the replacement/resignation of Veterans’ Affairs Minister Predrag Matic and his closest assistants, they seek the organisation of a public debate regarding the suggested changes and additions to the Croatian Veterans Act as well as the passing of the Homeland War Act and Croatian Veterans’ Act at the constitutional level.

Djuro Glogoski, the president of the 100% Croatian military war-invalids association said that the veterans seek that all those rights that have been transferred from the Rights of Croatian Veterans Act to the jurisdiction of other government departments, which include welfare, employment, children’s education etc., be returned to the jurisdiction of the initial veterans’ rights Act.

The veterans have agreed to a meeting with Croatia’s leadership but reject invitations to hold meetings at the government headquarters, at the parliament house or at the office of the country’s president – they seek that the meetings be held at the protest site and invite the Minister of Veterans Affairs to also attend but as a veteran, not as Minister.

It’s heartbreaking that Croatian veterans, war invalids, have a Minister who is incapable of dialog with those citizens for whose welfare his mandate dictates positive action. All I have been able to observe from Minister Matic during the past week is spite against the protesters, stubbornness and utterly repulsive and off-putting stance that tells me he is irritated at the suffering veterans for being loud about their rights and feels contempt for such expressions of freedom.

One would think that one of the basic human rights of those who lost their lives, limbs and/health for everyone’s freedom in a democracy is being able to voice ones complaints and requests without the fear of retribution, without the need to suffer. Not in Croatia, it seems – the Veterans’ Affairs Minister is waging a war against the Veterans! On Friday, 24th October, Minister Matic and his aide Bojan Glavasevic (whose resignation the veterans also seek) entered their office building accompanied by riot police, which – as one can imagine – stirred a great deal of disgust among the protesting veterans and the public. The protest has been peaceful at all times and yet this pathetic excuse for a minister brings riot police with him, saying it was not he but the police risk assessment unit who sent the riot police to accompany him!

Well, he could have rejected the accompaniment by riot police – but he did not!

Zagreb residents were came to give support to the protesting veterans during their sit-in on the ministry’s premises and the local office of the Red Cross organisation provided them with blankets, food and drink during the week. Minister Matic’s words (pathological boasting) that the man against whom the protest is waged (He) is fair and good because he had paid for the mobile toilets used by the protesters and he is paying for the electricity so the protesters in front of his office building could have heaters running in cold weather!

What a nasty piece of work this minister of the current Croatian government is!

Minister Matic fails to realise that he paid for nothing to benefit the protesters – Croatian taxpayers have, including the ones among the protesters! Besides, mobile toilets were brought there after his ministry refused to allow the war-invalid veterans to use the toilets inside their ministry building and after the veterans publicly protested against that!

The support for the war-invalid veterans’ protest is growing significantly by the day. The veterans have vowed not to stop protesting even if it means they’d be camped there in the streets till Christmas and beyond. Minister Matic is becoming increasingly stubborn and says that he too is a war veteran and that no one can force him to resign – but that he may resign if 50% of veterans want him gone! Evidently, Matic has learned nothing about democracy in the past twenty years: he holds that the mere fact of being a veteran gives him the right of being a Minister in the government. Well it does not! Every Minister must stand down in the face of protest from those his/her portfolio holds jurisdiction over – and the protesters outside his office are many from the 100% war-invalids population! The veterans are adamant that a number of their crucial rights have been either directly transferred to ‘unsafe’ portfolios in the government, and therefore under threat, or indirectly cut under Matic’s mandate as veterans’ affairs minister and they wish to correct such injustices. They also emphasise that the clause banning those who participated in the aggression against Croatia from entitlements to war veterans’ rights has also been removed from the relevant legislation under Matic’s watch. While Matic has denied this the veterans persist that such moves are another way of equating the victim with the aggressor. If this is proven to be the case Minister Matic not only deserves a forced resignation from the post but a permanent ban from any public office or job in Croatia. Personally, I wish the veterans strength to endure for it is heart-breaking to see that those we owe our gratitude for freedom and democracy must now, under this communist coloured government, fight, suffer and even die for what is rightly theirs. Nevenka Topalusic, may you rest in God’s peace and your courageous soul breathe strength into those who, like you did, must endure so that the values of the Homeland War and the rights earned through spilled blood and lost lives are kept firmly there where they belong – at the top of Croatian nations’ priorities. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Funeral of Nevenka Topalusic
in Vrbovec, Croatia – Thursday 23 October 2014
Photo: Slavko Midzor/Pixsell

Croatian Homeland War Invalids
At protest site in Zagreb
Photo: Borna Filic/Pixsell (click to enlarge)

Old habits die very, very hard, as the news reminds us every day, but change begins with illumination — attention, pointing, identifying and generally shining lights in dark places. However the president of Croatia, Ivo Josipovic, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic and Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Predrag Matic through their public comments continue to deride and belittle the group of protesting war invalids in Zagreb one thing is emerging as clear: the rally by the war veterans, which seems profoundly taxing on the already frail health of the war invalids, points very clearly to the fact that the Croatian Homeland War Veterans have not been afforded their rightful place as the nation’s heroes that they deserve. The current Social Democrat government and the current President of Croatia (the ideological heirs to the fallen communist Yugoslavia) have more often than not raised the value of WWII communist partisans for today’s Croatia far above the actual Homeland War veterans, who in fact were the ones that ushered today’s Croatia into the free and democratic world, sacrificing life and limb.
Monday, 3 November 2014 will mark the end of full two weeks since Croatian war invalids, Homeland War veterans took to the street in front of the War Veterans ministry building in Zagreb, setting up camp, staying determined in their demands for the protection of their rights, for the removal of the Minister for Veterans Affairs Predrag Matic and two of his closest aides and for certain legislative changes that would see veterans’ rights and plights for freedom and democracy included in constitutional law.
Indeed, the Homeland War invalids and veterans were born in Croatia when it was part of Yugoslavia under the dictatorship of Marshal Josip Broz Tito. They have worked and lived there ever since, experiencing firsthand the tumultuous history, including the repressions and then the fall of Communism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia through freedom loving plebiscites (in every state of former Yugoslavia bar Serbia), which resulted into hostile Serb aggression and the catastrophic violence.

