Posted on 03/11/2008 11:12:44 AM PDT by Bokababe
The Hague, 11 March (AKI) – Three Croatian generals went on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday for crimes allegedly committed against Serb civilians in 1995.
Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak, and Mladen Markac are the first Croatian officers to be tried for crimes committed in the operation, Storm, in August 1995.
More than 350 Serb civilians were killed, thousands of homes were destroyed and up to 250,000 Serbs were deported from the country, prosecutor Alan Tieger told the court.
He said he would prove that the three generals were part of a “joint criminal undertaking” aimed at the “violent elimination of Serbs” from Croatia.
Serbs, who accounted for 12 percent of Croatia’s four million people before the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in 1991, rebelled against Croatia’s secession and proclaimed their own Republic of Serb Krajina.
Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were killed by the Croatian state in World War II and feared repetition of the crimes when Croatian nationalist president Franjo Tudjman, who led the country to secession, came to power.
Tieger said that Tudjman, who died in 1999, masterminded the Storm operation, not only to retake territories controlled by local Serbs, but to completely eliminate Serbs from the country.
The decision was taken at a meeting on 31 July 1995, when Tudjman allegedly told his generals that Serbs “should be dealt such a blow that they practically disappear,” Tieger said.
“Tudjman’s long range political ambition was to expel Serbs from Croatia because he believed that they threatened the state stability,” Teiger stressed.
“At one point he told the American ambassador that Serbs were ‘a cancer on the Croatian skin’,” the prosecutor said.
According to the indictment, Gotovina, Cermak and Markac were the key generals who carried out “the joint criminal undertaking”.
Tieger claimed the operation in which Croatian forces crushed the Serb rebellion, “for most Serbs meant the end of life on the territories on which their predecessors lived”.
Croatian forces were “systematically looting and destroying their property, mistreating and killing civilians”, Tieger told the court. He said the prosecution would present 134 witnesses to prove the charges.
Since it was founded by the United Nations in 1993, the ICTY has indicted 161 individuals, mostly Serbs, for crimes committed in last decade Balkan wars and more than fifty have already been sentenced to over 700 years in prison.
They have Gotovina but not Ceku, how convenient.
I suppose Bush & Rice will be running over there to pin a medal on those generals?
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One of the accused , Gotovina, is seen as "a hero" in some Croatian circles that they are making a movie about him, starring Gorna Visnjic (of ER fame) as Gotovina. Sick!
They had staged several dry runs in the weeks prior to Storm.
As one of the Serbian generals said, "Knin fell in Belgrade". The Serbs of Croatia were sold out by their brothers in Belgrade.....we told them that would happen. They didn't listen.
You should be blaming the RSK officials for cutting and running and ordering the population out. The Serbs cleansed themselves.
General Gotovina is a hero.
Of all the nations on this earth, it does not surprise me that this is the one that regards war criminals as heroes.
Yes, the aftermath of Serbs "cleansing themselves" from Croatia And that is why Gotovina is at the Hague -- because he is "a hero".
You're a genius, Dio.
The Croatian Army prevented the Bihac pocket from turning into another horrific massacre like Srebrenica and Gorazde.
Slovenia and Croatia placed captured Serbs on buses and sent them packing back to Belgrade. The refugee exodus followed mainly Highway 1 that ran through most of eastern Croatia and Slavenski Brod to Belgrade. Some rocks may have been thrown, but the journey of Serb refugees was largely peaceful.
The Serb offensive was reversed by the Croatian Army's gain on the ground in Bosnia, not our 72 hours of bombing Serb infrastructure at 15,000 feet. When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright realized what was happening, she ordered the Croatian advance halted.
The Croatians withdrew from the Bosnian Anvil area so that Bosnia would be left roughly evenly divided with the remaining Serb population. The State Department has cleansed this history.
Much Serb resentment grew out of the obstacles to Serbs wanting to reclaim their homes. Passport requirements were tightened, unemployment hovered at 20%, and housing was in short supply as displaced Croatians moved into former homes of Serbs.
