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SERBS MUST BE ERADICATED BY HOOK OR BY CROOK
According to the widespread and ill-founded opinion of Starcevic's
rightists, subsequent Frankofurtimists and their spiritual followers,
Pavelic's ustashas, who all claimed Croatian state and historic
right, Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia appeared there
artificially, by the intermediary of the Serbian Orthodox Church
and religion, with the assistance of the priests, monks and teachers.
Serbs, created and nurtured by their church, according to this
abominable claim which is clearly inspired by Croatian plans of
assimilation, deliberately split up the Croats so as to thwart
them in their development and the realisation of their national
tasks. The Serbs in Croatia, according to the nationally blinded
Croats, are "Croatian renegades, allies of the Italians and
Hungarians", they are "nothing other than cats-paws
of foreigners against Croatia's freedom and unification",
"sons of that cursed tribe which everywhere spreads hatred,
slaughter and murder, which in a greed for power tramples down
on everything, imagining that they would thereby frighten the
Croatian people". The Serbs are vipers "of whom you
are safe only when you have crushed their heads".
Because the Serbs in Croatia are not Serbs but Croats of Orthodox
faith, because they are Croatian renegades, collaborators with
Croatia's enemies, Italians and Hungarians, they had to be forced
by hook or by crook to renounce their Serbian and embrace the
Croatian idea of the state. This is how this question was viewed
by one of the most eminent leaders of the Party of Right, Eugen
Kvaternik, and how he thought he would resolve this problem.
In a letter to Don Mihovil Pavlinovic, a leader of the Croatian
National Party from Dalmatia, written in Zagreb on June 22, 1869,
Kvaternik wrote: "What are the Serbs? They are infamous
agents trying to split our nation, for the sake of hostile foreigners,
into two peoples, two camps. We read your Narodni list.
Your hair would stand on end if we were to discuss its misguided
policy and spirit on many subjects. But for the time being, let
us talk only of the Serbs.
"If we believe in one God and his justice; if we have respect
for science; if we hold that righteousness cannot be defended
with crooked and mendacious ways, why then should we recognise
the infamous Serbs on our sacred soil? What do you expect to
achieve? Do you hope to mollify the Byzantines? Do you think
you will deceive the Byzantines? To some of them the Croatian
name is what holy water is to Satan, as they say. If this is
what you believe, then we feel sorry for you! You are doing yourself
a disservice, and you will soon realise that you have been on
the wrong path.
"We admit no such wavering; we know that it is childish
to expect anything from them; we know them to be the most terrible
dagger the dying Austria wields against our people; therefore,
we openly say: only a traitor to our homeland, a renegade to
his kin, an enemy of science, can for the sake of his religion
declare in the sacred Croatian land that he is a Serb and not
a Croat. We openly say to them that the Croatian people will
know how to punish such treason, how to destroy such a bastard
religion, which is capable of making people betray their nation
and all that is most sacred to the people.
"Here in Civil Croatia and Slavonia there are 800,000 Catholics
and 129,000 Vlachs. In your parts, with 420,000 inhabitants,
there are more than 80,000 of them; we do not care if within
the Frontier they make up as much as one half; in relation to
the total number of our people, they account for only one-fifth;
but we are disciplining them with our pure national policy so
that they dare not open their mouths; the youth are beginning
to join us because they are impressed with such an open, manly
and pure policy.
"Why do you not act in the same way? Are you not ashamed
when you read in your paper, 'we the Croats and Serbs'? What
are you then? Do you not realise that you are opting out of your
nationality? Who has it written on his forehead that he is a
Serb? Do you not realise that you are thereby aiding your worst
enemy? Furthermore, as you consider parties around Dalmatia,
do you not realise that in addition to the German-Italian bureaucratic
parties there exist some secret ones fomented by certain agents.
God grant that I may be wrong, but I am afraid that these tendencies
are Serbian inspired; I cannot imagine what else they could be.
If I am not wrong, if these tendencies are indeed 'Serbian',
what do you gain by stooping to these easterners, concurring for
their sake with their Serbian lies? Does it not amount to lending
support to them?
"I pray to God that the serpents might be uncovered in good
time before they threaten you with Serbianism; you will then
realise that you have been wavering in your policy, and you will
shake them off with one stroke, like we do, instead of holding
a serpent for a brother! Croats, looking to the West, are capable
of overcoming Serbian barbarity alone; but for this purpose,
there must be a direction, there must be a constant principle.
Shilly-shallying is death! Get together with your Ljubic and
keep a watch; you will not go wrong.
