What is the basis for such assertions? Namely, the claim about the alleged lynch without any doubt can be traced to the OSCE, whose observers, as in all incidents in the Danube Valley Region wrote their own report. That report, compiled in the night in which Mutic died, as we learned from the circles close to the OSCE, mentions pitch black darkness in the house of the victim as well as in the street in which the house is located. The report then mentions that the OSCE representatives (therefore in that pitch black darkness) saw several armed individuals around Matic's house who were allegedly making threats, so that the OSCE representatives "because of unknown degree of danger" beat it from the scene of the incident. This clearly indicates where Dr. Pupovac got the idea about the lynch, which of course never happened. The president of the Serb National Council is, however, closer to the truth when he says, although indirectly, that in the whole story about Berak, including the protests, certain state mechanisms and state officials have made mistakes. Putting that aside, Pupovac's description of late Mutic as a person who did not participate in the war and a person who "was the only one in Berak to maintain normal communication with both Serbs and Croats" is very striking. With that qualification, on the one hand Dr. Pupovac indirectly condemned all the other Serbs from Berak, and on the other hand totally ignored the attitude of the returnees to Berak. They, however, have filed as many as 56 criminal suits against their fellow ethnic Serb villagers, and one of them was against late Mutic.
As the returnees to Berak claim, he during the occupation of the village took residents of Berak to and from a camp established there at the time. A court should decide whether that is true, and a man is definitely not guilty until something is proven. However, Dr. Pupovac should have at least kept quiet about the tragic time of the Homeland War and a possible role of the late Mutic based on the information about the filed criminal complaint. Therefore, it is interesting that both the OSCE and Dr. Pupovac are very eager to politicize the tragic event in Berak. The OSCE has an inclination to politicize events that unfavorably portray Croatia, and at the same time to suppress and ignore the other sort. Why, for example, the OSCE does not react to so many provocations in Mirkovci, the village with an overwhelming Serb majority? From the placing of the SDSS stickers on Croat cars, to graffiti and paint spilled on the facades of Croat homes. Why did the newly appointed OSCE deputy mission chief, Hans Dieter Steinbach, during his first visit to Vukovar only meet with Milos Vojinovic, the leader of the Joint Council of [Serb] Municipalities, but not with the local Croatian officials? The answer is very simple. The OSCE as well as other international factors want to extend the OSCE mandate in Croatia and very little can be done about that. On the other hand, the Serb officials, including Dr. Pupovac, have an inclination to talk directly to the OSCE, and with the ethnic Croat officials only through the OSCE. The mediation of the OSCE, however, is not necessarily the best way to establish better inter-ethnic relations. Dr. Pupovac certainly would not have been harmed if he asked the Croats in Berak about the circumstances of the death of a Serb in Berak and the quality of inter-ethnic relations in that village. These relations definitely are not good nor will they be until direct communication is established and until the Serb ethnic minority asks for forgiveness from the majority nation in the country they live in.