The danger that the 1990’s Homeland War figures and real events disappear from memory, or their importance for today’s Croatian state, has been an ever-present concern among multitudes of Croats. Croatia’s so-called antifascists, those who still hold the WWII fighters for a new communist Yugoslavia as heroes have turned every political trick in the book to ensure that the meaning of the Homeland War events become distorted and manipulated by their political agendas. The pro-communist/socialist Yugoslavia left-wing governments and presidents (including the current ones), that the independent and democratic Croatia has had the misfortune of having, have consistently promoted a type of amnesia, which – if allowed to continue undisturbed – erases national Homeland War heroes and heroines from public consciousness. There was the era of de-Tudjmanisation, which commenced particularly after 1995 (after Croatia won the war of Serb aggression against it) headed by Stjepan Mesic, the Croatian president after Franjo Tudjman’s death, whose mission in life appeared to be nothing except the propagation of cruel lies against Croatian first president Tudjman and equating the aggressor with the victim in the Croatian Homeland War. The attempts by many a prominent politician, academics and leaders to reconcile Croatia’s WWII and post- WWII history as part of transitioning from communist totalitarian regime into a democratic one, based on individual freedom and responsibility, have been thwarted by the left-wing politicians every time the truth about communist crimes had stuck its head out into the public arena. Franjo Tudjman’s and Homeland War veterans’ struggles against the communist Yugoslavia and the 1990’s Serb aggression have in many important aspects evaporated from the public conscience; the fight to prevent the total and effective evaporation of the importance of Franjo Tudjman and Croatia’s Homeland War veterans for freedom and democracy has and is resting in the hands of the brave veterans and their supporters.
The current young generation in Croatia are quite ignorant of the Homeland War heroes. They don’t seem to fully understand what democracy means, how much has been sacrificed for their freedom, how much has been achieved and how much needs to be done. The livelihood and life’s advancement opportunities of an overwhelming number of Croatian young has been reduced by the incompetent government and the country’s presidential office to existential anxiety; poverty is sweeping away the courage to fight for the truth and it is left to the veteran few and their supporters, who still have fighting courage, to ensure Croatia of today does not lose its true identity amidst the communist lot.

Indeed, it was yesterday, Saturday 1 November, that the representatives of the Croatian network for combat against poverty, the Pulse of the People (Bilo Naroda), arrived at the protest site offering the war-invalids/veterans their absolute support. A joint statement by the network and the veterans’ association included that “the Croatian government representatives and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs publicly impose the idea of guilt sharing for the war in Croatia, and that one of their new tactics is the equating of the Croatian Homeland War with the Greater Serbian aggression and occupation through the manipulation of facts within the strategic documents towards the EU,” reports Vecernji List.

They say that they had noticed this manipulation in the draft of the operational plan “Competition and Cohesion” in which the government labels Croatia’s Homeland War as destructive. The Croatian veterans’ associations and the Pulse of the People association say that this document was only until recently written in the English language, therefore not transparent to the Croatian population, and that it describes the countless minefields in Croatia as the result of the Homeland War and not, as the facts are, as the result of the Serb aggression and occupation of a third of Croatia’s territory in early 1990’s.

“It is through these and similar practices towards the Homeland War and its veterans that the Croatian government ignores the foundations of the Croatian state it governs, it does not engage in thorough solutions for problems that arose during the Homeland War and it manipulates the Croatian and worldwide public and it does not assist the veteran population to turn to the future. This is one of the reasons why we seek the replacement of minister Predrag Matic, his deputy and his aide,” said Ante Deur, president of the Assembly of the veterans of Croatian guard units.

“The public talks of veterans’ privileges,” said Ante Deur on Friday 29 October, “and, yet, the children of communists enjoy privileges in Croatia.” He said that veterans’ rights must be part of the Constitution “so that no one could touch them any more”.

And indeed, the support for the war-invalids’ veterans is amazing; so many organisations and citizens are rallying behind them and also making sure they are fed and warm at the “camp” outside the Veterans’ Affairs building. And the light their protest is directing to expose the dark place of communism that still exists in Croatian politics becomes even more relevant when we come across the statement made last week in the city of Split by president Ivo Josipovic at the 70th anniversary of liberation of Split from German/Italian occupation: “Those who want some other Croatia, Croatia in which Kevo’s Pits are returned, Croatia in which the Partisans are declared criminals, Croatia in which history is not understood, are not doing Croatia any good.”

The reader needs to know that the “Kevo’s Pits” referred to by president Josipovic is a synonym for hundreds of mass graves and pits (close to 900) where hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of Partisan and communist crimes lie; still to this day without justice!

Evidently, Croatia’s president Ivo Josipovic fails miserably to accept the Croatia created as a result widespread rejection by the Croatian people (1991) of the “Partisans’ Yugoslavia” and through defending of the idea of free Croatia from brutal Serb aggression. So who else but the veterans must persist in defending free and democratic Croatia from communist onslaught!? And as Djuro Glogoski, the president of Croatia’s 100% Military War-Invalids Association, said: the veterans are not placing their monetary payments or rights in the first place but their priority lies in their determination not to ever again permit the putting down of those who had participated in the creation of Croatia. “You shall never again trample on our dignity, and we shall be together in this to the end,” is Glogoski’s message to the Croatian government and leaders.

Djuro Gologoski
President of 100% Croatian Military War Veterans Association
Photo: Davor Puklavec//Pixsell (click to enlarge)

I say: Good on you – Croatian Homeland War veterans! Do not let the WWII past and communism that followed define Croatia’s present and future; make sure that Homeland War truth and the fight for freedom and democracy are! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

As I write this post, I watch live streaming Croatian HRT TV coverage from Vukovar – Heroic City, City of Special Piety, City that was on 18 November 1991, after three months of siege under brutal Serb destruction, mass murders, rapes, imprisonments in concentration camps, ethnic cleansing of all non-Serb population, levelled to the ground. As I write this I also think of the village of Skabrnje, which also on the same day suffered massacre and mass murder by the Serb aggressor.

Today is the 23rd anniversary of these horrible war crimes for which no one has as yet been convicted! The grief becomes deeper and deeper. Little if any sight of relief that justice can bring, if it came.

As I watch this commemoration in Vukovar on the TV I notice a Tweet by Martin Schulz, EU Parliament President in which he tweets to the world that Vukovar devastation happened in the name of “ethnic hatred”! Shock and horror overwhelms me, for this is wrong. Ethnic hatred with which Serbs entered Vukovar in 1991 was ushered into Croatia with a song they sang loudly in Vukovar’s streets: “Slobo (Slobodan Milosevic), Slobo, send us some salad, there will be meat, we’ll slaughter the Croats”! Ethnic hatred was a tool to use in Serbia’s attempt to grab one third of Croatian territory – so the devastation was not in the name of ethnic hatred but in the name of land grabbing, of denying democracy to a nation (Croatia) that wanted out of communist Yugoslavia. Now that Croatia is a part of EU I trust there will be a Croatian MP who will educate the European Parliament about the war in Croatia in 1990’s! I’ve replied to Mr Schulz’s tweet – of course I did, I cherish the memory of the many thousands of fallen innocents and all other victims of this terrible time in Croatia’s history.

Croats mourned today in Vukovar, over 100,000 came, and in Skabrnja and, indeed, there is not a single city, town or village that has not lit candles in its streets and squares in commemoration of the victims.

Following are screenshots (hrt.hr) of the procession through Vukovar today that ended at the War Memorial Cemetery and walked and prayed in silence and dignity.

Forgive – never forget!