"These are the reasons why we shall not digress by one iota
from the direction given by Hervat. The style of writing will
change of its own accord as soon as we remove by this means the
unclean workers. And you shall see that very soon, the flag of
the pure, unsullied Croatia will wave not from the Drava to the
sea, but from the Salzburg-Tyrollean Alps all the way to Kosovo
and Albania".
What the founder of the Party of Rights told Mihovil Pavlinovic
suggests that the Serbs, by the fact that they existed, that they
were Serbs and not Croats, just by living on the soil of Croatia,
were splitting the united Croatian people for the sake of alien
interests. Under no circumstances was Kvaternik ever ready to
admit that there were any other peoples in the Croatian state
territory than the Croatian people. Even though most of the Serbs
in and outside Austria-Hungary believed the Habsburg Monarchy
was their greatest and most dangerous adversary, Kvaternik maliciously
accused them, without any reason, of being "the most terrible
dagger" in the Monarchy's hands, pointed against the Croats.
The Rightists' leader made this evaluation of the Serbs at the
moment when they, together with the most progressive members of
the Croatian National Party, were marshalling all their forces
for the purpose of destroying the dualist system, bringing down
the unionist Ban, Levin Rauch, and nullifying the discriminatory
and humiliating provisions of the Croato-Hungarian Nagodba. Although
the Serbs had defended Croatian state, national and political
interests, Kvaternik denounced them as traitors, not because they
betrayed anybody, but because they were Serbs and not Croats,
because they were Orthodox and not Catholics. They were accused
of treason at the time of their greatest loyalty and patriotism,
when with their high political consciousness they led the way
in the hard oppositionist struggle against Austria-Hungary and
the system which it had imposed on Croatia. The entirely fabricated
accusation of the alleged betrayal of Croatian interests was to
be continually raised against the Serbs. It was a label which
was unscrupulously attached to them for a very definite purpose.
The label was intended to put the Serbs on the defensive, at
all times and in every activity, to force them to demonstrate
and prove that they were loyal citizens of Croatia, that they
were patriots and not traitors. They were expected to think less
of their Serbian and more of Croatian interests, if they were
to avoid the label of traitor. This label was to create complexes
in them, weaken them and force them to keep reasserting their
loyalty. Socio-psychological and politicological research would
undoubtedly show that this incessant and well-thought out branding
did yield results, creating among the Serbs in Croatia, albeit
in small numbers and mostly among intellectuals, a type of submissive
personality who in his eagerness to prove his conformism, became,
in sentiment and mentality, more ardent Croats than the Croats
themselves.
The ideologists of the Party of Right sharply denounced all those
daring to admit that there were Serbs as well as Croats in Croatia,
and, convinced that such people were hostile to Croatia and the
Croats, regarded them as traitors to the motherland, to common
sense and to science.
In his letter about the Serbs addressed to Pavlinovic, Kvaternik
presented himself and his followers as champions of strong-arm
rule. He boasted to Pavlinovic that the Serbs in Croatia "dare
not open their mouths". He suggested to Pavlinovic that
a similar policy towards the Serbs should also be pursued in Dalmatia.
He did not try to conceal his unwarranted and sick hatred of
the Serbs, who for him were Byzantines, Easterners, barbarians
and foes. Although he hated and scorned them so passionately,
he just as strongly wanted them to be Croats. Those who would
not agree to it, those who felt themselves to be Serbs, as was
true of a vast majority of them, Kvaternik threatened with physical
annihilation. In this manner, among the bourgeois politicians
of Croatia, he had become one of the first advocates of genocide
against the Serbian people in the Triune Kingdom. He had sown
these morbid seeds which later on, when he was no longer around,
were taken up, nurtured and scattered by the Frankists, ustashas
and followers of Tudjman's HDZ. His evil seed clearly fell on
fertile ground, for he was able to boast that "the youth
are beginning to join us".
The founder and ideologist of the rightists revealed to his friend
Pavlinovic the true sense of the policy he propounded, the policy
which implied the destruction of the "brood of the bastard
Orthodox religion". The goal of this policy, according to
Kvaternik, was to hoist the flag of the "pure, unsullied
Croatia" which would flutter, "not from the Drava to
the sea but from the Salzburg-Tyrollean Alps all the way to Kosovo
and Albania". In other words, the rightist ideologist called
for a great ethnically and confessionally pure Croatian state.
