Were Croatian Serbs Expelled from Croatia?
by Nevenka Levak
Glas Slavonije, Osijek, Croatia, February 28 1998
At the latest press conference of the SNS, the president of that civic association
of the Serb ethnic minority in Croatia, in his usual style, with unverified and
fabricated figures tried to give a new dimension to the consequences of the war
in Croatia and bestowed a status of expelled Croatian citizens on those Serbs who had
escaped from big cities before the war. Namely, according to him, more than 200,000
of Serbs were "expelled" from cities during the war, and their return is now questionable;
consequently they have now joined the equal number of Serbs who escaped from Croatia
after Croatian military-police actions in May and August of 1995.
It is a fact that the number of the members of Serb ethnic minority in Croatia
has significantly decreased since 1991. However, no one can, under any
circumstances blame the Croatian state for the fate
of those Serbs who left on the eve of the aggression against Croatia or during
the war. Also, no one can claim that they were expelled and thus treat them equally
as those non-Serbs who were forced out of their cities and villages with
grenades and other weapons.
Memory
It is obvious that Milan Dukic counts on the collective amnesia of those who lived
to experience and survived year 1991, and now wants to give the Serb runaways victim status.
However, they left or escaped because of several reasons but definitely not because
they were attacked by the then non existent Croatian Army assisted by the members
of the Yugoslav Peoples Army; the truth is exactly the opposite: non-Serbs, and above all
Croats were forced to leave their homes because of the aggression against Croatia.
In big cities in 1991 we were only aware that Serbs were deserting us. They
left during night, carting away all of their movable possessions, leaving
behind only those possessions they couldn't carry away; of course, many of them
were convinced that soon they would return as "victors" to their apartments and
houses. They deserted their friends and neighbors without saying good bye, knowing
that an attack by the Army and paramilitary formations was imminent.
Of course, they did not inform Croats about their intentions in order not to
reveal diabolical plans of the Serbian fuhrer; they would leave supposedly for a
few days, take a vacation, in order to move to a safer ground until the shooting
stoped. Furthermore, many drew enormous amounts of money with bad checks,
robbing the Slavonska Bank, and all in hope that no one will ever ask them to pay back;
they were convinced that that bank will not exist in the future. For months
in advance, they had stopped paying their bills, taken out loans for various
machines and cars, because they thought that the real Croat state, which would
prosecute them for those crimes would not exist in the future.
"Endangered"
Their excuse for departure was that they felt "endangered" because of persecution by
Croats. Sure, there were individual cases of maltreatment, but they were not
of such dimension to force hundreds of thousands to move, nor were they the
reason for mass escape. The Serbs felt humiliated because they had lost privileged
status at work, earned by the virtue of their ethnicity, and that was their
excuse to accuse Croats for their professional demise. And we would wake up
in the morning only to witness new wounds on the face of our city; waiting
for new attacks we would run to work under the hail of grenades in order to
preserve the rhythm of living in the city. Thus, only with our persistence we
saved numerous factories, shops, schools and hospitals, only for them, who ran
away and from somewhere far away watched the horror of war hoping that we will
give in, to demand to return to work and receive back pay.
Such persons were certainly not expelled, because, especially we in Osijek know
that there were reasons to stay in the city in order to save it, and those who
escaped became eternal nomads and exiles and can only blame themselves for their
own fate... They do not deserve our understanding nor the status of an expelled
person.
Translated on 4/19/98
