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Remembering "Operation Storm" - when the Croatians committed the great War Crime of Ethnic Cleansing
www.generalmihailovich.com ^ | August 4, 2019 | Aleksandra Rebic

Posted on 08/04/2019 9:55:15 AM PDT by Ravnagora

Serbian refugees leaving Krajina in August of 1995

during Croatia's "Operation Storm" / "Oluja".

Author of photo unknown at this time.

Remembering the Fall of Krajina - "Operation Storm" / "Oluja", when the Croatians committed the great War Crime of Ethnic Cleansing against the Serbs that has never been punished.

The "War Years" of the 1990's for those of us who cared about what was happening in the former Yugoslavia were years that remain permanently etched in our hearts and in our consciousness. Many events over the course of those years made a significant impact, but for some of us the "Fall of Krajina" remains perhaps the most heartbreaking.

Like every morning during those years, I woke up on August 4, 1995 to news about what was happening in "the homeland" - what to some was the former Yugoslavia, what to others was "the Balkans", and what to still others was the center of the universe at that time. After more than four years of maintaining a strong Serbian stronghold in a historically significant area of Croatia, the "military frontier" where Serbs had been the majority for several centuries, and which the Croatian nazis had coveted more than anything else in their quest for "independence" from Yugoslavia, on that fateful day in August of 1995 the Croatians, with the support of the United States, finally succeeded in overwhelming the Serb patriots and the civilians. "Operation Storm" for the Croatians was an event that they would honor and celebrate enthusiastically every year thereafter. "Operation Storm" for anyone with any understanding or appreciation of the true nature of "war crimes" remains a horrific War Crime that has, to this day, gone unpunished.

There has been no real justice for the more than quarter of a million Serbs that were ethnically cleansed from the Krajina during that first week of August in 1995. Those brave Serbian people had refused to comply with Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia in 1991, knowing that it would be a death sentence for them if they did separate from Yugoslavia. They held on to the "Serb Republic of Krajina" for four years, a beacon of glorious, noble resistance, especially to those of us in the diaspora whose parents and grandparents, like my own, had been born and raised in Croatia and who were among the most dedicated Serbian Orthodox patriots anywhere to be found on this earth.

I remember that August day 24 years ago so vividly - not so much the day itself, but how it made me feel. I was in an apartment in Chicago, thousands of miles away, but the news hit me in the gut as though I was watching events unfold outside my window instead of on the television screen. So many of us took the devastating news very personally. For us, the "Serb Republic of Krajina" was the "homeland", regardless of where we had been born.

For the 10th anniversary of "Operation Storm" in 2005, historian Nebojsa Malic wrote an excellent essay describing the significance of "Krajina" and the nature of the war crime that befell this historic location in the Balkans. I highly recommend reading it:

http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2005/08/04/remembering-the-storm/

To all those whose lives were lost, to all those who survived but lost their ancestral homes, to all those who became true refugees who did not have the benefit of the world's compassion and political activists fighting on their behalf, please know that you have not been forgotten, and that Krajina will remain Serbian forever in our hearts.

Sincerely,

Aleksandra Rebic

August 4, 2019

*****


TOPICS: History; Politics
KEYWORDS: croatia; ethniccleansing; serbs; yugoslavia
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1 posted on 08/04/2019 9:55:15 AM PDT by Ravnagora
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To: joan; Smartass; zagor-te-nej; Lion in Winter; Honorary Serb; jb6; Incorrigible; DTA; vooch; ...

Ping.


2 posted on 08/04/2019 9:56:25 AM PDT by Ravnagora
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To: Ravnagora

bttt


3 posted on 08/04/2019 9:58:14 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire. Or both.)
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To: Ravnagora

With a lot of support from The Vatican.


4 posted on 08/04/2019 9:59:51 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Ravnagora

“Croatians” Were not these folks always regarded as the meanest fighters of all Europe?


5 posted on 08/04/2019 10:02:07 AM PDT by litehaus (A memory toooo long.............)
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To: Ravnagora

Every people deserve their own nation (Serbs included).

Sorting this out is often bloody, and the innocent suffer the most.

