Posted on 09/02/2003 8:06:38 PM PDT by Doctor13
Ethnic Discrimination Slows Refugee Return
(Zagreb, September 3, 2003) Eight years after the end of the war in Croatia, ethnic discrimination continues to impede the return of hundreds of thousands of Croatian Serbs displaced by the war, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
"The impediments to return are insurmountable. It is time that the government of Croatia starts being part of the solution rather than part of the problem." Lotte Leicht, Brussels office director of Human Rights Watch.
The 61-page report, “Broken Promises: Impediments to Refugee Return to Croatia," describes the plight of displaced Croatian Serbs and urges that progress on return be made a condition of Croatia’s application to join the European Union. “The impediments to return are insurmountable,” said Lotte Leicht, Brussels office director of Human Rights Watch. “It is time that the government of Croatia starts being part of the solution rather than part of the problem.”
There are no precise statistics for how many of the more than 300,000 displaced Serbs have returned. The Croatian government has registered more than 100,000 returns, but many returnees, after a short stay in Croatia, depart again for Serbia and Montenegro or Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1991 Serbs made up 12.1 percent of Croatia’s population, but the 2001 census showed their number had fallen to 4.5 percent.
Most of those who have returned have been elderly farmers whose houses were not destroyed or occupied, and who receive old-age pensions from the government. Return to urban areas is rare, because the refugees cannot repossess their pre-war apartments or obtain substitute housing. Young and middle-aged Croatian Serbs are dissuaded from returning by lack of employment opportunities and, for men, fear of arbitrary arrests on war crime charges.
These problems are a result of a practice of ethnic discrimination against Serbs by the Croatian government, Human Rights Watch said. The report contrasts the difficulties in return of Serbs with the government’s success in enabling the vast majority of ethnic Croats to return to their pre-war homes.
"The government has never genuinely tried to facilitate Serb return," said Leicht. "Instead, the authorities have consistently prioritized the needs and rights of ethnic Croats—including Croat refugees from Bosnia—over the rights of Serb refugees and returnees."
The Human Rights Watch report is based on two years of research involving a comprehensive review of local legislation and extensive interviews with returned refugees, temporary occupants of their houses, and representatives of Serb civic associations, national and local governmental bodies, international organizations, and Croatian human rights groups. The report includes recommendations to the Croatian government and the international community to facilitate the return of Serb refugees.
Personal accounts from “Broken Promises: Impediments to Refugee Return in Croatia”:
Ivan Kovac, a Bosnian-born Croat, lived as an immigrant in Australia until he came to Croatia in 1995. Since 1997, Kovac has run a restaurant in Gracac in a home owned by Danilo Stanic, a Serb. Stanic and his wife returned to Gracac in 1998, but the local housing commission ignored their repeated requests that the commission evict Kovac. In July 2002, pursuant to Stanic’s private lawsuit, Gracac municipal court ordered that Kovac vacate the part of the house used as a restaurant, but the restaurant continued operating as of June 2003, pending a court decision on Kovac’s appeal.
Boja Gajica (53), a Serb returnee to Knin, applied eight times between 1996 and 2000 for the position of nursing attendant, for which she has an associate degree. Each time a Croat candidate, with lower or different qualifications, was selected. On one occasion, the manager of a child-care center allegedly told Ms. Gajica that she would be afraid of the local soldiers and policemen if she employed a Serb.
In June 2002, Human Right Watch observed the court proceedings on repossession of property, in which the defendants—a Bosnian Croat wife and her Muslim husband, occupants of a three-story Serb house in Karlovac—explained that they opposed sharing the house temporarily with the owner because, in the husband’s words, “He cannot live with us. We were at war with such like him for four years.” The owner, Dusan Vilenica, returned to Karlovac in 1998 and has been unable to reoccupy the house or move into its uninhabited parts since.
"What worries us, is that those in power in Croatia are largely the same as in the Nazi era. In some cases, they are exactly the same people, now in their seventies and back from exile under Communists. In other cases, they are children of the Ustash." (Croatian Nazi Party). - Jewish leader, scholar and historian, Dr. Klara Mandich, The London Independent.
"But you can understand Croatia best by saying flatly that if there is one place in the world where a statue of Adolph Hitler would be revered, it would be in Zagreb (the capital of Croatia). - Edward Pearce, the [London] Evening Standard, 7 August 1995, "Victory smiles that hide the roots of evil."
"Croats will 'kill people for the color of their skins." - U.S. Colonel Fontenot, Commander of NATO forces in northeastern Bosnia.
