Serbian Orthodox suffer since the United Nations took control of Kosovo

To: homeagain balkansvet

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"From a dozen secondary mass graves along the road between Bratunac and Konjevic Polje: the road that passes in front of the Ag Warehouse in Kravica. 83 were identified by name as of my last visit to the morgue. "

Have you read The Balkan Times, Dshihad defender:

"On Christmas of 1993, his units attacked Kravica, killing 46 and wounding another 36 soldiers and civilians, all Serbs. Dani quoted witnesses as saying that some residents of Srebrenica not only took part in the killing of innocent Serb civilians, but also described their crimes with no pity for the victims."

http://www.balkantimes.com/html2/english/010412-GEORGI-008.htm (<- click)

You mentioned this town, haven't you?

Karadjordje

181 posted on 02/23/2003 8:38:40 AM PST by Karadjordje

Such thing as Russian who is a "Ruthenian Byzantine" "convert from American Catholicism" is as likely as Chinese Shinto Pentacostalist.

Ah, so, Plaise the Lold and pass the joss sticks. You never know. And I never said I'm Russian. I just studied it once upon a time.

182 posted on 02/23/2003 8:40:03 AM PST by homeagain balkansvet ((setting the record REALLY straight))

To: homeagain balkansvet

So you are saying that Bosnia and Croatia had the right to secession? Do you know that the Yugoslav constitution actually provided the right to secession for the Republics of the former Yugoslavia? The problem is that Croatia and Bosnia declared independence unconstitutionaly and against the declared will of the Serbs within these Republics. The Serbian population living for centuries in Bosnia and Croatia had a veto in regard to seccession as they were a constituent nation. The right to leave the Yugoslav Federation was as valid as the right 'not to leave', to remain within the Yugoslav Federation. This right to remain citizens of Yugoslavia was breached by the international community with the recognition of Croatia and Bosnia. It was a deliberate act of agression, a declaration of war. Agression through recognition. From one day to the next, you find yourself degraded from the status of a constituent nation, to a rightless minority 'in a hostile country'. Isn't that a reason to stand up and fight? Imagine you are living in Texas as a US citizen and in the near future Texas declares independence due to it's mexican population becoming the majority in Texas. Spanish would become the official language, Texas would be the state of Hispanics and the 'american' minority wouldn't be mentioned at all in Texas' new constition. Would you keep quiet and accept it without revolt? Or would you take up a rifle and show them what a real 'american' thinks about their nasty little declaration of independence and teach them a lesson or two? Especially if you had some members of your family killed in the last civill war, when Texas was independente for a short while (just hypothetical scenario in regard to NDH).

So you say international borders are a holy cow? What about the borders of the fomer Yugoslavia? The west recognized Croatia's and Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia. Applying the same logic, Serbia, Russia and the rest of the world could have recognized Republika Srpska Krajina and Republika Srpska after Croatia and Bosnia became recognized independent states by the international community. Why not? The same pattern. Croatia and Bosnia violated the constitution of the state they were part of by declaring their independence and proceeded with military means to finaly achieve their goals and get rid of all political and military institutions belonging to the Federation. Republika Srpska Krajina and Republika Srpska applied the same principles to Croatia and Bosnia in response and after they became internationally recognized states. The only difference is that Croatia and Bosnia were part of the old and internationally recognized Yugoslavia for a few decades, whereas Republika Srpska Krajina's and Republika Srpska's declaration of idependence came into effect the same second as Bosnia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. From their point of view they were never part of these newly created statelettes to begin with. By the way, these borders were created by a communist croat dicator and serbophobe and were administrative units within Yugoslavia, not borders of independent states, as Croatia and Bosnia never existed as independent states in recent history(with the exception of Hitler's puppet state NDH).

183 posted on 02/23/2003 8:40:50 AM PST by DestroyEraseImprove

Ah, the Near Legendary Christmas Day (6 Jan) 93 massacre. Yep. Forty six dead in combat. That's why the Serb leaders chose the spot to massacre the men from Srebrenica. They'd been lied to so much by their own propagandists that they were convinced they had to do this. Lies are like that you know.

Fact is, the Serbs killed the boys at Sreb for the same reason the Brits burned Joan of Arc: they couldn't get over the fact that they kept kicking Serb butts over and over and over again.

So remind me again: how does the death of 46 in combat justify the massacre in cold blood of thousands of disarmed prisoners?

184 posted on 02/23/2003 8:50:39 AM PST by homeagain balkansvet ((setting the record REALLY straight))

To: homeagain balkansvet

"Let me ask again: So where this morgue is located and from were those bodies came? [...] Please provide the official links.

" http://cf.news.yahoo.com/010802/3/2eqo.html
http://www.phrusa.org/research/bosnia/fmp_krav.htm

There are only 73 bodies in this morgue and no clear evidence that those bodies found in the area of abandoned Serbian villages around Srebrenica are not Serbs. I want your 4000 bodies morgue link. You have been there, you said and you cannot provide link to such an important finding?

And yes, I see that you do not claim to be Russian. Just use proper HTML formatting when you quote and follow with your own text.