Never forget and never forgive until the last criminal repents, is made to take responsibility for his/her crimes. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic
Candidate for President of Croatia

In one week, on January 11, Croatian presidential candidates Ivo Josipovic and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic face their final battle for the Office of the President. One of the more significant platforms pursued by Grabar-Kitarovic in her election campaign is “the return to where Franjo Tudjman stopped”.
“He (Tudjman) is a man who gathered us all around the idea of freedom and independent Croatia and, led by him, the Croatian people and all the citizens who fought for Croatia, our state was created and it’s now our duty to complete the work he started and take Croatia into prosperity,” she said in December 2014 at the 15th anniversary of Tudjman’s death.
When Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991 the communist Yugoslav Secret Police (KOS, UDBA) controlled a great deal and Croatia was faced with a brutal war of Serb/Yugoslav People’s Army aggression. This was the time just after the “Berlin Wall” came down, promising freedom and democracy to Eastern European countries that had been suffocated by Soviet-led or Soviet associated communist regime for decades, since WWII.
Franjo Tudjman, announcing paths to freedom from the Yugoslav communist regime and democracy for Croatia started the tearing down of the “Berlin Wall” that had existed within former Yugoslavia since WWII. In the early 1990s Croatians, led by Tudjman, along with Slovenians and eventually Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, turned towards West (while Serbia and Montenegro, along with those organised individuals in the other aforementioned Yugoslav states wanted communism to flourish, dug their vicious pro-communist heels in) and broke their ties with Yugoslavia, which was dominated by the Serbs. Most, but not all, from the Serbian minority in Croatia tried, with the help of the Yugoslav Army, to stop Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia. After several years of bloody armed struggle, Croatians managed to militarily defeat the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian rebel forces.
But this success of Croatian Homeland War veterans and their leadership was not to see uninterrupted the next phase that would entail putting into place all the necessary political, ideological, administrative and legislative actions within Croatia that would see Tudjman’s path for a truly democratic and prosperous Croatia in action. The viciously ardent communists, led by Stjepan Mesic, staged and aided an all-out war of vilification against Tudjman and Croatian Homeland War Generals, setting their sights on criminalising the war and equating the victim with the aggressor. As the new Croatian state was formed during the Homeland War, the former Yugoslav communist Secret Police was not dissolved, allegedly because the new Croatian leadership could not risk an ‘internal war’ with the remains of the totalitarian regime. At the time Tudjman was to support lustration – removing from higher office those who were operatives of the Yugoslav Secret Police – the chase to vilify him as an ultra-nationalist who participated in joint criminal enterprise against Serbs in Croatia picked up and constantly threw dust into the eyes of those who wanted to work on further and more profound democratic changes in Croatia. (It took 18 years for the International Criminal Tribunal of Former Yugoslavia to peel off this vilifying coat when in 2012 Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac were acquitted of crimes they were charge with as Generals of Tudjman’s army…)
By the year 2000 “reformed“ communists came to power in Croatia, both in Government led by Ivica Racan and in Presidency of Stjepan Mesic. Ivica Racan’s former Communist Party changed its name to “Social Democratic Party,” yet everything else remained the same. They kept their close relationships with the Serbian minority in Croatia and the Serbs in former Yugoslavia – with the same old communists in their respective positions of leadership. Stjepan Mesic, having been ousted as parliamentary speaker in 1994 by Tudjman on account of his vicious and vilifying attempts to oust Tudjman from power, had meandered through creating new political parties to acting as independent to stay in power and continue his work on burying the democracy Tudjman had set as Croatia’s goal.
Social Democrats and Mesic had pushed on with “drowning” Tudjman and Croatia’s Homeland War and resurrecting communist Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito along with suffocating the efforts to bring communist crimes perpetrated during the times of communist Yugoslavia to justice. Croatia’s current president Ivo Josipovic had picked up where his predecessor Mesic stopped and Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic where Racan’s government had stopped. Croatia had become a battleground where values of communist Yugoslavia were elevated above those of Tudjman, Homeland War and democracy and, hence, widespread corruption that has its roots in communist Yugoslavia continued to flourish no matter which political party was in government after year 2000.
“Instead of reforming the economy and cutting the government costs, Croatia continues to borrow and sell off national treasures, while increasing taxes. As of today Croatia is the EU member with the GST/VAT at 25%, and with the highest unemployment rate, especially among young professionals who increasingly seek relief from poverty and existential hopelessness abroad.
The Croatian media scene is dominated by the same people who used to glorify former dictator Tito. The current head of the national television, the “HRT,” is Goran Radman, himself the last president of Tito’s communist youth organization. This well-rehearsed team sends to jail or fires someone every week because of “corruption,” in order to distract people’s attention from the real problems. The vast majority of cases involve political opposition leaders.
The media is served a steady stream of “secret” witness depositions, demonstrating how the country is being robbed. At the same time the attention is drawn away from the real problems, concealing the fact that the fleecing of the country is carried out by the government itself.
Increased taxes, no investments, no encouragement for private investment projects, halting the funds earmarked by the EU – all this seems to be the hallmark of the Josipovic’ regime” writes Dan Rados of The Daily Caller in his thought-provoking article titled “Is Serbia controlling Croatia by blackmailing its president”.
All that and much more seems the hallmark of the politics of those who do not want a democratic and prosperous Croatia and they are those who remain loyal to the values of communist former-Yugoslavia. One wonders how much of this pro-communist Yugoslavia outlook has stopped Ivo Josipovic visiting again the protest-camp site outside Veterans’ Affairs ministry building in Zagreb where 100% war-invalids have been rallying for changes and rights since October 2014! I.e., aloof faced, Josipovic has visited the protesting veterans on 24 October and has done not a thing then or since then in attempting to truly listen to the suffering veterans, to create or help create a constructive dialogue and seems unperturbed by and deaf at the veterans’ plights. His excuse for failing to speak to the protesting veterans since late October is that he has invited them to visit him in his office! And this is the man who tries to tell the people that he too holds that independent Croatia of today is based on the values of Croatia’s Homeland War (as well as antifascist)! The communists of today, such as Josipovic, seem brazenly and spitefully determined not to let Croatian Homeland War veterans achieve fully an upper hand they deserve.
Throughout the campaigning for the presidency of Croatia it has been so refreshing to come across a candidate like Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic who, unlike Josipovic, emanates with democratic justice, providing for citizens’ and human rights for everyone based on the law of the country, due process and fairness. She is adamant in unifying the Croatian nation into working towards the goals set by Tudjman and, unlike Josipovic and the Social Democrat led government, appears to place Homeland War veterans above any former communist or antifascist crusader. With her victory on Sunday 11 January Croatia is surely to start breathing fairness and justice once again and the “Berlin Wall” will finally tumble down for Croatia just as it has many years ago for the other European countries adversely affected in the past by it. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Serb national and Australian citizen (who migrated to Australia at the age of 14) Dragan Vasiljkovic, 60, also known as Captain Dragan, who has lived in Australia under the name of Daniel Snedden, is a man wanted by Croatia on charges of war crimes committed during the 1990’s war. On Friday 15 May 2015 Dragan Vasiljkovic had finally, after close to a decade of utilising every legal avenue available to him, run out of all legal options to fight extradition to Croatia – the High Court of Australia denied Vasiljkovic the leave to appeal the orders for extradition that were confirmed last year.
In denying him a High Court appeal on Friday May 15, Justice Kenneth Hayne of High Court of Australia Melbourne Registry, said an appeal “would not enjoy sufficient chance of success“.