"Kill all Serbs and Jews including children so that not even the seeds of the beasts are left." - Andrija Artukovic, Minister of the Interior in the "Independent State of Croatia."
The Independent State of Croatia was recognized by Hitler for being his loyal ally. From April 1941 to April 1945, 44,000 children from infants to 14-year olds were killed. It is the first time in the history of any nation that children were sent to concentration camps. Infants were fed caustic soda so that they die a slow and agonizing death. Artukovic was given a fake passport by the Vatican's "Ratline," whereby thousands of Nazi war criminals were able to escape to Argentina, Canada and the United States. In the case of Artukovic, he was finally brought to trial in Los Angeles after 45 years of being protected in the United States. By then, he was in his 80's.
It should be noted that the map that exists today of the Balkans is almost identical to the map Hitler had envisioned.
There is more than enough room for recriminations to go around, and neither group is innocent of abuse of the other.
The Serbs ended up with Tito after WW2, and while Tito worked with the USSR, he was not anti-American, but rather, pro-Tito.
Under his rule, serbian nationals spread throughout the former Yugoslavia to take up positions of power and authority, often using it to claim the best houses, land, and businesses.
When I was younger, I had some freinds and neighbors that were from Serbia, but from different generations.
The older generation told of the communists, and the murders of family members, of the confiscation of their farms.
They hated the communists.
And some told of the Nazis, WW2, the murders of family members, the war, fleeing to england, and then to the americas. ( Canada, then the U.S. )
They hated the Nazis, and some, the Croats.
The younger ones told of the lack of liberty, and they (or their parents ) slipping through the iron curtain to the relative freedom of the west.
They hated the USSR, but not necessarily communism, were ambivilant toward socialism.
Yet, others only knew of the old country from the stories of their parents, told many times.
To them, they were only stories, and they didn't really "hate" Nazis, Communists, Croats, Socialism, or anything.
Croatians under the Nazis killed as many Croatians as they did Serbs.
The Serbs in turn, killed as many Serbs as they did Croatians.
They both murdered Bosnians (Muslims) with equal efficiancy.
With the breakup of old Yugoslavia, and the fall of the Soviet Union, it was inevitable that there would be a blood-bath.
I knew it and said so, before it happened.
I understood the intense hatred between the Serbs and Croatians.
Likewise, that the Bosnians, often Muslims, would recieve a good portion of that fallout.
Serbian refugees from Croatia should leave it behind, and seek to settle in Serbia.
Attempting to re-settle in Croatia is tantamount to suicide, and they should know it.
They will never regain property, jobs, status or political (or any other kind of..) power in that nation.
They must simply accept that they are not and will not be accepted in that country for many generations, and let it be.
The Serbs are just being bull-headed, and will pay for it.
Consider this;
Where is the concern for the Russians that had lived in Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, etc., etc., etc....
They too lost home, position, power, privilege, and were ostracized, and many were forced to leave what had been their home for generations.
They never became Latvians, Estonians, etc.. They remained russian, with the privileged status of being russian.
I don't hear anyone crying for them.
Sort of like the old sunday school song, only weslified.
I mean, when a business organization reaches a point at which the likes of the hildabeast and Wesley Clark are the best they've got, they hold a going-out-of-business sale.
The Serbs did not collaborate with Stalin and the USSR. The Serbs were fighting for their lives after being bombed and occupied by the Germans, being attacked where they lived in Croatia and Bosnia, and being attacked from surrounding countries, like Bulgaria. Tito, a Croat/Slovene, who was involved in attacking Belgrade during WWI, was given backing by the British and the U.S. which bombed targets for him. And the targets were often Serb civilian targets - apartments, churches, villages, etc. Anti-Serb propaganda and false crediting of Tito for battling Germans was spread by the "Allies." This false propaganda was discovered when the hundreds of US and other Allied airmen, who'd been shot down, were saved by the Serbs:
http://www.visi.com/~homelands/serbia/serbia_letter.html
The most incredible part of our rescue was that before each mission, our bomber crews were briefed by the highest levels of American intelligence that, if shot down over Yugoslavia, we were to stay away from the Serbian people as they were collaborating with the Germans and "cutting off the ears of American airmen" before turning them over. Only after we were shot down did we find out the amazing thoroughness with which the truth about the Serbs was being distorted.
Under his [Tito's] rule, serbian nationals spread throughout the former Yugoslavia to take up positions of power and authority, often using it to claim the best houses, land, and businesses.
