Why has the Hague been Silent for Five years about Butchers from Skabrnja?

While the village in the Zadar hinterland was still under occupation, the Croatian side collected available evidence about the monstrous massacre and handed the material over to the investigators of the International Tribunal for War Crimes in the Hague. More than five years have passed since then, but the Hague still hasn't issued a single indictment against the butchers from Skabrnja

by Ivica MARIJACIC

Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, Croatia, April 18 2000

Even after almost nine years, the Skabrnja tragedy is not less painful, irrespectively of some social tendencies of forgetting of everything that has happened in the Homeland War. Starting with the marginalization of Croatian victims and price paid by the people for its independence, all the way to the monstrosity of claims that Croatia did not need the war and atmosphere in which all attention is focused on Serb victims, as well as the terrifying opinion that the Homeland War is not something that the Croatian people should be proud of but rather a shameful blotch on its conscience, today, ten years after the achievement of independence, such aggressive and imposed claims, as well as emphasis on marginal events from that period, threaten to suppress and revise important historic facts.

Because of all that, it is necessary to remind of one of the mass killing grounds of the Croatian people, the one in Skabrnja near Zadar; not to incite hatred against the nation whose members committed that crime, not to add fuel to the fire of extremism and political radicalism, not to hide the fact that Croats also committed individual murders during the defensive and liberation war, not to incite new wars, but for the sake of full historic truth and justice and the need to preserve the memory of that event in all the coming generations and make sure that today they do not impose on us the extremist claim that Croats were aggressors in the Homeland War!

Skabrnja was mourned by whole Croatia, but Croatia never saw the true extent of that Serb imperial necrophilia. Slobodna Dalmacija is in possession of exclusive and original photo material about bloody events in Skabrnja on November [studeni] 18 and 19, 1991. That material was produced by Serbs themselves on October [listopad] 21 1991 during their survey of the terrain. The file was named "Unidentified corpses in Skabrnja" and the "documentation of the investigation" was processed by Dragan Miljus from the "Police Station in Benkovac" in the so-called Krajina. Not even the inhabitants of Skabrnja have so far seen these shocking photographs which testify that the members of the occupying Serb paramilitary forces and the former Yugoslav Army, led at the time by general Ratko Mladic murdered civilians in a cruel manner during their entry into that village in the Zadar hinterland: the civilians were murdered next to the road, in cellars, in their homes, fields, everywhere and anywhere they were found. In that, even the most monstrous methods were used: tanks ran over women on the road, men were murdered by a bullet in the back of the head, parts of bodies were cut off from some victims before their execution...

In those first few days and in the days of several years long occupation the Serb aggressors murdered more than 80 inhabitants of Skabrnja. The total number of victims is 86, and it also includes defenders who died during the liberation or from anti-personnel mines. Skabrnja was occupied in November 18 1991 and liberated in the operation Storm in 1995, the operation whose value is today increasingly ciminalized by many abroad, and unfortunately also in Croatia. While the village was still under occupation the Croatian side collected the available documentation about that crime and handed it over to the investigators of the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. Five years have passed since than, but the Tribunal still hasn't issued a single indictment against the butchers of Skabrnja.

The investigators from the Hague are these days digging up ravines in the Gospic region searching for remains of Serb civilians who were allegedly executed by Croats in an organized manner. No one sensible has anything against the need to solve those crimes, whoever committed them, but the minimum of civility and justice would be to at least investigate Croat victims in parallel, if there is not moral, political and military respect for the position of the victims that Croats had in that war.

Namely, how can one believe in some sort of universal justice of the International Tribunal if it is now hastily investigating Croatian crimes on the basis of still unproved testimonies, while it has for years been keeping files about unquestionable Serb crimes against Croats, such as the one in Skabrinja, in the drawer.

Translated on May 16 2000