Because the Serbs did not agree to become Croats of Orthodox religion,
Ante Starcevic, following in the footsteps of Kvaternik, only
a year later hinted at the road which Croats would follow in dealing
with the Serbian question. He wrote in 1870: "The Croatian
people will not suffer this slavish brood (meaning the Serbs -
V.K.) to sully the holy land of the Croats."
That Kvaternik's and Starcevic's notion of the Serbs in Croatia,
Slavonia and Dalmatia had completely imbued the Croatian policy,
that it had become prevalent in the Croatian society, can be affirmed
by numerous proofs. I will adduce only some, for illustration's
sake.
Don Mihovil Pavlinovic's notions in 1869, when Kvaternik counselled
him on how to deal with Serbs and the members of the "bastard
religion" in Dalmatia, can be seen from his letter to Bishop
Strossmayer of August 31, 1869: "The manuscript I am sending
you with this book will make my thoughts clear, and which can
be reduced to the two points: Croat and Catholic. For this idea
I shall lay my heart, my labour, my life. For everything else
I do not care a cent".
Narrow-minded, bigoted Croat and fanatic Catholic, not only he
gave "not a cent" for the other nations and faiths,
but was also their fiery opponent and hater. When he wrote his
book Hrvatski razgovori (Croatian Talks), Niko Veliki Pucic
referred to it in a letter to Valtazar Bogisic with the following
words: "Terrible work, a real libello incendiario
against the Serbs, so much so that the imperial and royal government
bought the whole edition of the book by this Dalmatian katun.
He is threatening, threatening, threatening!"
The well-known Croatian politician, Frano Supilo, like Kvaternik
and Starcevic, believed that the question of Serbs in Croatia,
Slavonia and Dalmatia can and must be resolved, if there be no
other way, by their physical destruction. He wrote that the Croats,
if they wish to emancipate Croatia from the Serbs, "must
first of all take up all available means (even the worst ones,
for all sorts of things are permitted in politics), including
the most perilous one, so that their domestic enemy of the same
language is either assimilated or destroyed in other ways. (Underlined
by V.K.) From this need, to the proclamation 'there are no more
Serbs!' with all its consequences, is but one single step."
Believing that everything is permitted in politics, as Supilo
wrote, the Frankists' deputy in the Sabor of Croatia, Dr. Jerko
Pavelic, brazenly declared in the Sabor how he and his political
followers would deal with the question of the Serbs in Croatia
and Slavonia. He claimed that the Serbian idea in Croatia and
Slavonia was imported from Serbia, but that it had not yet assumed
such proportions that it could not be brought back to the Croatian
idea. If the Frankists won power, said Pavelic, the "so-called"
Serbs would within 48 hours become "Orthodox Croats".
Pavelic's frightening statement was answered by Dr. Dusan Popovic.
"We Serbs are deeply insulted by Pavelic's words. I am
surprised that this kind of statement could be made by Dr. Pavelic,
who as an historian should know that an entire generation must
be slaughtered before a nation can be moulded into another."
It is beyond question that Pavelic and his ilk did know this truth,
but he was prepared to adopt this method of dealing with the Serbian
question because since Kvaternik's and Starcevic's time, the eradication
of the Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia had become part
of the programme of a considerable segment of Croatian politics.
That the Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia were undesirable
and that they had to be, at all costs, using all available means,
assimilated and uprooted from the soil of Croatia, is corroborated
by the writing of Gajo Radunic in 1911. According to him, to
be a Serb in Croatia was sad, "and it is still highly perilous
to be called Serbian". Radunic was convinced that this adjective
would disappear from Croatia and will be only a sad vestige in
history, because the Serbian name will be completely lost after
all the Serbs became Croats. The Serbian question, in his assessment,
is "hanging like a sword over the heads of the Croats",
and therefore "every Croatian heart must be happy on the
day when we see these poisonous plants disappear from our fields
(underlined by V.K.), when we have all as one seriously undertaken
the job of liberating our beloved Croatian State. In other words,
the Croats will be happy when the Serbs from Croatia, Slavonia
and Dalmatia have disappeared, when Croatia is ethnically pure
and unified, without the Serbs, because they are for the Croats
in Croatia, in the opinion of Josip Miskatovic, bad grass, which
the Croats "must weed out of their garden".
A convincing amount of evidence that a portion of the Croatian
society, while still a part of Austria-Hungary, had come to the
conclusion that the question of Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and
Dalmatia can be resolved by genocide, was left behind by Stjepan
Radic, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party. He explained the
assaults by the Croatian ban Paul Rauch against the Croato-Serbian
coalition by saying that Vienna was behind the ban in all respect.
