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Back to index to Milosevic statement
WARREN ZIMMERMAN ON THE SLOVENIAN/CROATIAN ASSAULT ON THE YUGOSLAV ARMY (JNA) As regards the war in Slovenia and Croatia, to begin with I will only mention briefly that in Warren Zimmerman's book - he was the last US ambassador to the SFRY - on page 173 he makes the following comment on the position of the JNA and the so-called heroic struggle in Slovenia and Croatia against the still common and legal Yugoslav army. I quote: "The JNA was in its own country. Its troops were legitimately deployed in all the Yugoslav republics. Even so, after the declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia, the troops were treated as occupying troops even when they did not leave their barracks. The Slovenian tactics and later on .... The Slovenian and then the Croatian tactics, which cannot boast of any particular heroism, was based on avoiding open conflict and attempting to bring the soldiers in the barracks to a state of hunger and forcing them to leave. The JNA, which until yesterday was a protector of the country and today has been treated as the occupier, had a strong effect on the soldiers who were torn between the two sides." Further, Zimmerman, bearing in mind all the circumstances, concludes in his book that it is wrong to speak of an attack by the JNA on Slovenia and later on on Croatia. One of the most active anti-Serb activists, Warren Zimmerman, who was then on the spot, is pointing to a well-known fact that it is wrong to speak of an attack by the JNA on Slovenia and Croatia while you here have been given the task of saying that aggression was perpetrated there by the JNA on its own country.
CROATIA AND YUGOSLAVIA AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR Within Yugoslavia the Croatian separatist tendencies did not fully disappear with the defeat and disappearance of the quisling independent state of Croatia in World War II. These tendencies began to be displayed quite openly in the early '70s with the so-called mass movement in Croatia by a part of the republican leadership when demands were put forward for the independence of Croatia and very strong pressure and threats were directed towards the Serbian people. Although in post-war Yugoslavia, among the most prominent state leaders, the Croats were given especially significant posts, and they dominated in absolute numbers. Even so, in Croatia and in some other places, the thesis was constantly fabricated that there was so-called Serb hegemony there. What the Serb domination or hegemony looked like we shall see. From World War II throughout the existence of Yugoslavia, it is very well known that from the end of World War II until his death in 1980, the undisputable leader was Tito, who was a Croat. During the existence of socialist Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1992, over a period of 47 years at the head of the Yugoslav government, 30 years, were Croats. And during the remaining 17 years, it was all the others. Only one of them was a Serb, from 1963 to 1967, and that was Petar Stambolic. When all this is borne in mind, how can we say that it was the Serbs who dominated in the political leadership of the country? As for the army, your own witness described the composition of the top leadership at the time of the break-up of Yugoslavia. There was one Yugoslav and that was the minister of defence, Veljko Kadijevic, from Croatia, from a mixed marriage between a Serb and a Croat woman; two Serbs, one from Serbia, one from Bosnia; eight Croats; two Slovenians; two Macedonians; and one Muslim. We should add to this that Tito's closest collaborator and the creator of the constitutional system in all its stages was a Slovene, Edvard Kardelja. All this shows quite clearly that the story of some kind of Serbian domination in Yugoslavia is a pure and simple lie as well as the statement that the Croats and Slovenians had cause to complain of inequality and insufficient representation. The story of Serb hegemony was only a propaganda tool which went against the truth and which was used to justify secessionist aspirations. In post-war Yugoslavia, the Ustasha genocide over the Serbs was a topic that was not much talked about. The remaining Serbs on the territory of the former Independent State of Croatia, especially those in the Krajina which the well-known Serbian poet Matija Beckovic described as the remnants of a slaughtered people, tacitly agreed not to talk about the sufferings of their relatives, even not to bury them in a proper way. The mass graves, Jadovnov [phoen], Pribilovci, Golubnjaca were simply covered over with concrete and left to be forgotten, whereas here the thesis has been put forward that the Serbs reburied their dead later on, although these people had never been given a proper burial.
