YWS 10/6

Yugoslav Daily Survey Directory

From: [email protected] (D.D. Chukurov)

6. OCTOBER 1995. YUGOSLAV WEEKLY SURVEY

CONTENTS:

- ZAGREB, SARAJEVO POSE MAIN OBSTACLE TO PEACE PROCESS - YUGOSLAV PAPER SAYS PEACE AT HAND - MOSLEMS, CROATS WANT WAR - THE WAR CRIMES OF CROATIA - NEW SERBIAN GRAVES IN KRAJINA EVERY DAY - REPORTS SAY CROATIA USES KILLING, ARSON - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

FROM DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN PRESS

ZAGREB, SARAJEVO POSE MAIN OBSTACLE TO PEACE PROCESS

The Belgrade daily "Vecernje Novosti" said Tuesday that Sarajevo and Zagreb posed the main obstacles to the peace process in Bosnia. Expert in international law Predrag Simic said in an article headlined 'Finally Agreement' that the United States would have to work hard to force its hitherto proteges to sign an agreement. He said the case was different with the Bosnian Serbs, whose negotiating position after the Geneva and New York talks had become significantly more solid and who were not burdened by disputes over territory like the Croats and Muslims. 'Aware of the fact that the dream of a Muslim-dominated Bosnia is withering away now, and dissatisfied with the attitude of its Croat partner in the federation, the (Muslim) government in Sarajevo is making new demands almost daily, apparently with the sole aim of gaining time so that the situation on the front or in the international public could be reversed to its own advantage,' Simic said. The situation on the ground, however, is not in the Muslims' favour - during a recent joint offensive against the Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb Republic), most of the captured territory came under Croat control. The Croats now hold about 21.8 percent of the Bosnian territory, and the Muslims 29 percent, but the Muslims are not satisfied with this proportion and demand a 34-17 percent division in their favour (in the proposed 51-49 percent territorial split between the Muslim-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serbs). Confident about their newly-developed military strength and Western support, the Croats are not hiding an ambition to include the entire territory they currently control into Herceg-Bosna and, later, into Croatia. Besides, ambitions of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman go beyond that, and he is making clear his intention to assimilate the Bosnian Muslims, as he indicated in a recent interview with the Paris daily "Le Figaro". The conflict between Muslims and Croats, however, has begun to change essentially their image in international public, so that even the German daily "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", usually highly critical of Serbs, has warned the Croatian President that he is mistaken about Germany's support so far and that he should be careful not to foster 'missionary dreams.' (Tanjug's "Daily Bulletin, Belgrade, October 4, 1995)

YUGOSLAV PAPER SAYS PEACE AT HAND - MOSLEMS, CROATS WANT WAR

The Yugoslav weekly "Vojska" said in its latest issue that Croats' and Moslems' attitude signalled that they did not care whether war would be ended and peace restored. In a commentary titled "Peace at Hand", the paper said the goal of the Moslem-Croat coalition was to eliminate the Republika Srpska, Bosnian Serb state, and its army, thus making it possible for Bosnian Moslem leader Alija Izetbegovic to form a unitary Bosnia-Herzegovina and for Croats to form a "Greater Croatia". Big powers - the United States, Germany, France, Great Britain and others - have strategic interests in the Balkans. That is why U.N. peacekeepers will have to leave the former Yugoslavia and will be replaced by NATO troops or a multinational force, the paper said. It is yet to be seen whether this means the setting up of NATO bases in the region although the NATO member countries stress that they are sending troops to the former Yugoslavia to restore and enforce peace, the paper said. One thing is, however, clear: the Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro has remained true to its position taken at the very outbreak of hostilities in the former Yugoslavia that the crisis be resolved peacefully, the paper said. Yugoslavia has backed the 'Contact Group' plan providing for a 49:51 territorial split between the Republika Srpska and the Moslem-Croat federation in Bosnia-Herzegovina and has accepted the constitutional principles proposed in New York on Sept. 26. Furthermore, it backs the principle that all conflicts be settled peacefully and not by force and that peoples be allowed to decide who they are going to live with and in what way. It also urges that war in the former Yugoslavia be immediately ended and peace restored. "Vojska" said that, in the light of the fact that Yugoslavia backed these principles and that it was very active in the peace process, it was logical that the U.N. sanctions against the country be lifted. Yugoslavia (which is also representing the Republika Srpska in peace talks) alone has backed all talks without setting any additional conditions except that the rights and interests of Bosnia's all three warring parties be equally respected, the paper said. The international community is becoming increasingly aware that Yugoslavia is cooperative and that it is making maximum effort to help end the war, "Vojska" said. (Tanjug's "Daily Bulletin", Belgrade, October 3, 1995)

