Authorities Claim All Defenders Are War Criminals

by Josip PECARIC

Hrvatsko Slovo, Zagreb, Croatia, October 19, 2001

Perhaps German foreign affairs minister Fischer opened eyes to many with his most recent initiative about the Western Balkans. The world wants Balkania. It should be our fate. It is not only the product of “evil minds” of Franjo Tudman, Maja Freundlich, Zoran Vukman, or Josko Celan. The claim that the world, with its actions, and especially through the activities of the Hague War Crimes Tribunal, wants to cancel the distinction between the aggressor and the victim is very prominent in Croatia. Actually, this assertion indicates the naivete of the Croats. Why would the Croat people accept the Western Balkans if they are as guilty as the Serbs? Why would they accept Serbs as bosses for the third time if they are as guilty as the Serbs?

Croats can and must accept Balkania only if they are aggressors. Therefore, the crux of the issue is not that the world wants to cancel the difference between the victim and the aggressor. They want to turn the tables and turn the aggressor into the victim and the other way around. The world has been working on that from the very start. If Tudman decided to start the war during the Yugoslav People’s Army’s (YPA) attack on Slovenia, Slovenia would have left Yugoslavia as a victim, peacefully, while Croatia would have been accused as the aggressor and had to remain a part of Yugoslavia. De Michelis openly announced that. And not only he. Was that the purpose of Spegelj’s plan?

Aggressors On Our Own Country!?

At the beginning of the Serb aggression on Bosnia-Hercegovina the British minister of foreign affairs immediately accused Croatia of attacking Bosnia-Hercegovina. The then Croat opposition accepted that immediately and the current president of Croatia testified about that in the Hague. Based on that testimony General Blaskic was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Of course, before that the world managed to place in power the cabal of six. It waited for Tudman’s death and elections to dare sentence Blaskic. And what are the new Croat authorities doing? Once they realized that Blaskic was found guilty of aggression against Bosnia-Hercegovina, they immediately passed the Declaration About Cooperation With the International Tribunal in the Hague, in which the authorities gave to this “tribunal” jurisdiction over the operations “Flash” and “Storm”. Thereby they opened the door to the return to the beginning. Croatia can be declared for the aggressor on a part of its own territory. No one among naļve patriotic Croats could believe that Racan and Mesic were prepared to go that far. The HDZ accepted the (unfavorable) Declaration About the Homeland War only because it unequivocally stated that Croatia was not the aggressor against Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Then sentences in Kordic and Cerkez trials followed. Again, for the aggression on Bosnia-Hercegovina! The Croatian authorities haven’t protested even though the Declaration obliges them to do so. Today it is becoming obvious that the reason for that is that the “aggression of the Republic of Croatia on the Republic of Serb Krajina” is forthcoming.

Then the charges that Tudman, Gotovina and others planned ethnic cleansing of Serbs from some sort of Carla [del Ponte’s] state of RSK followed. However, the assertion by Carla Del Ponte that the president of the Republic of Croatia, and its other highest state and military officials planned ethnic cleansing of occupied Croat territories illustrates her conviction that all Croats are criminals, and that Croats are a genocidal nation. Namely, every state has the right and obligation to liberate its occupied territories. Obviously, only the Croat people is denied that right. It is denied that right because Croats are criminals, a genocidal people.

The attempt to prove the genocidal nature of the Croat people is the only remaining course of action left to the United Nations as an excuse for its participation in the Greater Serbian genocide of the Croat people. If it were otherwise, the UN would fire Carla Del Ponte the moment she issued the indictment implying that Croats are a genocidal people.

And it was clear that Croats would be condemned as the aggressors as soon as the cabal of six came to power. President Mesic said as much in his interview to Der Spiegel claiming that “Tudman counted ships in the fleet of Croat mediaeval kings and failed to notice that his war machine had succumbed to the Serb army”.

Strbac Again Wants Krajina

On the other hand, Savo Strbac, a member of the wartime headquarters of the Benkovac municipality at the time when the horrendous crime in Skabrnja was committed, and today the chief of Serb “Veritas”, the organization that helps the Hague in putting together indictments, says the following for Serb Nedeljni Telegraf: “the trial of Croat generals in the Hague is a chance for Serbs; that is a terrific chance to resuscitate the Republic of Serb Krajina with legitimate means”. Strbac understands what the Croat authorities supposedly don’t, and says that the indictment of General Ante Gotovina “writes a new history, so that during the trial the late president Franjo Tudman will also be in the dock, while the Homeland and defensive war will be depicted as a criminal and aggressive war”. Savo Strbac emphasized that the Hague for the first time officially recognized Krajina as a “state” with its own army, and that that could be the basis for the establishment of the so-called “Republic of Serb Krajina”.

Servile Croat authorities must obey their bosses. Consequently, they must agree to proclaim the aggressor for a victim. This is the origin of so many arrests of Croat defenders in Bjelovar, Virovitica, Sinj, Bibinje, Sibenik, and Split. People who organized defense in 1991 are being interrogated. At the same time the authorities are preparing a law that would annul 400,000 signatures of Croat citizens demanding that Croat defenders be treated as the victors in WWII. And while in Serbia they do not arrest war criminals, Croat authorities are requesting from Serbia “documentation” about crimes committed by Croats. For example, on the territory of Srbac’s municipality Benkovac 105 Croats were killed between the start of the war and 1993 and not a single Serb has been punished for that as a war criminal. But, on the other hand, we have learned that there is some sort of a Dalmatian Human Rights Committee that “proves” that Croats committed crimes. They do not care about murdered Croats.

It is clear that the current authorities want to turn Croat knights into criminals, and turn the victim into the aggressor. It does not matter whether they are doing that merely to please the world. The world and its wishes do not matter. It is horrendous when the authorities elected by the Croat people participate in something like that.

Translated on February 20, 2003