THE RISE OF TUDJMAN AND THE HDZ Bearing in mind this terrible mass crime from the not so distant past, what could the Serbs in Croatia feel when at in February 1990, at the rally of the HDZ in Zagreb, the president of that party, Tudjman, said, among other things, the Independent State of Croatia was not only a quisling creation and a fascist crime, it was also an expression of the historical aspirations of the Croatian people. What was more natural than for them to respond and to raise their voices before "the Croatian people," in quotation marks, because this was not referring to all Croats but to extremists aided from abroad, before they set out anew to realise their so-called historical aspirations. All this is information that you have and that you are overlooking. This illegal Prosecution was not hindered from speaking in paragraph 94 of its illegal indictment about the HDZ without any qualification, although this was a party which revived the practices and symbols from Ustasha times. While in paragraph 95 of this same false indictment, the pro-Yugoslav Serb Democratic Party is called a nationalist party. This is a manipulation which they permitted themselves in this kind of presentation because they know everything about the chauvinist activities of the HDZ, but they are not allowing a word to be said about it. Everything about the HDZ had to be suppressed, and the SDS had to be blackened. This shows quite clearly that these activities of the Serbian people -- what they fail to say is that the activities of the Serbian people were activities aimed at defence. Warren Zimmerman, in his book The Source of a Catastrophe speaks about how in Tudjman's Croatia, in quotes, "The rights of Serbs were seriously violated. They were dismissed from work, asked to sign statements of loyalty." The irony is greater because here they tried to impute that I requested some type of statement of loyalty. Well, they couldn't find then a single person who had to sign this statement of loyalty to me. This is absurd. Their homes and property were attacked, Zimmerman continues, says that Tudjman's ministers called the Serbs by derogatory names. On page 215 of that book he says that Tudjman played a major role in the violent death of Yugoslavia and the violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. He said that he was said to have a Nazi attitude towards the Serbs due to which Croatia turned into an undemocratic and explosive republic, and these are his words. The anti-Serb path of the new Croatian government is linked to the Nerval Group. Nerval is a place in Canada where the Franciscan monks and Ustashas were situated. These neo-Ustasha groups were assessed by the Canadian government as more extreme than the actual pro-Nazi-Ustasha organisation during Hitler's Independent State of Croatia. In spite of that, the Croatian press is writing about these things but due to a shortage of time I cannot present this to you now. But the gist is in the following: At the time already in 1987, in 1987, as early as that, an approach was made to the future Independent State of Croatia containing this programme containing four main points taken over from information coming from Croatia, from the Croatian magazine Globus. Number one: At any cost Croatia must be an independent state. We must work on having Croatia become ethnically clear and homogenous. In other words, the Serb national community should be reduced to a minimal minority so that they would not be a disruptive factor. The struggling Croatia should be led on one front, and the main opponent are the Serbs. In order to defeat the Serbs, we need to join together with the Communists and the Partisans and in union with them we will win our finer victory. And four: As far as Bosnia and Herzegovina is concerned, such a policy should be conducted which would sooner or later lead to the joining of Western Bosnia to Croatia to have a pure Croatian territory. Martin Spegelj, his defence minister during the time of these events in the Dnevnik on the 28th of October, 2001, said publicly, "If a house of a Serb is burned down, he will not have anywhere to return." He said that Gojko Susak said this. Again in Novi List, Spegelj said on the 29th of October 2001 that Tudjman and Susak essentially made a concept of a pure nationalist state after the model of Croatia from World War II. In December, on 8th of December, 1993, the New York Times speaks about 10.000 homes which were blown up with dynamite. I'm not going to quote from that in order not to waste time. In spite of the pressures, harassment, physical attacks and an overall degradation on the individual and collective level, the Serbian people in Croatia were also discriminated against in a legal way. The Christmas Constitution is well known, which deprived the Serbs of all the rights that they enjoyed prior to that. In The Balkan Odyssey, Lord Owen says on page 61 that they resisted joining the settlements populated by Serbs which generally together formed the military border between the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empires, which was defended from Vienna and not from Zagreb. The sense grew after 1945 because this population was exposed to genocide during World War II by the Croatian Ustashas. A very small number of commentators in 1995 realised or recognised that the Croatian government in attacking Krajina did not liberate this land since the Serbs had inhabited it for over three centuries. This is something that is written by Lord Owen. [Sic. He is referring to a passage on p.35 of the Gollancz edition. The point is that the administrative borders of Croatia were made in a rough and ready way and were never fully accepted by Serbs living in Krajina, the military border between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires - PB]
THE SERB REACTION Already in mid-1990, there was a series of actions, attacks, and killings, and because of the Serb reaction by placing barricades to the entrances to their settlements, this revolt was called the log revolution. The Croatian authorities interpreted these reactions of Serbs who were afraid to remain without any means of collective defence in relation to the recurring Ustasha terror and ideology, considered that to be an attack, an aggression against the Croatian state. Well, I don't know how one can make an attack by placing logs in front of the approaches to their houses. Spegelj, who said what I quoted before, said the following: "Knin, we will resolve in such a way that we will massacre them. We will massacre them." This is what we have international recognition for. There are numerous proofs of this, that these are not just empty words but that we are talking about dead people here. In his book The Invasion of Serbian Krajina, Gregory Elich speaks of the following: "In 1990 Tudjman said, 'I'm glad my wife is neither a Serb or a Jew.' [In English] and wrote that accounts of the Holocaust were exaggerated and one-sided." [Interpretation] I will skip over many of his quotes but mention just some of them. "[In English] During its violent secession from Yugoslavia in 1991, Croatia expelled more than 300.000 Serbs, and Serbs were eliminated from ten towns and 183 villages." ... And then: "[In English] Tomislav Mercep, until recently the advisor to the Interior Minister and a member of parliament, is a death-squad leader. Mercep's death squad murdered 2.500 Serbs in Western Slavonia in 1991 and 1992, actions Mercep defends as 'heroic deeds.'" You have here the testimony of Miro Bajramovic, a member of that death squad. I have it on tape, but I don't have time to show it to you. Gregory Elich goes on to say: "[In English] Sadly, the Clinton administration's embrace of Croatia follows a history of support for fascists when it suits American geopolitical interests." Susan Woodward of the Brookings Institution, in the book The Balkan Tragedy 1995, says: "[In English] The Croatian government did little to protect its citizens from vicious outbursts of anti-Serb terrorism saw mixed communities of Dalmatia and interior during the summer months of 1989 when Croat zealots smashed store fronts, fire-bombed homes, and harassed and arrested potential Serbs leader. In many parts of Croatia, Serbs were expelled from jobs because of their nationality. Discrimination was not limited to this early flare-up but increased over the following years." How long before this log revolution when this was going on in 1989 and that criminal activity that you are ascribing to the Serbs when they were actually just defending themselves? Chris Hedges, in The New York Times on the 16th of June, 1997, says: "[In English] [Previous translation continues]... 500.000 of 600.000 ethnic Serbs from the country and carried out de facto annexation of largely Catholic region of Herzegovina," et cetera.