185 posted on 02/23/2003 8:59:44 AM PST by A. Pole

To: homeagain balkansvet

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"And you calling ME "jihadi boy" is akin to a Nazi calling a Nuremberg prosecutor "Jew." It reflects far more on you than it does on me."

I don't call you "jihadi boy" - I call you SS Dshihad Mudshahedin warrior:

"The intention for the raising of a division containing Bosnian Muslims was put originally put forward in 1942 but it was not until the the spring of 1943 that the division was eventually raised. Himmler was quite eager to raise this division, although it went against his beliefs on racial purity. His reasons were twofold. Firstly he believed that the Muslim religion was a useful tool in motivating these men as it preached the virtues dying in a holy war (Jihad) and other useful teachings.
    Religion was an important motivational tool to this Division so thought Himmler and allowed each battalion to have an Iman and each company had a Mullah. Books were produced encouraging their religion and were distributed throughout its ranks. It was even reported that Hitler sent each member of the division a pendant with a miniature Koran attached to it. However it's formation was met with some opposition from the Croats who were wary of boosting Muslim separatism and recruiting for the German Army in their country. They eventually agreed but continued to put up some opposition to the raising of the division especially when it was discovered that the Germans were using the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as a tool in their recruiting drive.
    Recruits came from a number of sources including Volksdeutsche and Muslim deserters from the Croatian Army and Ustache units. A number of Bosnian Catholics were allowed to join up as well but only made up a small number of the divisions recruits. Not all recruits were from Croatia though with the signals battalion being entirely made up of Germans. Later when it was discovered that the numbers needed to fill out the ranks would not be met conscription was introduced.
    They were organized along the lines of Moslem units which had served in the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army with the cadre for this division originally intended to come from the 7th SS Prinz Eugen Division but this was not possible as the training grounds in the locality were full so the division was sent back firstly to Germany and then to France for training. They were in training from July '43 to February '44 but problems soon began to emerge. Their German training officers did not share Himmler's enthusiasm at the prospect of Muslims as part of the Waffen SS. They despaired at the sight of the men kneeling down on their prayer mats facing Mecca, praying to Allah and constantly made their feelings known in no uncertain terms. Referring to them as "Mujos" and behaving in an overbearing and condescending manner. This led to friction between officers and men which culminated in a mutiny in the pioneer battalion during which some German officers were shot out of hand. However this mutiny (known as the Villefranche mutiny) was inspired by 4 members of the division that were Yugoslav Communist partisans who had been planted within the division as a means of disrupting training and recruitment. Three of the main mutineers were captured and shot, along with 11 others. Quite a large number of others who had gone along with the mutiny were sent to either labour gangs working on the Siegfried Line or to concentration camps. One of the main conspirators named Matutinovic who was one of the Catholic recruits escaped and made it to Spain. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a muslim religious leader, who was living in Berlin at the time was sent for to restore order in the division and they were moved to Silesia and later to Bosnia for the completion of their training in mid February.
    Also incorporated into this regiment was the 23rd SS Kama which was made up of Croatian conscripts. Originally it was intended that the 13th SS would provide the officer cadre for this division but due to lack of recruits they themselves were incorporated into the 13th SS Waffen Gebirgs Division. As well as this the 1st Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 13th SS which was composed of ethnic-Albanian Muslims from Kosovo had not been committed to anti-partisan operations but was still in Bosnia. Himmler ordered it to be part of the new 21st Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS Skanderbeg.
    The division was now led by Austrian, German and other Volksdeutsche officers and NCOs and the recruits were given special privileges relating to diet and religious observations. All wore modified SS uniforms complete with field-grey fez with SS insignia and began anti-partisan operations in the spring of 1944 from their base in Brcko and took part in several large scale anti-partisan sweeps such as Operations "Maibaum", "Maiglockchen", "Save" "Wegweiser" and "Osterei". As part of 5th SS Mountain Corps they were constantly engaged in anti-partisan warfare until September of that year when it was withdrawn back to Brcko. IT was during this time that the desertion rate of the division reached an all time high with over 2000 deserters reported within the first three weeks of September. Widespread desertions continued until October when it was ordered that most of the Bosnian volunteers be disarmed and pressed into service with labour units. The remnants which also had a sizeable number of Germans were reformed into a regiment, as part of Kampfgruppe Hanke and deployed in Hungary, south of Budapest, Lake Balatan, and Drava in March 1945. The survivors marched west to avoid capture by the Soviets and were taken prisoner by the British.
    It has been suggested by many sources that the reputation and combat prowess of this division was dubious to say the least. This is debatable for two reasons. Firstly the question of atrocities will always arise in an area where partisan warfare is carried out and tit-for-tat reprisals are common. Atrocities against civilians and innocent parties are inexcusable but are sadly inevitable in guerilla warfare. Acts of brutality were committed by both sides and should be remembered when studying this subject. This may go some way to explaining the reason for the behaviour of this division. One must bear in mind the ethnic situation in Yugoslavia as another factor, with no love being lost between Serbs and Muslim Croats-a situation that came to head in the mid-1990's. A second reason for its suggested dubious combat reputation was its high rate of desertion. This can be put down to Germany's reversals in the face of the Soviets with many of the men from the division (far from being cowards) deciding to return home to protect their families which were constantly threatened by Tito's partisans. A question of loyalty to ones family must surely come before anything else. Naturally there exceptions to every rule and certainly there may well have been an element within the divisions whose actions cannot be excused."