Vasiljkovic’s lawyers say his final hope now is a change of heart by the Australian government. There’s not much chance of that for the government had made decisions to extradite Vasiljkovic to Croatia before and the ABC news reports that the Australian government had issued a statement this week indicating it will be following through with extradition.

Vasiljkovic, who was arrested by Australian police in Sydney in January 2006, was charged with war crimes, including commanding troops that tortured and killed prisoners of war, commanding an assault on the Croatian town of Glina which saw civilians killed, and breaching the Geneva Convention during an assault northeast of Benkovac when civil buildings were damaged and ruined, Croatians were forced to leave their homes, their property robbed and civilians (among them was a foreign journalist) were wounded and killed; led a paramilitary unit that terrorised the local Croatian population and is alleged to have tortured prisoners of war in a medieval fortress near the town of Knin…

Denying the allegations against him, he had been fighting extradition while in prison in Australia, pending the outcomes of extradition to Croatia legal battles, saying that he will not be protected under the Geneva Convention if brought before a Croatian court; that he would not have a fair trial in Croatia.
Vasiljkovic’s Australian lawyers will reportedly be seeking that if extradited (which is a certainty as far as I can see) years spent in prison in Australia be counted in any sentencing discount in Croatia and that he will be safe if deported to stand trial in the capital city of Zagreb.
One thing he can count on is safety and fair trial for it is in the interest of his alleged victims that justice is done and Croatian judiciary is well aware of that. Furthermore, Croatian courts have had ample opportunities to deliver just verdicts and conduct fair trials in numbers of similar cases over the past decade or so.

It’s been reported that Vasiljkovic’s criminal rampage did not stop in Croatia, against Croats – he had Bosniaks in his sights too. In evidence, in 2009, before a defamation case Vasiljkovic (Snedden) had launched against The Australian newspaper (and lost the case), a Bosnian woman accused him of repeatedly raping her in Zvornik (close to Srebrenica), northern Bosnia, in 1992. The woman, who travelled to Sydney in April 2009 to testify in the NSW Supreme Court along with several Croatian men allegedly imprisoned and tortured by Vasiljkovic, identified him in court as the ”Captain Dragan” who repeatedly raped her and watched as other soldiers did so also.

In this landmark civil judgment, The Australian newspaper had in 2009 successfully defended the defamation action brought against it by Vasiljkovic – under the name Daniel Snedden – after the publication of an article in 2005 that detailed the horrors he was said to have committed in the former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) during the so-called Balkans conflict.
Nationwide News, publisher of The Australian newspaper, ran a de facto war crimes hearing in which it proved, on the balance of probabilities, the substantive truth of matters contained in the allegedly defamatory newspaper article.

Judge Megan Latham found December 18, 2009, Nationwide News had proven a raft of allegations made against Vasiljkovic, including that he repeatedly raped a woman in Zvornik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1992; that he had admitted committing a massacre in July 1991 to a journalist from London’s The Times; and that he had personally committed the war crime of torture as well as condoning such crimes by troops under his command.

“The systematic abuse, humiliation and deprivation visited upon those whom the plaintiff (Vasiljkovic) sought to punish and subdue at the Knin fortress, the old hospital prison and the Sremska Mitrovica prison, was consistent with (his) stated aim to drive out non-Serbs from the Krajina,” Justice Latham found in her judgment.
It was in his reactions to this defamation case and its findings that Graeme Blewitt, the former deputy chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said he was confident a fair trial could be conducted in Croatia given the number of similar cases heard in recent years.
According to The Australian, former war crimes prosecutors welcomed the 2009 defamation case verdict and demanded the Australian government find a way to prosecute Vasiljkovic should his extradition to Croatia not proceed.

But extradition will proceed. We no longer need to fret for justice and keep asking: will he or won’t he face the court to answer to the charges of atrocities in Croatia. Vasiljkovic was a most active paramilitary campaigner for the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina that terrorised, murdered, raped, tortured, ethnically cleansed, and pillaged a large section of Croatia, liberated in August 1995 in Operation Storm. Until a court verdict on alleged war crimes Captain Dragan remains a notorious figure of the 1990’s bloody and criminal attempts at extending the borders for “Greater Serbia” into Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Croatian veterans Djuro Glogoski (in wheelchair)
and Josip Klemm (pushing the wheelchair)
head to meet with Croatia’s Prime Minister
for the first time since the
veterans’ protest commenced more than 200 days ago
Photo: Index/Hina
June 2015

Last week, the Croatian veterans renewed their request for the government to create and publish a Register of Aggressors (against Croatia in early 1990’s) just as Veterans Register was created and published a couple of years ago. There are mixed feelings about this among Croats and those leaning towards nostalgia for communism and former Yugoslavia, or those who stand against lustration and processing of communist crimes, would have us believe that a Register of Aggressors places people suspected of war crimes (or those who aggressively rebelled against Croatian independence) into lifelong “suffering” linked to their name being on the list etc. Well, I would think that if a court clears a suspect of all charges then his/her name comes off the list. And if a person had been found guilty, then he/she deserve for their name to remain on that list, just like a criminal record of serious crimes remains.

Victims from Serb aggression against Croatia –
overwhelmingly too many!

The Croatian veterans would reportedly have Croatia’s rebel Serbs, including those who have been given amnesty by the late president Franjo Tudjman, on that list. One could safely say that the amnesty could have well prevented many a thorough investigation into criminal behaviour during the rebellion against Croatian independence and that there are those who did commit war crimes on the amnesty list from late 1990’s.
According to the General Forgiveness Act passed in Croatia in 1996, soldiers who participated in the military actions against Croatia cannot be criminally prosecuted, except if they had committed war crimes. In other words, one cannot be prosecuted for the act of taking part in war operations but can for acts of looting, rape, killing of civilians and other war crimes.
It’s rather amusing to watch the opponents to the Register of Aggressors, who have spent more than two decades wrongfully bad-mouthing and rubbishing Croatia’s first president, Franjo Tudjman, and now find themselves spinning accolades of praise for him for showing what they say great statesmanship in extending amnesty to rebel Serbs for their rebellion,