GOSPIC AND VUKOVAR I don't have time. They are talking about the Kristallnacht in Zadar, talking about expulsion of tens of thousands of people from their apartments. They're talking about in the Croat papers in Feral, in the Tjednik, new proof about the -- of the crimes in Vukovar, and I'm quoting them, "when the corpses of dead bodies floated down the Danube, then in Gospic in the Croatian coastal area," and so on. The magazine Identitet, a Croatian magazine, says that the least work [sic - PB] was done to shed light on the crimes in Osijek in 1991 and 1992 when several Serb civilians were killed, and they explain how they were taken away and how they were killed. When we're talking about Gospic, three officers of the Croatian army applied to testify here about the crimes. They were not given any protection, so the witness Milan Levar, who was supposed to testify against those who committed the Gospic massacre was liquidated. Erdemovic, who admitted that he had killed 100 people in Srebrenica, whom we arrested, who came here because he asked to be brought here, he asked to be extradited to The Hague, and he was not our citizen so he was extradited at his own request, you provided protection for him although he admitted killing 100 people. He admitted that to our investigative organs, and you released him after four years to -- to live unpunished. But you did not protect these other witnesses, but you did extend protection to him so that he can go back to -- I see that I will have to skip some things. The time flies, unfortunately. On one page 182 of his book, David Owen touches upon the following topic and he says: "Mostly the Serbs who remained there didn't have any freedom at all. Many JNA barracks were surrounded by the Croatian army, which was the reason why the JNA reacted so strongly in places like Vukovar." He says "places like Vukovar," but that is actually the only place where the JNA reacted forcefully. But he does explain why this happened. The explanation is also what is being written in the Croatian press now about how many corpses were floating down the river much earlier, before the events in Vukovar. Vukovar was the only exception and the only place where the JNA responded to being surrounded, to its members being attacked, to civilians being attacked, responded forcefully.
SETTLEMENT OF THE KRAJINA PROBLEM So it is without doubt that the war in Croatia was caused and initiated by the Croatian authorities in order to effect a violent and illegal secession, and, as the years that will come would show, to achieve an ethnically clean Croatian state. And arising without doubt from everything is that the Serbs were forced to defend themselves. They had to fight for their survival. So nobody is doubting the existence of individual crimes which were the result of the chaos that had occurred and which this so-called indictment is trying to present as the result of some kind of joint criminal endeavour, although all the facts, the historical, military, and legal facts, speak to the contrary. And they base this on testimonies such as the testimony of Milan Babic, who was in conflict with his very own leadership precisely because of his own extremism and similar witnesses. It is well known that primarily thanks to the efforts of Cyrus Vance but also thanks to the efforts of the Republic of Serbia and my own efforts, the Vance Plan was adopted. The protected zones were created which the Croat army never respected, because it is well known how many attacks there were: Miljevacka, Klatno [phoen], Peruca, Medak pocket, Zemunik, Western Slavonia, Flash, Storm, and so on. How many hundreds of Serbs were killed in each one of those attacks and all that happened. Weapons were under a double lock. The Serbs had handed it over, but they took it back when they were attacked in order to defend their very lives and to prevent a massacre. In view of all the above, Lord Owen in his book says: "The Croatian army equipped itself quickly with planes, heavy artillery. All this came from neighbouring European countries and was bought in the former eastern Germany. When this happened, it was not difficult, as far as the Serbs were concerned, why they resisted demilitarisation and demobilisation. The Serb factor was a consolidating factor, and the Croatian side was a destabilising factor." I am finishing my quote from the Owen book. And he said that the biggest ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav crisis was the ethnic cleansing in front of which this institution remains unmoved, and that is the expulsion of thousands of Serbs and hundreds killed. When something like this happens to the Serbs, it does not appear to be a crime.
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