http://www.forces70.freeserve.co.uk/Waffen%20SS%20Text+Images/13THSS.htm (<- click)

Karadjordje

186 posted on 02/23/2003 9:03:11 AM PST by Karadjordje

To: DestroyEraseImprove

By the way, these borders were created by a communist croat dicator and serbophobe and were administrative units within Yugoslavia,

So you concede that Communist Yugoslavia was an illegitimate state from the time of its formation. Thank you for making my argument for me. If the state WAS created by a communist croat (actually croat-slovene) dictator (and he was anti-Serb, in the sense that he was anti-EVERYBODY), and the lines drawn "arbitrarily," that shows that the original state was illegitimate.

But that leaves the internal borders of Yugoslavia at the time of independence. We must take the borders as we find them. International borders, yes, are a sacred cow. We REALLY don't want to start carving up contries and giving away their provinces to their neighbors. That Would Be Bad.

Imagine you are living in Texas as a US citizen and in the near future Texas declares independence due to it's mexican population becoming the majority in Texas. Spanish would become the official language, Texas would be the state of Hispanics and the 'american' minority wouldn't be mentioned at all in Texas' new constition. Would you keep quiet and accept it without revolt? Or would you take up a rifle and show them what a real 'american' thinks about their nasty little declaration of independence and teach them a lesson or two? Especially if you had some members of your family killed in the last civill war, when Texas was independente for a short while (just hypothetical scenario in regard to NDH).

Were this to happen, hypothetically, the argument for unity or independence would be undermined if one side or the other committed major war crimes. Fact is, you boys lost the war when you did that. Sreb was One Massacre Too Many.

But your argument is entirely speculative and not entirely parallel, as the Milosevic power-grab of 1990 doomed any chance at another outcome. Had the Serbs, and yes, the Croats, had different leaders, they could have come to a much less bloody outcome. It Didn't Have To Go This Way.

187 posted on 02/23/2003 9:04:37 AM PST by homeagain balkansvet ((setting the record REALLY straight))

You have been there, you said and you cannot provide link to such an important finding?

Not everything is on the web. I have the photographs. I have my own eyes. That is enough for me. You really want me to spam you with war porn? I don't think so.

Man, the Clintonesque spinning-deny-deny-deny-spinning-namecalling-deny-spin-namecalling I'm encountering here is incredible. Are you sure you guys never had sex with That Woman, Ms. Lewinski?

188 posted on 02/23/2003 9:18:27 AM PST by homeagain balkansvet ((setting the record REALLY straight))

To: homeagain balkansvet

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"And you calling ME "jihadi boy" is akin to a Nazi calling a Nuremberg prosecutor "Jew." It reflects far more on you than it does on me"

And guess who fought this Hitlerian SS Dshihad Mudshahedins - you mentioned the term "jew" - let's ask a Jew (The Simon Wiesenthal Center (<- click)):

"Armed Resistance in Yugoslavia

The struggle against the German invaders began in July 1941 with the Serbian uprising. Soon, the Communists took over the leadership of the struggle, and in the ensuing four years the leftist (partisan) movement increased in strength. By the middle of 1943 the movement had over 200,000 fighters in its ranks. At the height of the struggle, no fewer than twenty German divisions were fighting the partisans, with assistance from collaborators of various nationalities, including the SS Handzar division, which had been recruited among the Muslim minority in Croatia."

Source: http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x35/xr3517.html (<- click)

The Serbs again at the right side.

Karadjordje

189 posted on 02/23/2003 9:19:23 AM PST by Karadjordje

The Serbs again at the right side.

In 1941. That's a long time ago.

The Germans were on the right side against Napoleon in 1814. Doesn't make them right in 1914.

190 posted on 02/23/2003 9:27:51 AM PST by homeagain balkansvet ((setting the record REALLY straight))

To: homeagain balkansvet

Was there any Denazification in Bosnia or Croatia like in Germany? (As far I know Islamist Fundamentalist Alija Izetbegovic was a Nazi collaborateur, and Fascist and Antisemit Tudjman not mentioned ...)

Karadjordje

191 posted on 02/23/2003 9:33:21 AM PST by Karadjordje

To: homeagain balkansvet

This describes pretty well what I saw with my own eyes.

Bosnian DNA Labs Trying to End Search for Missing

http://www.balkantimes.com/html2/english/020405-BETH-001.htm

by Beth Kampschror for Balkan Times in Sarajevo - 05/03/02

Hasa Selimovic hasn’t seen her husband or her youngest son since Bosnian Serb soldiers took them off a truck leaving Srebrenica in July 1995. Another son, Amir, fled into a nearby forest. She never heard from them, or her brother Jusuf, again.

Last summer, after more than six years of hoping her family was still alive, Mrs. Selimovic gave a few drops of her blood to a DNA project overseen by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Her DNA profile was put in a database, and it matched a profile in another database -- of bone DNA. It was her son Junuz.