Franjo Tudjman, in late 1990’s, made some political concessions and compromises within the then international political currents, that were in the business of carving “justice” in Croatia and former Yugoslav territory, and extended amnesty from prosecution for rebellion against Croatia to thousands of Serbs who were active in the aggression against Croatia and many among them could have been rapists and killers. Such efforts (amnesty) were made, I understand, to achieve some peace, steps towards reconciliation … But they have not worked apart from adding to the excuses Serbs continue using in denying their aggression against Croatia (and Bosnia and Herzegovina)!
Those who support the Register of Aggressors claim that such a register would assist in information, evidence and fact gathering regarding any war crimes as well as assist with putting in motion court proceedings for them. They claim that it is both absurd and unfair to publish the Veterans’ Register and not the Aggressors’ one! Indeed, I would totally agree! After all Croatia would have no need to have the veterans proposing the Registry of the Aggressors were it not because of the aggressors who placed Croatia in the position to defend itself and its people from aggression.
Those against the register claim that its existence could result in people taking the law into their own hands, especially in smaller places, towns… Some who are against the register fear that the criteria for confirming the names to be included in the register may not be tight or objective enough. E.G., could two neighbours join forces and accuse someone of having been an aggressor just as people used to be accused as “elements against the state” in the former communist Yugoslavia.

Those against the Register may also argue that the very inclusion of a person’s name on the Register of Aggressors automatically labels him/her as “guilty until proven innocent”, which, of course, if that were the case, would be contrary to the Constitution. Those supporting the Register may argue that the inclusion of a person’s name in the Register of Aggressors does not and must not signify any guilt of any crime but is a list that compliments the records of Homeland War army, military or paramilitary operatives, i.e. the Aggressors were also military, paramilitary or army operatives just as those whose names are on the Veterans’ Register are.

A question should also be asked: should the amnesty given in 1996 now be revoked?

Sound reason would say – yes! It’s causing grief and unrest incessantly – there is a difference between forgiveness and justice. Justice must come and forgiveness may or may not – it is the prerogative of the victim to forgive or not! Absolutely! We can urge and encourage a victim to forgive his/her aggressor, killer, rapist… but we cannot force the victim to forgive against his/her will. It is human to forgive but it is also human not to! The aggressor, killer, rapist…should ask for forgiveness if forgiveness is to be given but Croatian rebel Serbs have not asked for it and continue denying their rebellion as wrong even if it did cost almost insurmountable devastation.
Some journalists and politicians in Croatia think that an Aggressors Register is an absurdity because the rebel Serbs from 1990’s cannot pose any threat to Croatia any longer!
Rubbish!
Croatian Serbs have still, after hundreds of years, not accepted Croatia as their home but in many ways gravitate toward Belgrade. But let’s say such observations may be seen biased so, let’s look at the Public Report for 2015 (PDF version here) issued a couple of days ago by the Croatian Security & Intelligence Agency (SOA): according to this report Croatia still has serious security issues with the Serbian Chetnik movement that commits its activities towards achieving a Greater Serbia. These ideals were the ones that murdered and ethnically cleansed non-Serbs frantically in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990’s war of Serb aggression. Every single follower or supporter of such a movement must stay on a “watch list” and Aggressors’ Register is one of those, as far as I’m concerned.

The SOA Public Report 2015 in Chapter 11 on Extremism says: “ Organisations and followers of Chetnik movements continue to be active in the states around us but also wider. In this, there are contacts maintained with the like-minded people in the Republic of Croatia as well as with other organisations and individuals with Greater Serbia ideological platforms.”
Here, one could say, is a very credible, valid and legitimate foundation for the creation of the Register of Aggressors!

“…You have no right to forget your past, because the nation that forgets has no future. However, you should not remember it for revenge, but for peace…”, is one of the strong messages given by Pope Francis in Sarajevo on June 6.
Funny thing about this is that some Croatian journalists wrongly think that Aggressors’ Register should not be created because it suggests revenge and lingering of urges for revenge.

Well, no – even Pope Francis knows that to achieve complete peace the wrongdoers must be held to account, justice has due process and that indeed often involves punishment, which is not the same as revenge.
So next time, someone writes that rebel Serbs of 1990’s no longer pose a threat to Croatia, turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to that – and support the Register of Aggressors! Support the Croatian veterans in this! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Luka Misetic
Photo: Davor Puklavec/PIXSELL

Well, July was a disquieting month for justice at the UN Security Council. Serbia’s lobby with Russia had resulted in Russia’s veto on the British instigated motion to call the 1995 Srebrenica massacres genocide! And so, the verdicts delivered by the UN Security Council appointed International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) officially became as valuable and as respected as a veto of one member state of the Security Council is worth! Denials can take one far these days, it seems!

In line with the appalling Serb denials of genocide and the horrendous crimes they committed in the aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1990’s it was to be expected that Croatian Serbs and their wicked supporters were going to stage some outrageous display of denials ahead of the 20th Anniversary of Operation Storm that liberated Croatia from Serb occupation and aggression in August of 1995; just as they did with the 20th commemoration of Srebrenica genocide in July.

And so, it came – the ugly beast of denials, political corruption, lies and attempts to pervert the truth in the form of launching an interactive narrative named “Storm in the Hague” (webpage)! Those responsible for this launch on Friday 31 July 2015 in Zagreb, Croatia, are the Documenta association in Croatia (an organisation supposedly dealing with confronting the truth of history but in reality twists that history to promote bias and lies against Croatia), the Serbian National Council (led by Milorad Pupovac) and, as I and multitudes see it, the ultimately biased and politically corrupt SENSE Agency – Centre for transitional justice.

The ICTY concluded the following:
1. There was no Joint Criminal Enterprise from the Croatian side.
2. Krajina Serbs were not deported from Croatia by the Croatian
authorities but left Croatia out of other reasons
not associated with any Croatian officials’
illegal behaviour;
3. Not only that the Croatian authorities did not permit crimes
against
Serbs and Serbs’ property,
but they were actively
against those crimes;
4. It’s confirmed that 20,000 houses were not burned
after Operation Storm. The number is probably closer to 5,000,
and that, in both Sectors, North and South.
5. The judgment has found that a total of 44 civilians
were killed by the Croatian forces, not 320 as the Prosecution claimed,
not 600 as HHO claimed and
especially not 2,000 as claimed by „Veritas“ i Savo Strbac.
6. There were no politics of non-investigation of crimes by the Croatian
authorities.
7. The housing laws after Operation Storm were not
in a collision with the international humanitarian law.

Many in Croatia and abroad consider (rightfully) that the interactive narrative “Storm in the Hague” is an attempt to belittle and nullify the ICTY Appeal Chamber verdict of 16 November 2012 in the case of Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, which had found that as far as the Croatian war efforts were concerned there was no Joint Criminal Enterprise, no excessive artillery shelling and no ethnic cleansing of Serbs.

