by Petar Doric
While the CNN has been playing Christiane Amanpour's report in which there is more blood on the screen than collocutors, in the MIA they are still writing statements such as: "Croatian authorities immediately started the investigation of all circumstances..." It seems that the real situation is completely different and that the MIA is trying to cover up as much as possible all crimes committed during the "Storm."
Two persons related to the victims of the massacre in Varivode, who were at the place of the massacre on Friday 9/29/95, when the mass execution of the villagers occurred, told Feral about their encounter with the "enlightening investigation." For obvious reasons we agreed not to reveal their identity.
" I was told ironically that the food I was taking to the elderly villagers," said S.Z. (initials have also been changed), "wouldn't possibly be delivered 'neither a little later, nor tomorrow, nor ever again'. It was suggested that I should leave since 'there was nothing for me to do'. I saw an elderly woman with the policemen; she had been hurt with a knife by looters seven days before, so I thought that the worst had happened and turned the car and headed away from Varivode. I went to Tonci Majic from the Dalmatian Committee for Protection of Human Rights and made a list of all people who had lived in Varivode during my previous visit to the village."
The MIA stories about "timely informations given to the public" are therefore inaccurate, since the story about the murders in Varivode became public already on Friday 9/29/95, when the above mentioned list was forwarded to the Croatian Helsiki Committee (CHC) and the president of one of the parties represented in the parliament; the party president the following day requested information from the minister Ivan Jarnjak. The MIA's first press release about the massacre in Varivode, made public on 10/2/95, was preceded by the CHC's report and the beginning of the investigation by the civilian UHPF [United Nations Protection Force] police. In the early morning hours on Monday 10/2/95, MIA patrol cars were passing through Varivode while the reporters from Feral and Associated Press, escorted by the UNPF were taking pictures of the traces of the massacre in the village houses. Croatian civilian police wasn't trying to intervene, but seeing that there was no point in trying to hide the massacre, issued a press release ten hours later.
Feral's collocutors J.B. and S.Z. claimed that after numerous conversations over the phone with the remaining relatives of the massacred villagers from Varivode, they managed to reconstruct a part of what had happened immediately after the massacre. Contrary to the MIA's report, the civilian police wasn't informed about the massacre by Bojanka Milosevic but by 70-years-old Mara Dukic, who at the time of the massacre was in Varivode. She, therefore, as Feral's collocutors stated, had heard the shots in the neighborhood; she sneaked out of her house, spent the night in a forest and the following morning stopped the first civilian car and informed the police about everything. After that, she didn't wait for an inspector on duty but contacted her relatives and found refuge in "one of the larger Croatian cities".
On the other hand, our sources mentioned that Bojanka Milosevic, described by the police as "the person who informed the authorities about the murders" had left the village several years before the Serb occupation of Krajina and has been living elsewhere since then. She was found in Varivode only after the end of the "Storm".
S.Z. said that she is a widow of one of the soldiers of the self-proclaimed Republic of Srpska Krajina, who had been attacked with a knife and lightly wounded a week before the massacre by a group of looters of abandoned and not abandoned serb houses. One shouldn't be surprised that the MIA "chose" this person, who can "easily be discredited" (it is not necessary to comment the current social climate) for the main witness for the public. Bojanka Milosevic stated in Slobodna Dalmacija: "Police was very helpful; they were protecting me the whole night and gave me chocolate."
The village of Varivode was as the rest of the territory of Krajina, completely looted at least three to four weeks before the mass murder of the elderly villagers. On the day on which the crime occured, hardly anything of value could have been found in the village to back up the MIA's claim that the motive for the crime was "most likely greed."
Indeed, what if the crime in Varivode was committed by the members of the Croatian Army (or the Croatian Defense Council [Bosnian Croat militia])? In case that the crime was committed by one of the "out of control" units, the MIA could indeed persistently keep repeating that it has done "everything in its power", or "everything it is competent to do". The Ministry of Defense hasn't been mentioned so far in this case, so they haven't shamed themselves with public statements like the MIA.
Be as it may, the fact remains that nine absolutely innocent people were killed. Anyway, UNPF keeps insisting on "at least" nine; everything happened in the territory full of military and civilian policemen, who are still assiduously stopping all "unusual" vehicles, meaning those with valid civilian number plates, even if they don't have a "press" sign.