Gone With the Fire

The order labeled "military secret, strictly confidential", sent on October 24, 1991, from the Military Headquarters of the Defense Forces of Eastern Slavonija and Baranja to Genral Miljenko Crnjac is almost identical to the order of the Pozega Crisis Headquarters about the evacuation of 26 villages, which were later looted and burnt down. The order includes the shocking instruction: all individuals found on the evacuated territory after a 48 hours deadline "can be shot at without warning by the units of the Croatian Army and the Police"

by Drago HEDL

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, February 10, 2001

The members of the Crisis Headquarters of Pozega who in late October 1991 issued the evacuation order for 26 local villages, exclusively or mostly with Serb residents, which were after the evacuation and military operations burnt to the ground (about which Feral wrote in the previous issue) were not unanimous regarding the need for such an action. According to what Feral has managed to discover so far, the idea about the evacuation of Serb villages originated with General Miljenko Crnjac, the commander of the 123rd Brigade of the Croatian Army, who, probably in agreement with some of the members of the Crisis Headquarters, decided to empty the villages with Serb inhabitants. This is claimed by Karl Gorinsek, at the time the commander of the Defense Forces of Eastern Slavonija and Baranja (later Operation Zone Osijek), and today one of the leaders of the Liberal Party.

In the meantime, Feral obtained another document that has so far on several occasions been mentioned in connection with the evacuation of 26 villages which involves General Karl Gorinsek directly in that story. That document, so far not known to the general public, is almost identical to the evacuation order. The document is entitled "The order for the removal of civilian population from the territory engulfed by war" and was faxed from the Headquarters of the Defense Forces of Eastern Slavonija and Baranja on October 24, 1991 to the commander of the 123rd Brigade of the Croatian Army, Miljenko Crnjac, and as information to the Chiefs of Staff of the Croatian Army, the Crisis Headquarters of the Slavonska Pozega Municipality and the Police station Slavonski Brod.

Shoot Without Warning

The order, labeled "military secret, strictly confidential" which mentions at its end the name of the at the time commander, Colonel Karl Gorinsek and the code 'n uth' differs from the order later printed and plastered in the local villages by the Crisis Headquarters of the Slavonska Pozega Municipality in only a few details. The Crisis Headquarters order, unlike that of the East Slavonija and Baranja Defense Forces, includes the village of Oljasi, which was obviously later placed by someone on the list. Furthermore, the Defense Forces order states that presidents of crisis headquarters in the mentioned villages and local communes should be informed about the order and that "personal wishes of the residents of the villages should be taken into account during the evacuation", i.e. that they should be allowed to go where they wish.

However, the document obtained by Feral in clause three states that in case of the violation of the order, therefore if someone refuses to respond to the evacuation and is encountered after 48 hours on the territory of the 26 villages, "the Croatian Army and Police units can open fire without warning". Exactly that instruction, it seems, was later widely applied in the field.

Anto Bagaric, at the time the chief of the Crisis Headquarters and today the governor of the Pozega-Slavonija County, on February 6, 2001, at a session of the County Executive Council, immediately after Feral's article about the events in that region, stated that the order put together by the Crisis Headquarters had been based on the orders received from Karlo Gorinsek. Bagaric, addressing the members of the County Executive Council, some of whom were members of the Crisis Headquarters in 1991, lest they feel "ill at ease", gave his version of the whole story. He accused Feral's journalist of "publishing military secrets on the front page," although he failed to explain how come posters with military secrets about the evacuation of 26 villages could have been plastered on village fences, lamp posts and pubs in the Pozega Municipality, and how come they were read many times on the local radio.

For full five days Bagaric avoided meeting the Feral's journalist, who left him a clear message about what he wanted to discuss with him. However, after the article was published, Bagaric hurried to announce that the article was deliberately timed to appear before the local elections, in order to harm his and HDZ's electoral chances. And in the style of notorious Dinko Sakic [commander of WWII Ustashe concentration camp in Jasenovac] he stated: "Today we would do the same as nine years ago," probably referring to the looting and destruction of the evacuated villages.