I would think that the saddest thing about this twisting of the final verdict in the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to suit the Serb denials of crimes and their aggression is that the Croatian taxpayers fund to a large extent the work of these organisations that twist the truth

Mr Luka Misetic, Ante Gotovina’s US based defense lawyer at the ICTY trial promptly addressed on his blog and in the Croatian media concerning and disquieting aspects of this launch of the interactive narrative “Storm in the Hague”. I have translated into the English language Mr Misetic’s address and here it is:

“Today (31st July), in Croatia, there was a SENSE Agency and Serbian National Council launch of the presentation “Storm in the Hague”. As it was to be expected the presentation purposefully covers up that which the Hague Tribunal found in its judgments in the case of Gotovina (Ante Gotovina, Croatian General).

HOW DID THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL ANSWER TO ALL THESE QUESTIONS?
1. Were Serbs deported from Croatia?
2. Did the Croatian authorities purposefully permit crimes such as murders, plunder and arson in order to deny the Serbs the possibility of returning to Croatia?
3. Were there more than 20,000 homes burned after Storm in the Southern part of the liberated territory?
4. Did the Croatian forces kill more than 600 Serbs during and after Operation Storm?
5. Did the Croatian judicial authorities and the police practice the politics of non-investigation of crimes?
6. Have illegally discriminatory housing laws been introduced?
7. Finally, did the Joint Criminal Enterprise exist in Croatia?

1. WERE SERBS DEPORTED FROM CROATIA?

Firstly, we need to correct some misunderstandings regarding the Trial Chamber judgment in which General Gotovina received a 24 year prison sentence. The Tribunal had concluded that Krajina Serbs were deported ONLY from 4 towns: Knin, Benkovac, Obrovac and Gracac. So, only from those four places.

The Tribunal had concluded that Serb civilians from all other places in the so-called Krajina had left Croatia out of other reasons not associated with any illegal treatmen by the Croatian authorities. Those legal reasons for leaving were:
• “Serbian Republic of Krajina” officials had called upon the population to leave the areas (Trial Chamber judgment paragraph 1762);
• The fear of aggression usually associated with armed conflict (Trial Chamber judgment paragraph 1762);
• Generalised fear from the Croatian forces and disstrust in Croatian authorities (Trial Chamber judgment paragraph 1762); and
• The fact that other Serbs were leaving had caused the effect of some civilians deciding to leave with them (Trial Chamber judgment paragraph 1754, 1762).

Hence, the Hague Tribunal had even in its Trial Chamber judgment found that a huge majority of Serb population from the so-called Krajina had left Croatia out of its own reasons, and that the Croatian authorities were not responsible for that. Only the four said towns were questionable for the Trial Chamber.
2. DID THE CROATIAN AUTHORITIES PERMIT CRIMES:

The Trial Chamber had explicitly rejected the claims that the Croatian authorities had purposefully permitted crimes such as arson, plunder and killings in order to deny the Serbs the possibility of return:

2321. The Trial Chamber found that the common objective of the so-called Criminal enterprise did not amount to, or involve the commission of the crimes of persecution (disappearances of people, wanton destruction, plunder, murder, inhumane acts, cruel treatment, and unlawful detentions), destruction of property, plunder, murder, inhumane acts, and cruel treatment.

Moreover, the Court tribunal did not only find that Croatia did not permit such crimes, but it also found that the Croatian leadership had actively opposed the perpetration of such criminal acts:

2313. However, the evidence, in particular the statements made at meetings and in public reviewed in chapters 6.2.2-6.2.5, does not
indicate that members of the Croatian political and military leadership intended that property inhabited or owned by Krajina Serbs should be destroyed or plundered. Further, it does not indicate that these acts were initiated or supported by members of the leadership. Rather, the evidence includes several examples of meetings and statements (see for example D409, P470, and D1451), indicating that the leadership, including Tudjman, disapproved of the destruction of property. Based on the foregoing, the Trial Chamber does not find that destruction and plunder were within the purpose of the joint criminal enterprise.

3. Were 20,000 homes burned in the South Sector?

This claim was thoroughly discredited at the hearing. This hypothesis, which has constantly been repeated in the past 15 years, is based upon wrong claims made in the 1999 report by the HHO (Croatian Helsinki Committee) on Operation Storm in which HHO claimed that the Canadian General Alain Forand, UN forces chief commander based in Knin, stated that 22,000 houses were burned in the South Sector. The reality is that Forand stated that a total of 22,000 houses in South Sector were inspected, and not that they were burned. The truth regarding the number of burned houses in the liberated area is most likely closer to the report by the UN General Secretary in December 1995: about 5,000 of houses and stables in Sectors North and South were burned after Operation Storm.
4. Did the Croatian forces kill 600 civilians during and after Operation Storm?

This also is a usual claim perpetuated all the time in the media. However, the Prosecution had claimed that about 320 civilians were killed in Sector South, and not 600. The Trial Chamber had found that out of these 320, 44 were killed by members of the Croatian armed forces. The number of Serb civilians killed by Croatian forces is closer to 44 than 600.

5. Did the Croatian judicial authorities and police practice the politics of non-investigation of crimes?

The Court Tribunal had rejected this allegation, which is being repeated in the media all the time, even today, and, after the Appeal decision. In paragraph 2203 of its judgment the Trial Chamber found the following:

The evidence reviewed indicates that some investigatory efforts were made, but with relatively few results. Moreover, there are
indications in the evidence that at the political level, these efforts were motivated at least in part by a concern for Croatia’s international standing rather than by genuine concern for victims. In light of the testimony of expert Albiston, the Trial Chamber considers that the insufficient response by the Croatian law enforcement authorities and judiciary can to some extent be explained by the abovementioned obstacles they faced and their need to perform other duties in August and September 1995. In conclusion, while the evidence indicates incidents of purposeful hindrance of certain investigations, the Trial Chamber cannot positively establish that the Croatian authorities had a policy of non-investigation of crimes committed against Krajina Serbs during and following Operation Storm in the Indictment area.
These are the main findings of the Trial Chamber. As we all know, some parts of this judgment have remained disputable given that General Gotovina was sentenced to 24 years (and General Markac to 18) due to Trial Chamber’s conclusion that General Gotovina had executed illegal artillery attacks against the towns of Knin, Benkovac, Obrovac and Gracac.

That’s why we needed to wait for the final verdict by the Appeals Chamber regarding the disputed matters left from the Trial Chamber judgment, and that final judgment arrived on 16 November 2012. (Acquitting the Croatian generals of all charges).

Appeals Chamber verdict

6 and 7. Joint Criminal Enterprise and housing laws

There was no Joint Criminal Enterprise on the Croatian side. The Appeal Chamber had quashed Trial Chamber judgment on that count, concluding that the Krajina Serbs were not deported from Knin, Benkovac, Obrovac and Gracac, and with that, the Croatian authorities did not deport the Krajina Serbs nor did the Joint Criminal Enterprise involving the Croatian leadership, especially Franjo Tudjman, Gojko Susak, Zvonimir Cervenko, Ante Gotovina, Jure Radic and Mladen Markac – exist.