"This one of my sons hadn’t yet finished eighth grade, the one that was found … I got the results around Ramadan, that was somewhere in the month of December. It was difficult," she said.

She lives alone in her fastidiously clean flat in Lukavac, a small town a few miles from Tuzla. On the wall above her scarf-covered head hangs a photo collage in black and white. It’s her, her husband Ismet, her son Amir and another son Mustafa, who was killed in 1993. "I don’t have one of that little one," she said. Sometimes she raised her voice and sometimes she cried. But she said she’d rather know the truth.

"I thank [the ICMP]," she said. "It’s better to know that the bones are resting somewhere than not to know. I’d like to find out about my husband, whether he’s alive or dead, let me find out. For my son, the same, and the same for my brother. They’ve done a good, good job."

The DNA identification project is trying to relieve the anguish of not knowing felt by Hasa Selimovic and the relatives of the about 30,000 missing persons in BiH. Two labs established last year in Sarajevo and Tuzla analyse, store and match DNA from blood and bone samples. A third lab in Banja Luka should be functional this year. Outside BiH, the ICMP collects blood in Kosovo and Serbia, and has several DNA labs in Croatia. US authorities are also using ICMP-donated software to help identify remains from the 11 September terrorist attacks.

No one has ever attempted such a large-scale identification project using this science. But the passage of years and lack of medical records in Bosnia has rendered classical forensics methods -- autopsies, clothing or dental records -- nearly useless.

Now families can give finger-stick blood samples at one of five centres in BiH, or to one of the five mobile teams in the field, and wait for a DNA match from recovered remains. Success depends on the number of bodies recovered and blood samples received. ID Coordination Head Adnan Rizvic said that ideally they’d like two to four relatives’ profiles in the database here in Tuzla -- up to 100,000 individual blood samples. Now they have 21,000. Thirty-eight have been matched using only the new in-country labs since the first case in November.

"This system is producing results," Rizvic said. "We doubled the cases for Srebrenica in only one year. This spring we’re expecting it to be bigger; we’ll have more samples, so it’s a bigger possibility to have a match."

Blood donors’ names, as well as the origin of bone samples, are masked by a bar code system. Rizvic pulled a few anonymous groups of 90 samples from a refrigerator. "Can you tell me who is this?" he asked. The local analysts working with the samples can’t tell either. Identity, which is the very reason these families are suffering in the first place, is confidential.

Remains recovered in Bosnia are known by a number until they are identified. Some will be buried that way. Across town from Rizvic’s office, about 1,780 remains in an enormous morgue with 4,408 white body bags -- all from Srebrenica exhumations, on rows and rows of ceiling-high metal shelves -- are ready for burial at the new memorial at Potocari. Only 168 of them have been identified.

"On the gravestone we’ll put our numbers," said Podrinje Identification branch project officer Zlatan Sabanovic. "We’ll continue the process and when we find them out, we’ll just take the number off and put the name on."

Until every numbered grave and bone sample has a name, families won’t give up. Thousands of them -- Croats, Muslims and Serbs -- belong to more than 50 associations throughout BiH, and the ICMP regularly grants them money for offices and helps organise conferences. Hasa Selimovic is active in Women of Srebrenica, which is seeking answers about the 8,000 Muslim men and boys that disappeared after Srebrenica fell.

"I’m looking for, and all of we mothers, are looking for brothers and husbands and children, all of ours, to find out, to find out the truth," she said. "What can we do? For us it’s clear that no one is alive … for so many years, you see, for seven years, none of them have got in touch with us."

192 posted on 02/23/2003 9:37:59 AM PST by homeagain balkansvet ((setting the record REALLY straight))

Be glad there wasn't, or the entire wartime leadership of Srpska would be in the Hague now. As opposed to half.

193 posted on 02/23/2003 9:41:13 AM PST by homeagain balkansvet ((setting the record REALLY straight))

To: homeagain balkansvet

No. What I said is, that these borders represented administrative units within Yugoslavia, not borders of souvereign states.

Still ignoring my questions and again I have to repeat myself. Why is it that Bosnia and Croatia had the right to secession and Republika Srpska Krajina and Republika Srpska based on the same principles did not? These unanswered questions were the reason for the war to break out. Why was the right to self-determination denied to the Serbs before the start of the war? Your answer is, because the Serbs delivered a military defeated to Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica three years after the war started. C'mon, you can't be that retarded. You can't violate internationally recognized borders of a souvereign state (Yugoslavia) by recognizing the independence of secessionist republics and then at the same time declare the borders of these newly recognized states(Croatia&Bosnia) as untouchable. And on top of that you deny the the right to self-determination and secession for nations within these new states(Republika Srpska Krajina and Republika Srpska). Pure hypocrisy and double standards.

194 posted on 02/23/2003 9:49:08 AM PST by DestroyEraseImprove

To: homeagain balkansvet

The Right to self-determination and the Serbian Question
Rastko ^ | 1995 | Dr Slavenko Terzic

Posted on 10/08/2002 3:19 PM PDT by DestroyEraseImprove

Source: The Serbian Questions in The Balkans, University of Belgrade, publisher - Faculty of Geography, Belgrade 1995.

