by Josip JOVIC
Moreover, there is a lot of justification for identifying the events in connection with the Hercegovacka Bank as ordinary banditry or looting that no one would have expected from the countries that like to portray themselves as the leading countries of the progressive civilization.
If someone disagrees with these statements, or considers them to be too strong, I would like that person to explain what would be an appropriate name for an armed raid of a bank, which is privately owned, blocking of monetary transactions in several counties, blocking of current accounts of citizens, smashing of walls, safes, taking and burning of money, eviction of the employees on the street etc?!
However, all of that, of course, are fairytales, banal explanations that insult sanity and closely resemble Stalinist methods. This time, unfortunately, Stalinism came from the West, rather than from the East. Soviet tanks protected the Hungarian and Czech people from their reactionary leadership, just as today SFOR tanks and the Muslim police are protecting the Croat people against its mafia, or customers from bandits.
In the frantic search for the arguments against the leaders of Croats in the neighboring state, Petritsch and Klein are sinking deeper and deeper in the quagmire of lies. They are preparing an indictment against Ante Jelavic for the murder of Jozo Leutar, demonstrating that all their former accusations related to that crime were fabricated, and acquit Jelavic of possible responsibility for the business dealings of the Hercegovacka Bank. The way they are going, they may end up accusing him of the murder of J.F. Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln perhaps.
Attempts to politically discredit Croats and deny their democratic, legitimate, electoral will were continued with open demonstrations of force. To the non-violent expression of dissent they responded by force.
After raiding military buildings, and city halls, banning TV and radio stations, after onesided and arbitrary changes of the Dayton agreement, always to the detriment of Croats, now they have set a financial institution, private property, in their sights. This is unprecedented and violates exactly the basic legal principles of the countries from which the international representatives come and on whose behalf they act. Next in turn could be other privately and state-owned companies, for example Aluminum in Mostar, and then, who knows, maybe even the Catholic Church. What is the ultimate goal of all these actions, which have besides been announced in the secret documents of international organizations published by Slobodna Dalmacija in the past? Their first goal is to destroy the political will to fight for some mode of political autonomy and its right to a status equal to that of the other two nations in Bosnia-Hercegovina. In other words, the goal is to reduce Croats to the status of an ethnic minority or simply individual citizens without any collective rights.
And just the way the trials in the Hague were the response to the idea of Herceg-Bosna, now threats with new arrests of the chief advocates of these political tendencies, based on fabricated and planted evidence are the response to the idea of autonomy, referendum, and election results.
That is the function of the announced concrete walls, obstacles, that are supposed to be erected on the border with Croatia and resemble the Berlin Wall. These walls will most likely meet the same fate as the Berlin Wall. The goal of such strategy is to preserve Bosnia-Hercegovina as a core for the renewal of some new Balkan association, with the concurrent destruction of the dream of, as they like to call her, "Greater Croatia".
The destruction of political will, according to their judgment, was impossible without the destruction of the economic base. That is why they attacked the Hercegovacka Bank. The new, imposed, administrator herself suggested to the customers to open new accounts in other (read Sarajevo-based) banks. The US administration, allegedly for security reasons, called on its citizens and diplomats to avoid traveling to the territories under Croat control in order to destroy religious tourism in Medjugorje. Or could it be that they are preparing an even more violent military attack on the unarmed population?
It will be difficult to achieve the agreed political goals in this manner. A totally wrong method has been chosen. The application of force against a nation will this time result merely in its homogenization and further loss of its trust in the possibility of life in a state named Bosnia-Hercegovina, in which that nation will persistently have to prove its rights and in which its life will be created without its input.
Croats all over Bosnia-Hercegovina were never more united. The division to Croats from Hercegovina, Sava Valley and central Bosnia, as well as divisions among bishops, against hopes of many, have not appeared. The international community can rely only on individuals who do not enjoy any support in the population as a whole or even in their own towns and villages. They are really a group of foreign hirelings, who are playing a disgraceful game against their own nation in exchange for money and privilege. Of course, they are here, together with the international administration, to explain to Croats what their true interests are and in what and whom they should place their trust, as they know that better than the people itself.
The attitude of most of media that support the current authorities in Croatia, imbued with the spirit of "antifascism", leftist ideology, snobbery and nostalgia for Yugoslavia, as well as prejudice against rotten and pro-Ustashe Croats from Hercegovina, and Croats from the neighboring state, is shamelessly biased and inimical and it seems that no one from that media majority would utter a word even it they started with court martial and executions [in Bosnia]. Even then, they would only cynically conclude that it serves them right.
And if the situation in Croatia is such, then what can be expected from the European or the world public? But, this is not the first time this nation has had to rely on itself, on its unity, faith and perseverance, the ultimate victory of the truth, sanity and justice.