Furthermore, after the Appeal Chamber verdict, it can be concluded that the Croatian leadership did not pass discriminatory housing laws after Operation Storm (see firstly the Government regulation and then the Temporary assumption and administration of certain property Act/Government Gazette NN 073/1995). That is, the Trial Chamber had found that those housing laws were in breach of the international law as they were introduced after the Serbs from Knin, Benkovac, Obrovac and Gracac were deported from Croatia. However, given that the Appeals Chamber had quashed the finding that the Serbs were displaced, that is deported, the conclusion that housing laws passed after Operation Storm were in contravention of the international humanitarian law must also be quashed.

Croatia’s Capital Zagreb
Prepares For The 20 Anniversary
Of Operation Storm and
Liberation From Serb Occupation
Military Parade and Celebrations of Independence
to be held 4th August 2015
Photo: FAH

TO SUMMARISE

The ICTY concluded the following:

1. There was no Joint Criminal Enterprise from the Croatian side.

2. Krajina Serbs were not deported from Croatia by the Croatian authorities but left Croatia out of other reasons not associated with any Croatian officials’ illegal behaviour;

3. Not only that the Croatian authorities did not permit crimes against Serbs and Serbs’ property, but they were actively against those crimes;

4. It’s confirmed that 20,000 houses were not burned after Operation Storm. The number is probably closer to 5,000, and that, in both Sectors, North and South.

5. The judgment has found that a total of 44 civilians were killed by the Croatian forces, not 320 as the Prosecution claimed, not 600 as HHO claimed and especially not 2,000 as claimed by „Veritas“ i Savo Strbac.

6. There were no politics of non-investigation of crimes by the Croatian authorities.

7. The housing laws after Operation Storm were not in a collision with the international humanitarian law.”

Written and Translated from the Croatian language by Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb), B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

5 August 2015
20th Anniversary of Operation Storm
Croatian victory over Serb aggressor
Monumental statue in honour of
Franjo Tudjman, first president of Croatia
Photo: Hrvoje Jelavic/PIXSELL

Today, 5th August 2015 is the 20th Anniversary of the Operation Storm, of liberation of Croatia, which put an end to the bloody and brutal Serb aggression and Croatia was liberated on that day from Serb occupation! While Serbs and Serbia will and have come out with barrages of denials of their own crimes of aggression, painting themselves as victims rather than aggressors – just as they did when 20th Anniversary of Srebrenica genocide was marked last month – Croatia is filled with pride at its achievements, bravery and independence.

Monumental statue to
Franjo Tudjman at Knin
Croatia

Today, 20 years after the hard won victory over the Serb aggressor Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman, who led Croatia into independence and democracy, secession from communist Yugoslavia received a greatest gift of gratitude: a monumental statue of him and a monumental honour to his name were unveiled at the town of Knin, the centre of the Croatian territory Serbs occupied during the war and ethnically cleansed of all Croats and non-Serbs by mid-1992.

“On this place, on 6th August 1995,
dr Franjo Tudjman, the First President Of Croatia,
victoriously kissed the Croatian flag
and said these words:
We have Croatia.”
Words inscribed at base
of monument in Knin

The base of the monumental statue of Franjo Tudjman in Knin is solid weight of stone that says:
“On this place, on 6th August 1995, dr Franjo Tudjman, the First President Of Croatia, victoriously kissed the Croatian flag and said these words: We have Croatia.”

20th Anniversary of Operation Storm
Liberation of Croatia
Military Parade to honour
the fallen, the brave and liberty

President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic
greets the military parade participants from army vehicle
4th August 2015
Photo: Pixsell

Yesterday, on Tuesday 4th August, a Croatian Army parade was held in the capital Zagreb to mark the 20th anniversary of Operation Storm and victory over the Serb aggressor, with 3,000 participants marching through the centre of the city, with spirits high and cheers and deep respect for those whose life was lost in the defence of the homeland, freedom and democracy. This parade was the first part of the official celebrations held in Croatia, the second part is being held in the heroic town of Knin today, as I said, where battles for freedom and liberation of occupied territory were led in August 1995with utmost determination to be free of the scourge of communism Serb aggression represented.

Crowds celebrate victory in
Zagreb Croatia
4th August 2015
Photo: AA

The joy of victory
Zagreb Croatia
20th Anniversary of Operation Storm
Photo: AA

Croatian war wounded veterans observe the military parade and say about the participants: "they are our pride" Zagreb 4th August 2015

Croatian war wounded veterans
observe the military parade
and say about the participants:
“you are our pride”
Zagreb
4th August 2015

In attendance at the Army parade in Zagreb were Croatia’s top leadership including President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic who inspected the procession before ordering the start of the parade, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic, Minister for defence Ante Kotromanovic, almost all government ministers, political elite and the not so elite, thousands of citizens and war veterans.
Members of historical detachments in colourful uniforms, coming from all parts of Croatia, attracted special attention by the audience. Croatian cadets and members of allied countries drew wide smiles from the onlookers and revellers.

Croatian military parade
20th Anniversary of Operation Storm
historical detachments marched also
Photo: Screenshot HRT news

20 Anniversary of Croatian victory
over Serb aggressor
Photo: Screenshot HRT news

20th Anniversary of victory and liberty
in Croatia
4th August 2015
Photo: Screenshot HRT news

The centerpiece of the artistic program was the performance of the national anthem “Our Beautiful Homeland” by a 12-year-old girl Mia Negovetic and the Croatian Navy “Sveti Juraj” (Saint George) a cappella band.

12-year-old Mia Negovetic
touched everybody’s heart
singing the Croatian national anthem
“Our Beautiful Homeland”
at the 20th Anniversary of Operation Storm
military parade
Photo: Josip Kopi/MORH/PIXSELL

HAPPY VICTORY, HAPPY LIBERTY – CROATIA! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Bilingual signs with Serbian Cyrillic
Removed from Vukovar’s public buildings
Photo: G. Panic

This is a big move towards making solid steps for peace and healing of victims of Serb aggression and atrocities against Croats and non-Serbs in Vukovar in the early 1990’s. Those who oppose the “step” will call it by any other name except one that has even a tiny bit of positiveness in it; they will call it recist, denial of human rights, denial of minority rights and such.

The Vukovar City Council on Monday 17 August 2015 adopted amendments to the city Statute as per August 2014 Constitutional Court ruling that handed instructions to determine, within one year, in which of the city’s neighbourhoods bilingual signs can be displayed.
In the amendments the City Council of Vukovar voted constitute changes of the Statute of the city so that it no longer provides for the existence of bilingual signs, and Cyrillic alphabet, on the city’s and government institutions, squares and streets. The changes were adopted on the initiative of the Croatian Democratic Union/HDZ, the leading party in Vukovar local government. Serbian political representatives and the Councillors of the Social Democratic Party, the strongest party in the national government, unsuccessfully opposed the decision.
For a couple of years now much has happened in Vukovar with protests against bilingual (Croatian and Serbian) signs on public buildings and streets etc. Bilingual signs containing Serb Cyrillic were systematically pulled down, smashed and generally rejected by the Croats living in Vukovar. The Committee for the defence of Croatian Vukovar and their supporters, who represent the victims of Serb mass murders, rapes, destruction say that Cyrillic symbolically represents the utter terror and the horror inflicted upon innocent Croats in Vukovar as they went about seceding from communist Yugoslavia, seeking through democratic peaceful processes their freedom and democracy.