In the twentieth century, South-eastern Europe saw the rise and demise of the Yugoslav idea which resulted in the creation and destruction of the common Yugoslav state. The fate of the Serbian people, the most numerous people in the central part of this region, which gave the greatest contribution to the creation of the common state, but which also became the tragic hostage of its forcible break-up, is closely linked to the fate of this idea and this state.

At the end of the twentieth century, the world's leading political centres of power displayed incomprehensible double criteria: on the one hand, they talked about global European and world integration - "a new world order", while on the other - they accepted and supported the disintegration of a state created according to the model of the 19th century European integrations (the unification of the Germans and Italians), and they artificially split up a people that was the state's pillar. And all this is taking place after the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany: new "Berlin walls" today threaten to split the Serbian people among five and perhaps even more states.

The Serbian question, as the key problem of the Yugoslav crisis, appeared with the destruction of the Yugoslav state, when the Serbs started their struggle for preventing the total break-up of the Serbian people and, at the same time, for being united in one state community like the other Yugoslav peoples. Serbia is just a part of the entire Serbian entity, which is often not understood in the world, because for centimes one third of the Serbian people has been living on its ethnic territories which, until recently, were the parts of several former Yugoslav republics, primarily Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The question of self-determination of the Serbs can be understood in the best way from the historical point of view, because the past cannot be disregarded when speaking of the face of peoples and states.

In order to understand and explain more deeply and extensively the Yugoslav crisis and the Serbian question the following facts must be borne in mind:

1) The Serbs are among old nations because they had acquired their national identity before the modern doctrine of nationalism was formulated. They undoubtedly possessed awareness about their long-lasting history and tradition, about their great empire, gland medieval civilisation and cultural unity, regardless of the fact that they lived in different states after the Turkish conquests of their lands. National awareness and a feeling for cultural identity of the Serbian nation were common to most Serbs, regardless of the fact that, being divided, they also cherished their local traditions. The Serbs are proud of their history and tradition and for this reason, just like the Poles once, they cannot accept the imposed contemporary divisions which cut up the Serbian ethnic, geographical, and historical entity.

2) The Serbian Uprising in 1804 marked the beginning of the national and social renaissance of the peoples of South-eastern Europe, in which the Serbs undoubtedly played a significant and even a leading role in certain periods. After the Serbian came the Greek Revolution in 1821, and then the national movements of the Croats (the Illyrian movement), Bulgarians, Romanians, and Albanians. In that lengthy and difficult struggle for liberation from the rule of the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottoman empire, which lasted over a century, the Serbs suffered enormous human and material losses. During that struggle of all the Yugoslav peoples only the Serbs managed to create two independent state centres - Serbia and Montenegro - during the 19th century, which became internationally recognised states in 1878 (Berlin Congress). And it was only these two Serbian states that built their independence and sovereignty into the foundations of the common Yugoslav state in 1918.

3) The international professional and broader public often, especially now, overlooks an extremely important fact without which it is impossible to understand the essence of the Serbian liberation struggle in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century and the reason for accepting the Yugoslav idea and creating a common state with other South Slav peoples. Despite the fact that the Serbs managed to form two state centres, until 1912 and until 1918 respectively, more than half of the Serbs lived under the rule of two empires - Austria-Hungary and Turkey, in the then historical provinces of Croatia, Slavonija, Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, southern Hungary (Vojvodina), Old Serbia, and Macedonia. Can one describe as "greater Serbian" aspirations their national desire to live in one state community in their ethnic area, along with Serbia and Montenegro, like other European nations? Why doesn't anyone then, according to this logic, speak of a "greater German", "greater English" or "greater French" Idea?

The formation of a common state in 1918 was a part of Europe's democratic transformation at the beginning of the 20th century, the victory of the democratic spirit cherished by liberal and democratic Europe during the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. That was a victory of the national over the imperial idea. The Yugoslav state was a multi-cultural community in the full sense of the word, for only as such it could be the state of the peoples of the same or similar ethnic origin, but of three religions - Christian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Islam. That is why these peoples inherited several cultural and civilisation models.

Aware of the great losses they had suffered for their liberation and also because of the dispersion of the Serbian ethnic region, from the very beginning the Serbs insisted on the preservation of the Yugoslav state community. I would like to mention here a dreadful fact about the human losses that the Kingdom of Serbia alone suffered in World War I (1914-1918). Before the war, 2,900,000 people lived within Serbia's old borders. Defending its bare existence from the aggression by the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Germany) and their Balkan allies, in World War I Serbia lost 1,247,000 people, of whom 845,000 were civilians and 402,000 solders. In other words, fighting for its liberation and the liberation of the unliberated Serbs, and of other Yugoslavs, in that catastrophic war Serbia lost 43% of its population. Such a demographic downfall took place only in German and western Slav provinces at the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).[1]