Under his rule, Croats, Albanians, and Muslims who collaborated with the Nazis got off easy. Serbs who'd been moved out of Kosovo during the war were not allowed to go back and reclaim their property. Illegal immigrants from Albania were allowed to settle into Kosovo. Most of those holding the highest power were Slovenes like Kardelj and Dolanc. Also, many factories founded in Serbia were moved to the western republics in "case of Russian invasion from the East." Branicap (former Yugoslav and Freeper) told me: "Truck factories, weapons and tools, paper mills, sugar mills aeroplane production...were dispersed to Slovenia (trucks, paper, electronics) and Bosnia (aeroplanes, weapons). So, industries founded and developed in prewar Serbia were (privately) moved elsewhere! Serbia's loss!"
Kosta50, another Freeper, says the factories were dismantled "brick by brick" from Serbia and taken to Slovenia and other Republics.
Croatians under the Nazis killed as many Croatians as they did Serbs.
They did not. Serbs were their main target, and the Croats killed them by the hundreds of thousands. There is photographic evidence of Serb priests being hanged and Serbs about to get their heads cut off, also of starving Serb children in the camps. Croatia's stated official policy was to convert 1/3 (to Catholicism), kill 1/3, and expell the rest of the Serbs.
They both murdered Bosnians (Muslims) with equal efficiancy.
What is your proof of this? The Muslims joined in with the Ustasha. For all the repeated claims of Bosnian Muslims being killed - the population statistics shows a steady rise of them versus the rest in Bosnia throughout the last century. The Bosnian Muslims had their own S.S. division "by the order of Hitler and with the blessing of Jerusalem Mufti" and were known for their brutal attacks and atrocities against Serb civilians. This is historical fact and there is photographic evidence of them, and the Mufti's visiting those troops.
Croatian logic was always a contradiction in terms -- starting with "their" language all the way to the fact that their dear mother "Independent State of Croatia" was neither independent (more like an oxymoron) nor was its name Croatian because they used the Serbian version of the word "independent" (Nezavisna) instead of a newly minted one (Neovisna), because they never fully mastered their adopted Serbian language.
Let me just add to this brilliant specimen's introductory phrase "While Croats collaborated with the Nazis, so too did the Serbs with Stalin, and The USSR." He forgot (conveniently!) to mention the United States and England in that collaboration. Minor detail that makes all the difference in the world.
The rest of his/her sputing is not even worth commenting, usch as the Serbs taking up all the positions of power and so on. Just as a reminder for those who may fall for this crap, at the breakup of Yugoslavia -- Stipe Mesic (pronounce it any way you wish!) was the acting President of Yugslavia, and a member of the Croatian separatist HDZ; Ante Markovic (a Croat) was the Prime Minister; the Chief of Air Force was non Serb; the defense minister Adm. Mamula was from a mixed Serbo-Croatian family. Mika Spiljak, Milka Planinc, Janez Vrhovec, etc. and many others were Yugoslav premiers -- all Croats or Slovenes, all people in positions of power presiding over Yugoslav govenrments. Tito was a Croat, with absolute power, and his second in command was Kardelj, a Slovene.
Everything Drammach wrote is unsubstantiated garbage not worth addressing any further because what he wrote is nothing short of intentional dissemnation of disinformation.
"Ivan Kovac, a Bosnian-born Croat, lived as an immigrant in Australia until he came to Croatia in 1995. Since 1997, Kovac has run a restaurant in Gracac in a home owned by Danilo Stanic, a Serb. Stanic and his wife returned to Gracac in 1998, but the local housing commission ignored their repeated requests that the commission evict Kovac. In July 2002, pursuant to Stanic’s private lawsuit, Gracac municipal court ordered that Kovac vacate the part of the house used as a restaurant, but the restaurant continued operating as of June 2003, pending a court decision on Kovac’s appeal."
The census is a fact. It shows that in a matter of little over 50 years, Croatia went from 25% Serbs to 4%. The only Balkan country where minorities make up more than a trickle of the population is Serbia -- the only multiethnic state where other nationalities and ethnic groups are welcome.
Given that Kosovo and Croatia have purged themselves of their Serb population by ethnic cleansing methods, the "international community" is looking the other way -- whereas in Republika Srpska there is blatant pressure by the same "international community" to create a multiethnic entity because the Serbs used ethnic cleansing to connect Serb areas of the former state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Go figure!
Hence, we have the usual double standard, which is precsely the reason the social experiment of the "international community" (IC) will eventually fail.