In this connection he wrote: "Whenever the gentlemen in
Vienna were in distress, they would look for some kind of turbulence
in which the populace would hit out blindly against anybody, and
by then the gentlemen would finish their job... The Serbs were
the most convenient people to make turbulence. They were settlers,
of a different religion, for many reasons undesirable for the
local population, so all that is needed from time to time is to
give a wink and the slaughter is ready! (Underlined by V.K.)
This is how it happened, in the autumn of 1902, in the middle
of Zagreb and in the middle of a day, that the shops of the Serbian
merchants were shattered."
With reference to morbid Frankists intentions vis-a-vis the Serbs,
especially during the annexation crisis and the Zagreb treason
trial, Radic wrote: "At the last meeting of the Frank-Starcevic
Party of Right, a strange conclusion was adopted, about which
the newspapers are writing a lot... A 'Croatian People's Legion'
was set up 'for the defence of the Croatian motherland'... Most
frightening of all is that what this legion calls for is not hatred,
it is the slaughter of the Serbs. Those who support the Legion
say that Bosnia, in which there are about 700,000 Serbs, will
unite with Croatia so that either we slaughter these Serbs who
are 'thirsty of Croat blood', or they should really drink our
blood". (Underlined by V.K.) The Legion referred to by
Radic was composed of volunteers, followers of Frank's Party of
Right. It was founded in 1908, with the task of confronting the
volunteer attachments from Serbia, but also of fighting the Serbs
and pro-Yugoslav Croats from the coalition and other political
parties. Rauch had a free hand against the Serbs in Croatia.
Emperor Francis Joseph made no secret of his anger against the
Croato-Serbian coalition, particularly against the Serbs, who,
in his opinion, were playing a decisive role in the coalition.
According to testimony of Isidor Krsnjavi, who was very well
informed having himself taken part in all these events as an important
factor, had there been less than 700,000 Serbs in Croatia and
Slavonia, Rauch would have killed them all. However, since their
number was fairly large, he said that it was not possible to carry
it out.
The very thought of the physical destruction of the Serbs and
Rauch's discussions on this point with his followers, bear witness
to the anti-Serbian mood in the circle around the Croatian ban
and to the ideas which preoccupied them and the way they intended
to resolve the question of the Serbs there.
Preparations lasting over several decades for a showdown with
Serbs were finalised in the political ideology of the Croats by
the outbreak of the war in 1914. When, in that year, the Archduke
Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, the political circles
in Croatia ready for genocide believed that a suitable moment
had come to destroy the Serbs. On the day of the assassination,
in the midst of Zagreb, it was publicly stated that "around
us and upon our bodies there are a multitude a blood sucking ticks
in the shape of Serbs and Slav-Serbs, who are selling our land
and sea, and now they are even murdering our king! We must have
a final showdown with them and destroy them. This should be our
aim from now on."
In a speech in 1917, Radic indirectly admitted that the Serbs
in Croatia were threatened just because they declared themselves
as Serbs. Presenting in the Sabor his view of what new Croatia
would look like at the issue of the war, Radic said: "Not
a hair on the head of a Serb in Croatia will be harmed any more
even should he repeat a hundred times a day that he is a Serb."
When he says 'any more', it is clear that until then a Serb in
Croatia could well be in trouble and was in trouble just because
he was a Serb and because he did not want to become an Orthodox
Croat. He was being forced to become an Orthodox Croat just because
he lived in Croatia. Here, in the Croatian motherland, in the
opinion of Radic and all the other Croat politicians who built
their programmes upon the Croatian state right, "there must
prevail only the Croatian state idea". This idea, Radic
said, was "pure nationalism in full accordance with the state
law".
If a comparison is made between the above adduced evidence on
how prominent Croatian politicians at the of the century intended
to resolve the question of the Serbs in Croatia, and how this
question was being solved by the ustashas and by Dr. F. Tudjman,
it is then clear that in all this there is a logical and organic
link; it is also clear that the Croatian political idea was and
has remained deeply indoctrinated with the idea of genocide.
A proof of this are the statements and writings of Dr. Mile Budak,
Pavelic's Minister for Religion and Education. In the Katolicki
list (Catholic Paper) of June 29, 1941, Budak wrote: "As
regards the Serbs living here, these are not Serbs but vagrants
from the East who were brought by the Turks as bag carriers and
servants. They are members of the Orthodox church and we have
not been able to assimilate them. However, they should know
that our motto is: 'either you bow or you leave'." (Underlined
by V.K.) This method of dealing with the Serb question was also
contained in the well-known Budak's statement where he said:
"One-third of the Serbs will be slaughtered, one-third expelled,
and one-third catholicized." (Underlined by V.K.)