4) When one today discusses the right to self-determination and the question of the self-determination of the Serbs on the territory of the former Yugoslav state, especially in its western part, it is particularly important to note the fact that the Serbs, together with Croats and Slovenes, were an equal constituent factor also when a state union of the South Slav provinces of the Austro-Hungarian empire was formed, in November 1918. The Serbian name existed in the name of both the government and the state of that short-lived union which appeared after the break-up of the Habsburg monarchy. The National Council of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs was formed in Zagreb on October 6, 1918, with a programme for "...the unification of all Slovenes, Croats and Serbs into the people's free and independent state of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs based on democratic principles."[2] Therefore, on the basis of the principle of the right to self-determination, the Serbs, along with Slovenes and Croats, separated from Austria-Hungary and formed a state union which soon decided to unite with the then Kingdom of Serbia, previously joined by Montenegro and Vojvodina, and most counties in the then Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The question is now: If the Croats and Slovenes no longer want to live in a common Yugoslav state which they formed together with the Serbs, on the basis of what principles must the Serbs now live in their republics - states and not with the other parts of the Serbian people as they themselves had already opted for at their referendums in the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina? How can the Serbs, from a constituent people in the short-lived State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs, and in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and understandably in Yugoslavia as well, now become a national minority in the same republics that were formed on the territory of the two state alliances? There is no need to even mention that it is precisely in the Yugoslav state formed in 1918 that most Yugoslav nations experienced their full national promotion and, for the first time in history, they formed their own states - republics, except the Croats, whose state lost its independence in 1102.

5) It is unnatural that the west European and American public opinions are largely indifferent towards the Serbs' struggle for self-determination. In the same way, it is deeply unjust that the European Community and the United States keep refusing to acknowledge the Serbs their right to self-determination and to their own national aspirations. The light to self-determination, which was so strongly promoted in the 20th century both in theory and practice of international relations, has been seriously violated in the case of the Yugoslav crisis by European arbitration (the European Community and its bodies). contrary to its original meaning, this right was carried out as the right to secession of the Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia, mostly by forcible means, and not as the right to self-determination of the Yugoslav peoples. Thus, Europe favoured the unilateral secession of republics, to the detriment of the right to self-determination of peoples. Apart from that, Germany, as the leading state in the European Community, urged, in the way without a precedent, the disintegration of the Yugoslav state, the member founder of the League of Nations and the United Nations, the state that was cleared twice after the two German aggressions and defeats in the two World Wars. Germany did this right after having achieved its own unification.

6) The biggest fundamental mistake, which the European Community and the United States do not want to understand and which is, among other things, the main cause of the tragic conflicts, lies in the fact that, with the disintegration of the common Yugoslav state, the Serbian people became the hostage of the exclusively administrative borders of the former Yugoslav republics.

Namely, the borders among the former Yugoslav republics are not based on any of the three principles: geographical, historical, ethnic, nor were they defined through the democratic will of the peoples. They were defined at the end of World War II by a few members of the Yugoslav Communist Party's Central Committee Politburo, led by Josip Broz Tito. They are the result of the Yugoslav communists' concept for resolving the national question which was based on two crucial elements: a) the heritage of the Austro-Hungarian imperial ideology in the Balkans, especially in regard to the Serbian question (to fight against alleged "greater Serbian aspirations" by establishing an artificial "balance of forces among the Balkan nationalism's"); b) the Stalinist practice and theory of the Third Communist International in the period after 1924, when the socialist and communist ideology of internationalism was replaced by the most retrogressive forms of nationalism and nationalist awareness in Yugoslavia. In cooperation with clerical and pro-Fascist political groups and with the help of the Comintern (the Third International), the Communist Party of Yugoslavia worked on breaking up the Yugoslav state which was considered a "Versailles creation" and "the prison of peoples". The strategy of directly breaking up Yugoslavia was abandoned after 1935, but this spirit continued to live in the organisational structure of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which during the World War II became the model for defining the borders of the Yugoslav federal units.

7) The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (the Yugoslav League of Communists), that is, its leadership with Tito at its helm, played a crucial role in determining Yugoslavia's fate after World War II, since that party ruled constantly for almost five decades. Titoism, as a special version of Stalinism, and his national policy were, apart from a series of external factors that accompanied them, the main cause of the Yugoslav state's disintegration and the tragic conflicts which this break-up led to. Everything that has been happening since 1991/1992 represents only the finale of a long-lasting process of Yugoslavia's political, economic and cultural disintegration which was carried our by the Yugoslav League of Communists. For instance, trade between Yugoslav republics was of lower intensity over the past decades than that between the European Community countries. Nevertheless, the Serbs, as a people scattered among five federal units whose borders were solely administrative, were most interested in the preservation of even such a Yugoslav state which practically functioned as a confederation under the 1974 Federal Constitution.

The Yugoslav communist leadership, in which Croats and Slovenes (Josip Broz, Edvard Kardelj, Vladimir Bakariæ) had the main say, manipulated with the national question, dissolved the ethnic unity of the Serbian people, obstructed Yugoslav political and cultural integration. Thus, instead of finding ways to overcome the political and religious disputes, it kept causing their deterioration, stimulating all forms of old historical divisions and creating new nations on a regional or religious basis. In order to preserve their power and privileges, the leading Serbian communists carried out Titoist ideas, possible critical views ended in removals from the political scene with mass political campaigns.