The EU, pushed by Jacques Chirac, put heavy pressure on the new Croatian government to turn over its military leaders for trial in The Hague since Croatia wanted to join the economic union.
Apart from Serb President Slobodan Milosevic, the major war criminals and instigators of many of the massacres, Prime Minister Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, have never been apprehended or tried.
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You've got to be kidding me. They have execution of Serb civilians on tape!
Issat right.
OESY: Look, either you're posting material that is not your own thoughts (or words), or, you just don't know what's going on in terms of Balkan issues. Or, is it both?
That photo is one of many of murdered Serbs found on this page where you are getting that image AND USING DEAD SERBS KILLED BY CROATS AS EVIDENCE AGAINST SERBS.: http://sokolac.slavicnet.com/sokolac/sokolac_history2_forum.html
Only you have made up your own false caption. The true caption from the source of the photo reads:
"On the eve of the liberation of Vukovar, civilians of Serbian origin were dragged out of cellars and shelters, after which they were killed in front of their homes. The folloving people were killed at Nikola Demonja Street No. 74: Radoslav Pavic, Zoran Pavlovic, Zorica Pavlovic, Nada Pavlovic, Milojka Pavlovic, Velimir Trajkovic."
From another source which gives more on the relationships of the people and how they were killed:
This photo shows Serb victims, Radosav Pavic and Velimir Trajkovic (both wearing red). The other victims are Zorica Pavlovic, her brother Zoran, mother Nada and Milojka Pavlovic. All axed to death by Croatian "skullcrushers", sending a clear message to the Serbs that the Ustashi beast was not dead.
And by the way the "Vukovar massacre" is about alleged crimes against captured POWs NOT CIVILIANS, family members, in jeans, sweaters and overalls, as in the photo.
Further, it should be pointed out the smoking ruin in the first photo of fleeing Serbs - there were areas of Serbs being strafed and killed by the Croatian airforce, as well the Bosnian Muslim army did invade parts of Croatia to kill fleeing refugees and attack and burn their homes and livestock.
Many refugees were killed before they reached Bosnia and Croatia.
Which only goes to show you can't just use 2 pictures and know everything, nor should you post photos of dead without knowing the true identities of at least some of them to insure who they were and who killed them.
The Croatian police, troops and death squads did murder many Serb civilians. The killings were initiated by Tomislav Mercep in early May 1991.
btt
Support is available regarding Serb atrocities in Kosovo at Kosovo and the Left: Serbian Atrocities and U.S. Intervention, By Roger Lippman, Seattle, April, 1999.
Below is a summary helpful to the more casual observer or those with short memories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_wars. If you have specific corrections to any of the commentaries, it might be useful to know what they are. I recognize there is much bitterness because things didn't go as well as planned, with Kosovo being the latest example, but other countries have coped with their losses and become model democracies as well as outstanding world citizens. Why pursue policies that will alienate the Hungarian and other ethnic groups in Vojvodina, which is still part of the Republic of Serbia?
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The Yugoslav Wars were a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) that took place between 1991 and 2001. They comprised two sets of successive wars affecting all of the six former Yugoslav republics. Alternative terms in use include the “War in the Balkans”, or “War in (the former) Yugoslavia”, “Wars of Yugoslav Secession”, and the “Third Balkan War” (a short-lived term coined by British journalist Misha Glenny, alluding to the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913).
They were characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbs on the one side and Croats, Bosniaks or Albanians on the other; but also between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia and Macedonians and Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia. The conflict had its roots in various underlying political, economic and cultural problems, as well as long-standing ethnic and religious tensions.
The civil wars ended with much of the former Yugoslavia reduced to poverty, massive economic disruption and persistent instability across the territories where the worst fighting occurred. The wars were the bloodiest conflicts on European soil since the end of World War II. They were also the first conflicts since World War II to have been formally judged genocidal in character and many key individual participants were subsequently charged with war crimes. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established by the United Nations to prosecute these crimes.