Just as brutally open in stating what the ustashas intended to
do to the Serbs was Dr. Ivo Guberina, a clergyman and ustasha.
In 1943 he wrote: "Certain elements in Croatia, who during
the time of Yugoslavia had the task to corrode the Croatia's state
and popular organism; to incapacitate it for living and especially
for the role which the providence has given it, and after the
downfall of Yugoslavia remained in the Croatian organism, without
changing an iota in their anti-Croatian tendencies. It is the
natural right of the Croatian state and the Croatian people to
cure its organism from this poison. The ustasha movement has
undertaken this job; it is using the means which every surgeon
uses in treating an organism. Whenever necessary, he makes the
necessary incision.
"The ustasha movement will prefer that these heterogenous
and now hostile elements should be quietly and freely assimilated
or that this poison should be removed from the organism (moved
back to the motherland). But if such elements will not assimilate
but want to remain in the organism as a kind of a 'fifth column'
for the corrosion of organism, or which is even worse, to come
to an armed conflict as is happening with the chetnik-communist
gangs, then according to all the principles of Catholic morals,
they are the attackers (aggressors) and the Croatian state has
the right to destroy these attackers with the sword. (Underlined
by V.K.)
When the ustashas had already far gone with ethnic cleansing (expulsions
and the physical destruction of the Serbs), when from Slavonia
alone 65,000 Serbs were expelled, and their homes and lands were
taken over by the Croats, Pavelic's Minister of Justice Mirko
Puk told the Sabor of Croatia, on February 25, 1942, the following:
"The moment the Croatian state government came into being,
its first duty was to return this element (Serbs - V.K.), which
had settled in these lands against all natural laws and against
the will of the Croatian people, where it came from. The Croatian
state government has in this sense carried out its Croat and its
ustasha duty." This statement, made in the Sabor of Croatia,
clearly reveals that the aim of the Croat and ustasha policy is
that Croatia should at all costs be left without Serbs.
It is little known that the communist authorities of Croatia,
too, immediately after the ending of the war in 1945, tried to
prevent rather than assist the return of the Serbs refugees from
Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, who had fled from the ustasha
dagger. The federal authorities in Croatia were happy that the
number of Serbs in Croatia had been considerably reduced. They
were loath to undertake forcible measures to expel ustasha families
from the Serbian homes or Serbian possessions. For this reason
the Ministry of Colonisation of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia
on several occasions during 1945, demanded from the popular government
of Croatia and its competent ministries to warn the organs of
government that they should properly and with care treat the returnees,"
members of the Serbian people "who are returning from Serbia
to their Croatian motherland".
Here are a few proofs that a great and ethnically pure Croatia
still fascinates the present rulers in Croatia, just as it used
to do in the previous one hundred and more years. Prof. Dr. Slaven
Letica, later a counsellor to President Tudjman, published on
September 12, 1989, in the periodical Danas, an article
entitled "Assimilation of Croatian Serbs". In this
article Letica made a would-be scientific attempt to prove the
inevitability of the assimilation of the Serbs in Croatia. He
had gone back to the idea of the "Croatian political people",
claiming that the Serbs in Croatia can opt for one of the two
roads. They can be, as he wrote, an 'organic part' of the Serbian
ethnic people, or 'a part of the Croatian political people'.
Letica had in fact offered the Serbs what the Frankists had stubbornly
and forcibly imposed on them throughout the second half of the
19th century, until year 1905 and the creation of the Croato-Serbian
coalition. He offered them the option of renouncing their own
national affiliation, in order to become a part of the "Croatian
political" or "constitutive" people. He offered
them what the Serbs in Croatia had never in the past been able
or wanted to accept, because they were aware that the option offered
to them was that of the political and national destruction. Until
1918, the Serbs had steadfastly resisted this road in an uncompromising
struggle, firmly convinced that it was their struggle for survival.
The option such as the one offered by Letica caused, within Austria-Hungary,
a tribal rift between the Croats and Serbs, because it was at
the core of all the clashes between the two nations. Letica had
offered political solutions whose sources are in the Croatian
state and historic law. Back in the 19th century, the Hungarian
ruling circles had tried to impose these solutions on the Croats
as well as on the Serbs, and the latter, in order to combat magyarization,
resisted it stubbornly. The solutions offered by one of the respected
members of Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Community, are in fact
the well-known formula: one state, one nation, one language.
