used without permission, for "fair use" only

Who Slaughters Over There

by Ada Mandic

ARKzin, Zagreb, Croatia, March 15 1996

(...)Two years ago, it wasn't pleasant to walk around Germany as a Serb; recently the same fate has befallen the rest of us. How come we are suddenly hearing about "Croatian nationalists"? Of course, Croats haven't always been celebrated in the German media for their democratic behavior, but the main news programs of the German television, as if they were consulting Croatian television, never made a mistake of confusing "the victim and the aggressor". When the "Croatia at home and abroad" was, with all available means, struggling for the recognition of an independent state, it was never said that this was the desire of "kroatischen Nationalisten" but of generic "Kroaten"... Of course, this formulation was aided by the results of a referendum (in which, by the way, no one asked Croatian citizens whether they supported war and ethnic cleansing, but whether they were for Milosevic's Yugoslavia or democratic Croatia in which all citizens would have equal rights), so why don't we organize a referendum in western Mostar and find out who the nationalists are and how many of them are there.

The fact that dismissals from work, evictions from apartments and other methods of pressure and so called soft ethnic cleansing in Croatia never found space in official German news programs during the war and horrible massacres in Bosnia isn't surprising; however, even the pictures of the Serb exodus from Krajina were not sufficient to call the gathered Croat citizens , who were seeing off the refugees with curses and gloating, "nationalists"; the majority of commentators emphasized that, well, the poor Serbs were getting back what they had dished out to others, that they were being expelled because they had expelled others; the end of the sentence, "it serves them well" could have been surmised by any viewer. Croats earned the horrible offense, that they are "nationalists" (there is no German who can find in that word anything positive) and on top of that "incited" (by the west Mostar mayor), only after they thoroughly shook up Koschnick's [former European Union administrator of Mostar, from Germany] car! I suppose that that expression among other emphasizes that the hateful faces of our compatriots shown in close up during the blockade of Koschnick's limousine and threatening howls do not represent the whole Croatian nation but only those mischievous "kroatische Nationalisten" who were not really serious because they had been incited by sly politicians.

Why I Abducted Koschnick

I know that I should be grateful to German television for an attempt to differentiate , but since I've heard these years enough praises from my German friends for belonging to a small, courageous nation who is tenaciously defending against the more numerous and better armed enemy (hmm, where have I heard this before?), and that that approach was unquestionable regardless of what I said or thought, I am aware that the Germans, from now on, will blame me for abducting Koschnick the same way they used to congratulate me the signing of the Dayton Agreement. According to the local criteria, we are not nationalists as long as we are fighting the Serbs and, regardless of what we do, we can never get sufficient revenge for all the evil they had inflicted on us (German and Croatian official version are the same up to this point, although the German version is somewhat convoluted and interspersed with various warnings against human rights violations which no one takes seriously anyway). When we are fighting Muslims, we are "small" nationalists because we are endangering the federation founded to be a "counterweight to Serbs", as one of the commentators on the local television clearly explained; however, only when confront Koschnick, that is Germans, we definitively prove our nationalism.

Of course, those who call Koschnick's abductors nationalists are right, but in this case they are more than late. Why is it easy to recognize Croatian nationalism in 1996 but it wasn't visible in 1991 when it was much more obvious and louder than today? Croats, actually "kroatische Nationalisten", are only consistently continuing the same policy which has been conducted since the first democratic elections (in which those nationalists gained the right to represent us other Croats), and that is the formation of an ethnically cleansed state. Croats who are shaking Koschnick's limousine and appear through the revealing eye of an camera as terrible, bloodthirsty butchers, are not any more civilized nor worse than those who gathered at the start of the nineties at "mass rallies" of certain Croatian parties at which one could hear the worst nationalist slogans. Of course, that national euphoria was shown from "birds eye view", from which enormous masses of patriots waving flags do appear magnificent; in close up those masses, unfortunately, did not look any more "lyrical" than those who assaulted Mostar administrator. We shall see whether German "late awakening" (if indeed that is what we are talking about) is better than nothing; we also need to find out whether the citizens of Mostar were indeed incited or not. If they were, then we will hear from Germans how "politicians are inciting people" and how Koschnick as recently as yesterday "drank coffee" with Croats, only to have them try to kill him the next day.

translated on 8/5/96