The Yugoslav civil wars can be split in three groups of several distinct conflicts:
Wars during the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia:
War in Slovenia (1991)
Croatian War of Independence (1991-1995)
Bosnian War (1992-1995)
Wars in Albanian-populated areas:
Kosovo War (1996-1999)
Southern Serbia conflict (2000-2001)
Macedonia conflict (2001)
The Early Conflicts (1991-1995)
In the years leading up to the Yugoslav wars, relations among the republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been deteriorating. Slovenia and Croatia desired greater autonomy within a Yugoslav confederation, while Serbia sought to strengthen federal authority. As it became clearer that there was no solution agreeable to all parties, Slovenia and Croatia moved toward secession. By that time there was no effective authority at the federal level. Federal Presidency consisted of the representatives of all 6 republics and 2 provinces and JNA (Yugoslav People's Army). Communist leadership was divided along national lines. The final breakdown occurred at the 14th Congress of the Communist Party when Croat and Sloven delegates left in protest because the pro-integration majority in the Congress rejected their proposed amendments.
The first of these conflicts, known as the Ten-Day War or “The War” in Slovenia, was initiated by the secession of Slovenia from the federation on 25 June 1991. The federal government ordered the federal Yugoslav People's Army to secure border crossings in Slovenia. Slovenian police and Territorial Defense blockaded barracks and roads, leading to standoffs and limited skirmishes around the republic. After several dozen deaths, the limited conflict was stopped through negotiation at Brioni on 9 July 1991, when Slovenia and Croatia agreed to a three-month moratorium on secession. The Federal army completely withdrew from Slovenia by 26 October 1991.
The second in this series of conflicts, the Croatian War of Independence, began when Serbs in Croatia who were opposed to Croatian independence announced their secession from Croatia. The move was in part triggered by a provision in the new Croatian Constitution that replaced the explicit reference to Serbs in Croatia as a “constituent nation” with a generic reference to all other nations, and was interpreted by Serbs as being reclassified as a “national minority”. This was coupled with a history of distrust between the two ethnic groups dating back to at least both World Wars and the inter-war period. The federally-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) was ideologically unitarist, and predominantly staffed by Serbs in its officer corp, thus it also opposed Croatian independence and sided with the Croatian Serb rebels. Since the JNA had disarmed the Territorial Units of the two northernmost republics, the fledgling Croatian state had to form its military from scratch and was further hindered by an arms embargo imposed by the U.N. on the whole of Yugoslavia. The Croatian Serb rebels were unaffected by said embargo as they had the support of and access to supplies of the JNA. The border regions faced direct attacks from forces within Serbia and Montenegro, and saw the destruction of Vukovar and the shelling of UNESCO world heritage site Dubrovnik.
Meanwhile, control over central Croatia was seized by Croatian Serb forces in conjunction with the JNA Corpus from Bosnia & Herzegovina, under the leadership of Ratko Mladic. These attacks were marked by the killings of captured soldiers and heavy civilian casualties (Ovcara; Škabrnja), and were the subject of war crimes indictments by the ICTY for elements of the Serb political & military leadership. In January 1992, the Vance peace plan proclaimed UN controlled (UNPA) zones for Serbs in territory claimed by the rebel Serbs as the Republic of Serbian Krajina and brought an end to major military operations, though sporadic artillery attacks on Croatian cities and occasional intrusions of Croatian forces into UNPA zones continued until 1995.
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Further consequences are described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia:
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the end of World War II (1945) until it was formally dissolved in 1992 (de facto dissolved in 1991 with no leaders representing it) amid the Yugoslav wars. It was a socialist state that comprised the area of the present-day independent states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and the self declared, partially recognized Kosovo.
* * *
You all know what happened in Kosovo, but here is a summary for Montenegro that can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegro: Based on the results of the referendum held on May 21, 2006, Montenegro declared independence on June 3, 2006 making it the newest fully recognized country in the world. On June 28, 2006, it became the 192nd member state of the United Nations, and on May 11, 2007, the 47th member state of the Council of Europe.
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General Gotovina is a hero.
To nazi-lovers everywhere.
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