Instead of assuring an even-handed approach, firm but fair, the IC is using a one-sided, yet contradictory approach. I am absolutely convicned, knowing how Serbs think, that a principled carrot-and-stick policy would get a lot more cooperation from the Serbs. If given credit where credit is due and punishment, where justified, across the ethnic lines, the IC could consider its job done. But instead of creating a lose-lose situation that can be turned into a win-win for all, the IC has advanced a win-lose and lose-win sceario, depending on which side is involved and thereby only deepening the rift.
The Serbs (& Tito) remained in power after WW2. While Yugoslavia continued to maintain relations with the west and esp. the U.S. after WW2, they also maintained their relations with the USSR, and Soviet troops were stationed throughout the old Yugoslavia.
The Serbs ended up with Tito after WW2, and while Tito worked with the USSR, he was not anti-American, but rather, pro-Tito.
So.... Where's the "false propaganda" in that statement?
Tito was a dictator, pure and simple.
I thought my post pointed out the intense hatred between at least Croats and Serbs, if not the Slovenians, Bosnians, etc...
But collaboration isn't all about racial / ethnic hatred, it's also about power.
I'm sure you can find anecdotes and evidence, both pictorial and documentary to support the claim of atrocities against the serbs.
You can also find the same concerning all the other groups, regardless of who was collaberating with whom, or not, which simply proves what I said.
If the Serbs were (are) such great and wonderful people, why did the country of Yugoslavia break up? Why did all the former balkan republics claim independence and sovereignty?
Because they loved the Serbians so much?
The only thing that kept the balkan nations from killing each other for 50-60 years was the threat of total occupation by the Soviet Union.
Prior to the end of WW2, and after the breakup of the USSR, their was no retraint, and ALL ethnic groups in the balkans did their best to kill each other.
This is the truth, whether you like it or not.
Well then, I guess all French are still Nazis too, for their collaboration, right?
Let's not forget the Belgians, the Italians, the Dutch, the Austrians, Chzeks, Hungarians, Polish, and right on down the line.
They ALL SENT JEWS, GYPSY, ETC. to the concentration camps, didn't they?
They All Had their collaborators, didn't they?
Get it together.
The Serbs were no better or worse than any others in that era.
Neither were the Croats, Bosnians, or anyone else.
INDIVIDUALS made choices, some good, some bad.
Most regret some of those decisions, including collaboration with the Nazis.
Sometimes you do what you have to, to survive, and concern yourself with the consequences later.
Ony difference between all those other european nations and the nations of the former Yugoslavia is that the Serbs and Croats, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Montenegrans, etc.. STILL HATE EACH OTHER.
Russians have no place nor welcome in Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, et al..
Serbs have no place nor welcome in Croatia.
The Serbs should leave and resettle in Serbia, and stop being so bull-headed.
As for World War II,the whole world was a slaughterhouse, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, so don't get uppity about Ustasa excesses.
This is the equivlent to a Serb saying, "All of Krajina and Bosnia were a slaughterhouse during the 90's, so don't get 'uppity' about the occasional village that Arkan's Tigers burned in Croatia or any 'excesses' by Serb forces in Srebrenica." That's a terrible argument.
Damn near every Serb I know that lived in the Independent State of Croatia, including my own family which had 18 members of it burned alive in a Serbian Orthodox Church by the Ustashe, had family that was slautered at the hands of the Ustashe. That being said, I also have Croatian friends that hid Jews in their basements and would gladly take a bullet for me.
As much as I appreciate the fact that there's "plenty" of good Croats out there, does not appologize for the Croat Ustashe Nazi Holocaust.
There are no "Croatian" genotypes. "Croatian" and "Serbian" is a cultural, not racial issue. In places like Herzegovina, due to forceful conversion to catholicism of Serbs in the 18th century under Maria Thersea, Herzegovina's Croats have last names like Milosevic, Colic, etc. So much for looks, and different last names. As for sounds, Croatians sound just like their Krajina and Herzegovina Serb counterparts.
So, "many" Croatians (how many?) hid Jews but did they hide Serbs as well? What a joke! Before you come back spouting off more historical inaccuracies and biological untruths, please review the name of Ustasha's fasicst Hitler-allied state: Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska (NDH). Do you realize that nezavisna is a Serb word and that the "correct" Croatian word is neovisna? Did it ever occur to you (probably not) that the very makers of the Croatian Ustasha state did not know "Croatian" language well enough because it's not their language? Because they didn't mint "their" word for it until much later? Don't you think it is almost an irony, a laughable one at that, that the most anti-Serb Croatian creation had a name that started with a Serbian word?
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