8) In the period between 1945 and 1991 Yugoslavia represented the realisation of the Croatian-Slovenian concept of the Yugoslav state which was not based oil the equality of peoples, but rather on the alleged equality of federal units - states, or more precisely on an artificially established balance of power between national-communist oligarchies; Tito's ideology and technology for preserving power in such a state were based on the belief that a coalition of federal national-communist oligarchies (of the Croats, Slovenes, Muslims, Montenegrins, Albanians and Macedonians) against the Serbs would eliminate the "danger of an alleged Serbian hegemony". Even though the Serbs accounted or over 40% of the population in the Yugoslav state, with such an organisation of power and such a national policy they were in an unequal position in relation to other nations, because their participation in power, compared to other nations was way below their number and real strength. This conception was expressed in the notion - "weak Serbia, strong Yugoslavia." Out of all the six federal units only Serbia had two autonomous provinces (Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohia), which, under the 1974 Constitution, were almost independent from their republic, while Dalmatia, for instance, did not get autonomy although it had been a separate province with its own assembly even when it was part of the Habsburg monarchy, but, nevertheless, it became part of the federal unit of Croatia.

9) The only fair and permanent resolution of the Yugoslav crisis would be if the peoples of Yugoslavia had the right to self-determination, instead of the self-determination of republics (territories) whose borders were arbitrarily defined by the communist leadership, but which the European Community and the United States took as a "holy" principle in their arbitration in the crisis. The Serbs have an incontestable right to self-determination within the Serbian ethnic area, on the territories where they have been living for centuries and where they have constituted an ethnic majority for centuries. This primarily refers to the territories of the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The former Yugoslav republic of Croatia encompassed three historical provinces - Croatia, Slavonija and Dalmatia, but it was, nevertheless, organised on a unitary principle. Dubrovnik, for instance, was never part of the Croatian lands - it was the independent Republic of Dubrovnik for centuries, and at the beginning of the 19th century it became an integral part of the Austrian province of Dalmatia. During that period it was as much a Serbian as it was a Croatian town. The Serbian Military Border was a separate political unit within the Habsburg monarchy for centuries and only at the beginning of the eighties of the 19th century it was annexed to the civilian Croatia[3]. The Serbian border's defended the Habsburg provinces from the Turks. On the territory of the Military Border the Serbs constituted an ethnic majority for centuries, as they do today; that is why this region represents the largest part of the Serb Krajina which is a Serbian state unit on the territory of the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia.

According to the population census carried out at the time of the Austro-Hungarian rule on December 31, 1910, the Orthodox, that is "Greco-Eastern" Serbs accounted for 24% of the population of the provinces of Croatia and Slavonija.[4] Slavonija later on became part of the Yugoslav republic of Croatia. (Dalmatia as well as the Roman Catholic Serbs who lived primarily in southern Dalmatia were not included here). Out of this percentage in most counties the Serbs constituted an absolute majority: Donji Lapac (91.79%), Graèac (72.33%), Korenica (73.48%), Udbina (73.13%), Slunj (53.19%), Vojniæ (72.18%), Dvor (87.49%), Glina (65.19%), Kostajnica (64.16%), Topusko (85.41%), Pakrac (50.96%). A high percentage of the Serbs also lived in the following counties: Gospiæ (47.54%), Otoèac (48.65%), Ogulin (47.54%), Petrinja (49.06%), Grubišno polje (46.87%), Daruvar (32.36%), Slatina (40.79%), Ilok (43.12%), Vukovar (36.19%).[5] During World War II, at the rime of the Nazi creation "The Independent State of Croatia", the Serbs were exposed to a monstrous genocide: around 800,000 people were killed. The Serbs' fear that the genocide could be repeated, due to the return of the symbols under which the previous genocide was carried out, is a first rate historical and psychological fact without which the Serbian question in these regions cannot be understood. According to the last regular population census in the former Yugoslavia in 1981, the Serbs accounted for 17% to 18% of the population in the Republic of Croatia, if one takes into account that a part of the Serbs declared themselves as Yugoslavs (officially 11.6% were Serbs and 8.2% Yugoslavs).[6]

The case of Bosnia-Herzegovina is even more convincing. Since they came to the Balkan peninsula, the Serbs have been inhabiting these lands: from the 8th to the 10th century Bosnia was an integral pair of the first Serbian state. At the beginning of the 11th century, Bosnia became one of the several Serbian states, as well as Hum (Herzegovina), then Zeta (later on Montenegro) and Raška (later on Serbia). In the ethnic sense, today s Bosnian Muslims are mostly Serbs who accepted Islam after the Turkish conquests, during more than four centuries of the Ottoman rule. It is understandable that over the centuries they formed their own cultural identity based on the values of the Islamic civilisation circle, because of which the leadership of Tito's Yugoslavia proclaimed them a separate nation - Muslims. For centimes, all the way up until the 1960s, the Orthodox Serbs constituted the majority population in Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to the Austro-Hungarian population census in 1910, 43.5% of the population declared themselves as Orthodox Serbs (officially as Greco-Eastern Serbs), 32.3% as Muslims and 22.9% as Roman Catholics (the Roman Catholics included all people belonging to this confession who lived in the Habsburg monarchy - apart from the Croats there were also Germans, Poles, Hungarians, and others).[7] According to the first population census after World War II in 1948, there were 44.3% of Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 30.7% of Muslims (officially "undecided Muslims"), and 23.9% of Croats. According to the 1981 census, we find 32.0% of Serbs (but their number is certainly larger due to the 7.9% of Yugoslavs, the way the Serbs, especially in mixed regions, mostly declared themselves), 39.5% of Muslims, and 18.3% of Croats.[8] It is interesting that with this percentage the Croats have already formed their state unit within Bosnia-Herzegovina ("Herzeg-Bosnia"), on the other hand, they energetically deny the right of the Serbs who account for approximately the same percentage to have then own state unit the Serb Krajina, on the territory which used to fall within the administrative borders of the Republic of Croatia.