Since this formula was topical during the Austrian, Austro-Hungarian
and Pavelic's NDH governments, it is obvious that the current
Croatian politicians are looking for their models in the times
long gone by.
How Dr. Franjo Tudjman intended to create his great, ethnically
pure and Catholic Croatian state, he explained at an international
gathering which was attended by David Fisher, Director of the
World Affairs Institute in San Francisco. During the promotion
of the autobiographical book of Warren Zimmerman, former US Ambassador
in Yugoslavia, Fisher said: "My experience is not as fresh
as Warren's and mainly comes from my service in Bulgaria. But
the two situations which I witnessed were a drastic warning that
the situation in the former Yugoslavia was much more complicated
than it had seemed to me. I remember a conference of the diplomatic
corps in Germany in 1989, where the future President Franjo Tudjman
was present, and who said that when he should become - not if
he should become - President of Croatia, that the soil in Krajina
would be red with blood. It was then clear to me that there is
a political hatred which sooner or later must come out in the
open."87 (Underlined by V.K.)
After this monstrous statement by Franjo Tudjman, I must remind
my readers of the once mentioned writing by Dr. Pero Gavranic
in 1895, where he said: "Today for sure nowhere in Europe
is there more hatred among peoples of different tongues than exists
here between the Croats and Serbs of the same language."
He said further on: "So that we the Croats should have
our independent statelet like the Serbs and that we should not
be afraid of anybody, there would for sure be a war between the
Croats and the Serbs, and this war would certainly be highly popular."
As soon as the Croats got their independent statelet and as soon
as Tudjman became president, the bloody war which he had planned
even before becoming the head of the state was a certainty, especially
since the Croats, far from having reasons to be afraid of anybody,
were goaded from various parts abroad to a cruel showdown which
they had been preparing for a long time.
According to assessments from well informed observers from Croatia,
the objective of the war was not, as used to be said in public,
to suppress the so-called Serbo-chetnik rebellion, but the creation
of an ethnically pure state. This is what the Croat journalist
Jelena Lovric said about it: "An ethnically pure state was
declared from the highest state authorities to be the desired
ideal. The head of the state in Knin, before the arraigned army
and zooming cameras, publicly boasted the realisation of the 'historic
results' - 'we have returned Zvonimir's city into the bosom of
our Croatian motherland just as pure as it was in Zvonimir's time'.
Thus the liberation of Knin had acquired a new dimension. It
was no longer the question of fighting the Serbian rebellion but
of the cleansing of the Serbs. This was the message overshadowing
the entire Knin festivity, so we cannot be comforted that the
otherwise highly excited president allowed an uncontrolled statement
to escape. The chief inspector of the Croatian Army, General
Ante Gotovina, said for example, that the 'Storm' was the ending
of the several centuries of occupation of Croatia. Drago Krpina,
Tudjman's counsellor for the liberated lands, describing the 'Storm'
as the victory of all victories, exclaimed that Croatia had liberated
the land which had been under occupation not five years but for
a whole century."88 (Underlined by V.K.)
Even if these statements had not been publicly made, the outcome
of the military operations known as 'Lightning' and 'Storm', after
which Croatia was thoroughly cleansed, unambiguously show the
aim with which Croatia decided to break up Yugoslavia. Now when
the long desired ethnically pure state has been created, Tudjman
and his collaborators are successfully resisting the return of
the Serbs to their homes and their lands. In this they enjoy
the indulgence from some great powers and Vatican, who had helped
them in the action of ethnic cleansing. The satanization of the
Serbs is being continued in the well known style. The insults
are coming from all sides. Threats that the trees are made for
Serbs are galore. The greater Croatian appetites have been whetted.
Bosnia continues to be in the focus of Croat interest. As many
times before, the Serbs are being told that they would find safety
only if they swim across the Drina.89 The Croatian policy vis-a-vis
the Serbs has remained exactly as it was during the Rightists,
Franko-furtimists and ustashas. It is imbued with hatred which
nobody is trying to bridle. Unbridled and encouraged from many
quarters, it is a danger for the entire region, but also for the
Croats in whose midst it was nurtured.
Copyright © 1997 Vasilije Krestic
Copyright © 1997,98 Bigz - Izdavacko preduzece d.o.o., Beograd
Copyright © 1997,98 Serbian Unity Congress All Rights Reserved.
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