As was expected Serbia and some of Croatia’s antifascist riff-raff have protested against these amendments in Vukovar City Statute and have called them racist as well as denying human rights to minorities. Their protest also touches upon the decision in these amendments of the Statute of Vukovar to introduce charges of 3 Euro for any council document issued in Cyrillic at special request by an applicant.

Vukovar’s people who are behind the moves against the Serbian Cyrillic on public buildings, streets etc. and the councillors of the ruling coalition defended the amendments to the Statute which were proposed by city mayor Ivan Penava (HDZ) and all of these supporters continue seeking and calling for a new census. The last census, they say, was fraudulent and had many more Serbs who lived in Serbia, not Vukovar, recorded as living in Vukovar. Busloads of people from Serbia had come to Vukovar at time of census, falsely declared their residence there and then after went back to Serbia. All this in efforts to make-up the necessary minimum of 34% of population in a place needed to introduce bilingual signage on public buildings etc.! If that percentage is based on fraud – and all evidence argued and provided to the public so far seems to point that way – then those councillors in Vukovar that reject accepting that fraudulent census result as its benchmark for the introduction of bilingual signage are absolutely in the right!

There has been no information yet on how the government will react to the amendments made to Vukovar’s Statute, to the complaints made by the Serb Ethnic Minority Council and criticism coming out of Serbia calling the Vukovar council’s move racist, and in breach of human rights of minorities.

As regards Cyrillic signs in Vukovar the government has the possibility to directly enforce laws, bypassing the city statute, but the question is how much that would be in line with the ruling of the Constitutional Court instructing the government to propose to the parliament, within a period of one year, amendments to the Law on the Use of Languages and Scripts of Ethnic Minorities, including mechanisms for cases when local self-government bodies obstruct the right to bilingualism.

Along with the Serb Ethnic Minority Council of Vukovar, also dissatisfied with the amendments to the Vukovar City Statute is the Serb National Council (SNV), whose leaders on Monday described them as unconstitutional and unlawful and said that they would notify the relevant institutions in Croatia, as well as the EU, the Council of Europe and the UN.

They can write to EU and UN “till the cows come home” but they have no case! Vukovar council decision was in respect of human rights: those of the victims!

Besides, Tove Ernst, European Commission Press Officer, reportedly said to Serbia’s news agency Tanjug and responding to a plea to the European Commission to comment on the abolition of the Cyrillic alphabet in Croatian city of Vukovar: “the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU bans discrimination based on minority status. However, the Commission has no overall authority with regard to minorities, especially in relation to the issue of recognition of the status of minorities, their self-determination and autonomy, and the use of regional or minority languages.” According to her, the Member States retain a general power to make decisions about minorities and the provisions of the Charter of fundamental rights concern the EU Member States only when they implement EU laws.
The Vukovar Council said it supported full application of the Constitutional Law on the Rights of Ethnic Minorities and the Law on the Use of Minority Languages and Scripts and warned that minority rights must not depend on daily politics. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Psychological Operations And Information Warfare Against Croatia And Croats – Part III

Guest Post
By Ante Horvat

Wartime Foreign Information Warfare against Croatia, Croats and the Truth

De-Croatization Under the Slogan of De-Tudmanization

The Information War Against General Ante Gotovina

http://mprofaca.cro.net/poa.html

Next Post: Psychological Operations And Information Warfare Against Croatia And Croats – Part IV: Foreign Intelligence Agencies, Capabilities, and Croatia

Psychological Operations and Information Warfare Against Croatia and Croats – Part IV

Guest Post
By Ante Horvat

Foreign Intelligence Agencies, Capabilities, and Croatia

About Celebrating Croatia’s Independence

Boka Cropress: What does celebrating 10th April mean to you?

Boka CroPress: When we talk about or mention the WWII Independent State of Croatia, how do we place ourselves in relation to the crimes that were perpetrated then?

Boka Cropress: What is the main message for the young generation in relation to the celebration of the historic 10 April?

Croatia: End Sexual Violence In Conflict – Get Minister Vesna Pusic Out Of Project

Psychological Operations And Information Warfare Against Croatia and Croats – Part V

Guest Post
By Ante Horvat

———————————

Part VI – The next installment will look the new and subtle English-language information warfare against Croatia, subsidized by allies no less.

Croatian Veterans Demanding Due Dignity Condemn Governance

Croatia: Antifascists Vilify Veterans To The Disgrace Of The Nation

Croatia: No-Serbian Cyrillic On Public Buildings Gains Meritorious Momentum

Croatia: Goodbye Violeta-Vicky, The Heroine Of Freedom

Croatia Thanks The Veterans For Freedom And Dawn Of Democracy

Croatia: Hard-Won Independence

Croatian Woman Veteran Dies Rallying For War-Invalids’ Rights

Croatia: WWII Communist Partisans Are Not Your Heroes – Homeland War Veterans Are

18 November – Croats Mourn Deeply

Croatia: With Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic “Berlin Wall” To Finally Tumble Down

Accused War Criminal Fails Last Ditch Effort To Avoid Extradition To Croatia

Croatian Veterans Vie For Register Of Aggressors

Croatia: Luka Misetic Responds As Serb Denials Of Crimes Take New Form

Happy Victory, Happy Liberty – Croatia!

Reverence For Croatian Victims Of Serb Aggression: Vote Trashes Use Of Serbian Cyrillic In Vukovar

Guest Post By Ante Horvat

Wartime Foreign Information Warfare against Croatia, Croats and the Truth

De-Croatization Under the Slogan of De-Tudmanization

The Information War Against General Ante Gotovina

Next Post: Psychological Operations And Information Warfare Against Croatia And Croats – Part IV: Foreign Intelligence Agencies, Capabilities, and Croatia

Guest Post By Ante Horvat

Foreign Intelligence Agencies, Capabilities, and Croatia

Boka Cropress: What does celebrating 10th April mean to you?

Boka CroPress: When we talk about or mention the WWII Independent State of Croatia, how do we place ourselves in relation to the crimes that were perpetrated then?

Boka Cropress: What is the main message for the young generation in relation to the celebration of the historic 10 April?

Guest Post By Ante Horvat

———————————

Part VI – The next installment will look the new and subtle English-language information warfare against Croatia, subsidized by allies no less.

Guest Post
By Ante Horvat

Guest Post
By Ante Horvat

Guest Post
By Ante Horvat