Merciless Robbery

The order now used by Bagaric to justify the burning and looting of 26 villages, as well as so far uncertain number of murders that took place in that region (at least 70 according to unverified testimonies) as we saw states that presidents of crisis headquarters in the mentioned villages were supposed to be informed about the order.

According to the residents of Slobostina, one of the villages on the list of Bagaric's Crisis Headquarters, which, as all the others, was thoroughly destroyed after meticulous looting, two representatives of the village, Jovan Lazic and Milan Pavlovic went on October 29, on the day when the evacuation order was issued, to the Crisis Headquarters of the nearby Croat village of Perence in order to try to take their village of the evacuation list. However, they were told there that there could be no talk about the evacuation. They were told that, if they did not leave on their own, the Croatian Army would come to the village and deport them by force. After that most residents left the village and only the elderly and those who had nowhere to go to remained behind.

However, the following day, on October 30 in the morning hours members of the Croatian Army and Police entered Slobostina and, according to the witnesses, used weapons to force the others to leave the village. Looting and arson started and Mirko Stankovic's house, at number 42, was among the first houses that were set on fire.

All the villages on the list, as Feral wrote in the previous issue, however, did not respond to the evacuation order. The number of "laggards" was especially high in the villages of Snjegovac and Jeminovac, which are higher up the Psunj mountain. The evacuation deadline expired and the residents of those villages were not disturbed by anyone. That continued until December 10, 1991, when the action of the Croatian Army followed. Several persons were killed on that occasion, and the remains of 13 villagers were found during the exhumation which took place on December 11, 2000. Bagaric today claims that these remains belong to members of the Banja Luka Corps, although the autopsy conducted in the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Zagreb hasn't yet been completed. In the previous issue Feral published names of the individuals murdered in Snjegovac, as given by the witnesses. They include many women, some of whom were older than 70 at the time of death.

Witnesses contacted by Feral, who are afraid to speak publicly, gave numerous examples of merciless looting to which the villages were exposed after the evacuation. Rudolf Macek, the county state prosecutor in Pozega, confirmed to this journalist that people are still afraid to speak. Macek is investigating the claims from the warrant against unknown perpetrators for murders and looting in the village of Snjegavic. "When we ask them something, they respond that they do not know anything, and we know well that they do," said Macek.

Tractors for Free

Even Karl Gorinsek confirmed in a conversation with Feral that inside the Pozega barracks he saw numerous tractors, combines, and agricultural machinery. He said that he did not know where that machinery ended up, but Feral's sources claim that they were sold for pittance and that a good tractor could have been bought for about $100! Furthermore, another storage house for the war loot was located, according to the witnesses, in the nearby factory Remont, which actually assembled tractors.

Witnesses claim that a grandfather's clock ended up in the house of a distinguished citizen of Pozega, what stolen lawn mowers could later be seen on the sides of the local soccer pitches, that whole bedrooms were taken from the evacuated villages to the houses of certain residents of Pozega, that one member of the Crisis Headquarters even stole the copper plates that were supposed to be put on the belfry of the Serb Orthodox church in one of the evacuated villages...

The events in Western Slavonija demand a thorough investigation, regardless of the anger of the former president of the Crisis Headquarters Ante Bagaric, today the governor of the Pozega-Slavonija County and one of the vice-presidents of the HDZ, and his claims that newspaper articles about that reveal military secrets and inflict harm on him personally and his party in the forthcoming local elections.

Bagaric and his collaborators from the Crisis Headquarters would have to, instead of spilling phrases about the dignity of the Homeland War, and for the sake of the protection of dignity of all the citizens of Croatia, clearly answer who ordered that the villages be destroyed, who looted and murdered, and who is even today boasting that today, just like nine years ago, he would do the same.

Translated on February 22, 2001