That does not make the process or the result criminal. It’s just the way things always have been, and always will be.


6 posted on 08/04/2019 10:02:45 AM PDT by Jim Noble (There is nothing racist in stating plainly what most people already know)
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To: litehaus

Even the Germans had to tell them to tone it down.


7 posted on 08/04/2019 10:04:44 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Ravnagora

yup. Thanks to Bill Clinton, we were
on the wrong side in that war. Now the
ones likely to get ethnically cleansed
are us.


8 posted on 08/04/2019 10:05:59 AM PDT by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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. The Krajina Serb Supreme Defence Council met under president Milan Martić to discuss the situation. A decision was reached at 16:45 to "start evacuating the population unfit for military service from the municipalities of Knin, Benkovac, Obrovac, Drniš and Gračac." The RSK was disbanded and most of its Serb population (from 150,000 to 200,000 people) fled.[21][36]

Only 5,000 to 6,000 people remained, mostly the elderly.[37] Croatian historian Ivo Goldstein wrote, "The reasons for the Serb exodus are complex. Some had to leave because the Serb army had forced them to, while others feared the revenge of the Croatian army or of their former Croat neighbours, whom they had driven away and whose homes they had mostly looted (and it was later shown that this fear was far from groundless).".[37]
9 posted on 08/04/2019 10:14:31 AM PDT by campaignPete R-CT (Committee to Re-Elect the President ( CREEP ))
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To: Ravnagora

Croats= catholic, serbs= Christians..


10 posted on 08/04/2019 10:14:52 AM PDT by Ikeon (Are you going to flap your lips until I die of boredom or are you gonna shoot me?)
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To: Ravnagora

Yet our media demonized the Serbs


11 posted on 08/04/2019 10:18:45 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you)
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To: Ravnagora

Another crime in the Clinton Chronicles, one that had Neo-con cheerleaders


12 posted on 08/04/2019 10:50:31 AM PDT by attiladhun2
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To: sparklite2

Bosnia and Kosovo were experiments in how the UN can give cover to conduct ethnic cleansing. Yes, they plan to use it here, with the blessing of the same Catholic Church.


13 posted on 08/04/2019 10:59:13 AM PDT by attiladhun2
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To: sparklite2

we supplied the surplus obsolete m-60s in mothballs to the Croatians to roll over the Krajina


14 posted on 08/04/2019 11:10:18 AM PDT by slapshot ( Speaker Ryan was a sober and less tan version of John Boehner)
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To: Ravnagora

The islamic aspect of that war is seldom mentioned.


15 posted on 08/04/2019 11:55:55 AM PDT by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again,")
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To: Jim Noble
Every people deserve their own nation (Serbs included).

It always depends on the definition of "their". In too many cases (Palestinians being the most visible example) a small cabal of gangsters figures out how to adopt the mantle of "an oppressed people" and work the international community for aid and and arms, all while delivering greater oppression to the people of "their" territory than the supposed occupiers do.

16 posted on 08/04/2019 3:23:18 PM PDT by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: Ravnagora

Well, perhaps the Serbs should have stuck to ethnically cleansing the Muslims and not moved on to ethnically cleansing areas of Croats. Paybacks can be hell. Just sayin’!


17 posted on 08/04/2019 4:34:56 PM PDT by House Atreides (Boycott the NFL 100% — PERMANENTLY)
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To: Ravnagora

Thank you for posting this.

It’s sickening how the Serbs have been demonized and made the scapegoat for all of the problems in the Balkans. With the enthusiastic assistance of the Western media, of course.


18 posted on 08/04/2019 9:55:13 PM PDT by CrimsonTidegirl
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To: Ravnagora

May the Memory of our Orthodox Serbian Brothers who lost their lives in Operation Storm be Eternal!!!!

And we Americans are still suffering in our own (lesser) ways from the crimes of the clintons and their fellow globalists!!!!


19 posted on 08/05/2019 7:56:13 AM PDT by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: Ravnagora

Memory eternal to the innocents of hell on earth unleashed by demonic powers in WWII.


20 posted on 08/18/2019 9:57:00 AM PDT by eleni121 ("All Along the Watchtower" Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9)
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