10) The acknowledgement of the light to self-determination of the Serbian people on the territory of the former Yugoslav state could be the factor of stability in South eastern Europe and the Balkans. Otherwise, this region will constantly be explosive, it will threaten with new clashes and keep endangering peace in this region and perhaps even further. The constitution of state alliances on the principle of the right to self-determination could also be the basis for a possible new integration on this territory.

The Yugoslav example displays the strategy of a complete revision of the European older established after the two world wars. The establishment of a new balance of power in Europe, and the world at large, is undermining all the principles which the contemporary world has been based on, imposing double standards and placing in the forefront an argument of force and forcible destruction. We are witnessing a serious crisis of the principles of international law and international relations. Unlike the time of a bipolar bloc structure when a precise codification of all principles was insisted on, now these principles are being completely relativized and are changing in the same direction in which interventionism is strengthening. This drastically endangers independence and sovereignty of small peoples and their states, especially if they are not ready to follow the concepts of the creator of the "new world order".

NOTES

1 Milorad Ekmeèiæ, Stvaranje Jugoslavije 1790-1918, 2 The Formation of Yugoslavia 1790-1918/ (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1989), p. 810.

2 Ibid.

3 Hugh Seton -Watson, Nations and States, An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics or Nationalism, trans, Nada Šoljan (Zagreb: Globus, 1980), p. 138.

4 "Popis žitelja od -31. prosinca 1910. u Kraljevinama Hrvatskoj i Slavoniji," /Census of December 31, 1910 in the Kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonija/ in Publikacije Kr. zemaljskog statistièkog ureda u Zagrebu, LXIII (Zagreb, 19)4), p.50-51.

5 Ibid.

6 "Nacionalni sastav stanovništva po opštinama - konaèni rezultati," /Population by Nationalities/ in Popis stanovnistva, domacinstava i stanova u 1981 .(Belgrade: SZS, 1991), p. 11.

7 "Popis žitelja...", op. cit., p.48. See also: M. Spasovski, D. Živkoviæ, and M. Stepiæ, Etnièki sastav stanovništva Bosne i Hercegovine, /The Ethnic Structure of the Population in B&H/, Edition: Etnièki prostor Srba, 2 (Belgrade: Geografski fakultet, 1992), p.19.

8 Spasovski, et al, Etnièki sastav... p.47.

Dr Slavenko Terziæ, Historian and Balkanologist, is Director of the Historical Institute, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade. His major areas of interest are History of Serbia and the Serbian People in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th, and History of the Balkans. In addition to numerous studies and articles (over fifty) on various aspects of this field, he has also published Srbjja i Grèka (1856-1903) -Borba za Balkan- /Serbia and Greece [1856-1903] -The Struggle for the Balkans -/ (1992); Srbija i Balkansko pitanje krajem 19 veka: povratak starim središtima /Serbia and the Balkan Question at the End of the 19th century: Return to the Old Roots/ (1992); Benjamin Kalay i srpsko pitanje /Benjamin Kalay and the Serbian Question/ (1992); Srpsko pitanje izmedju Rusije i Zapadnih Sila /The Serbian Question between Russia and the Western Powers/ (1993); Old Rashka (1993), and Ethnic and religious in the Serbian history problems of the national Integration's in the 19th and 20th centuries (1994). At present, Dr Terziæ is working on the book Russia, Slavophilism and the Serbian Question.

195 posted on 02/23/2003 9:49:30 AM PST by DestroyEraseImprove

To: homeagain balkansvet

Look, life is too short to argue with brick walls. I've made my case. Read my sources. I've spoken what I've seen with my own eyes. If you want to discuss with me in private, send me an Email. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear will know the truth.

And if you think I'm a Bin Laden worshipper because I think machinegunning helpless people in a barn is a Bad Thing, go directly to Hell, do not pass go, do not collect 200 trillion Serb dinars.

We be out of here now. Buh-bye.

196 posted on 02/23/2003 9:49:53 AM PST by homeagain balkansvet ((setting the record REALLY straight))

To: homeagain balkansvet

197 posted on 02/23/2003 9:52:15 AM PST by DestroyEraseImprove

To: homeagain balkansvet

I know someone who has pictures of thousends massacred Serbs by Croatian Paramilitaries. Are you intereseted in this?

Karadjordje

198 posted on 02/23/2003 9:56:14 AM PST by Karadjordje

This is no joke.

Karadjordje

199 posted on 02/23/2003 9:59:14 AM PST by Karadjordje

200 posted on 02/23/2003 10:01:37 AM PST by Karadjordje

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