THE WAR CRIMES OF CROATIA

President Franjo Tudjman's government came to power in Croatia claiming to represent democracy, European culture and Christian values. Its conquest of the rebel Serb areas of the Krajina was accompanied by renewed bombast to that effect and drew applause from Croatia's sponsors, Germany and the United States. It is now clear that Croatian forces committed widespread murder against elderly Serb non-combatants while looting and burning Serb homes. Under any of the international legal conventions which Croatia purports to recognise, these are war crimes. The European Union and the United Nations have both gathered compelling evidence of Croatian atrocities. The human rights group Helsinki Watch discovered that 12 Serb civilians aged between 60 and 85 were slaughtered in a village near the fallen Serb "capital" of Knin. Then their corpses were removed by helicopter to Knin for burial in secret. The critical point about the Helsinki Watch report is the degree of official complicity in criminal acts which it reveals. It is no longer credible fro Croatian ministers to explain such excesses to their European colleagues as the work of isolated elements. A government that claims closer kinship to Vienna and Paris than to Belgrade and Sarajevo must be measured by the standards it sets itself. President Tudjman cannot act by the rationale of racial supremacy at home and pose as a sophisticated democrat to the rest of Europe. Nor can the atrocities in the Krajina be excused with the lament that Serbs and Muslims are also guilty of war crimes. The values of the rule of law and the observance of human rights are indivisible. There has been so much hand-wringing over Europe's failure to avert tragedy in the former Yugoslavia that we may think it impossible to do much about these latest atrocities. That is not so. It is precisely because Croatia seeks to distinguish itself from the other states of former Yugoslavia that it is vulnerable to pressure. Its European aspirations furnish a lever to correct and restrain its conduct. Croatia should be told that it can expect no political favours and extract no economic concessions from the European Union unless this behaviour ceases and the guilty are brought to justice. The same stance should be taken by all European institutions whose membership confers respectability on the government in Zagreb. If Germany wishes to speak up for Croatia, that is its privilege. Other foreign offices and ministers will no doubt protest the risk of upsetting the peace process and the undesirability of annoying Mr Tudjman. That is as much self-deception as the declaration by the U.S. ambassador to Zagreb that the fight of at least 140,000 Serbs from the Krajina "was not ethnic cleansing". We cannot thunder moral indignation at the Serbs while granting the Croats a licence to murder. In this case Europe can make a difference - and it should. (Editorial, "The Independent", London, October 5, 1995)

NEW SERBIAN GRAVES IN KRAJINA EVERY DAY

At the beginning of August, the Croatian military threw out the indigenous Serbian population from the region known as Krajina. Zagreb says that the situation in Krajina has been stable and secure since. "Rude pravo" has managed to obtain an exclusive testimony of a Czech national working for an international organization in Krajina. For security reasons and at his own request, his name is not given. A group of observers found three dead Serbs. One had been dead for about 10 days. This is nothing unusual over here. Only God knows how many of them are lying in burned-down houses, buried or just scattered unburied in faraway places in Krajina. The other two murders were of more recent date. The two dead men were about 70 years old. One had been killed with a bullet in the pate. The other had his throat cut in the way called the Ustasha way over here - the lower jaw and the larynx were separated. The corpses of two killed Serbs had lied in the wayside ditch at the main road entrance into Knin for ten days, although requests were made to local authorities every day to investigate the case and bury the corpses as appropriate. Another group of observers met the peasants that the local Croatian authorities had invited to come to a school for regular registration. All those who could walk came over, but in the meantime, "somebody" burned down their homes. Those bedridden died in the flames of their homes. A woman pleaded with a Czech unit to help a group of men frightened to death, hiding in nearby woods and shrubs. Their houses had been burned down, they were sick and most of them were very old and in need of urgent attention. A UN ambulance subsequently found 14 people in terrible shape between 30 and over 70 years of age, half of them over 70. Most of the houses in their village had were burned down on 12 August, i.e. a week after the end of the war. One man was killed with a bullet, while five old people died in burning houses. One of the women had taken out her father who was on the crutches into the woods, but she had to leave behind her mother who was unable to walk as Croatian soldiers had already been approaching their village. She had hoped that they would take pity on the old woman and would not burn her or that they would at least take her out of the house. They did neither, and burned down both the old lady and the house. Later on, she found her mother's charred bones in the ashes of her house. The buildings in which the representatives of international organizations in Knin had lived and worked were robbed; Croatian soldiers destroyed whatever there was to destroy, they threw out whatever there was to throw out. They opened the doors with machine-guns, broke windows and tore out window frames, scattered furniture and turned beds upside down. They stole computers, bullet-proof vests and portable radio stations. All of these had belonged to the United Nations. Destroyed and scattered around were uniforms with UN badges, so that Croatian soldiers knew very well what they where destroying. ("Rude Pravo", Prague, September 13, 1995)

REPORTS SAY CROATIA USES KILLING, ARSON (by John Pomfret)

Croatian army and police units allegedly burned 60 percent of the houses in one large swath of territory they conquered from separatist Serbs last month and executed elderly Serbs who remained in the region, according to reports by the European Union and the United Nations. Unusual in their first-hand detail, the unofficially circulated reports said teams of monitors from the 15-nation European Union viewed the corpses of at least three elderly Serbs who had been shot in the head. Two of the freshly dead bodies were seen as late as Sept. 11, more than a month after fighting ceased in the area, known as the Krajina. In all, a separate U.N. document said, the bodies of 23 civilians have been found in the region, more than half of them old people apparently executed by Croatian forces. Both reports said Croatian authorities blocked attempts to investigate numerous sites that allegedly contain mass graves. The reports, completed last week, are the latest and strongest of a series of documents drawn up by international organizations alleging that the Croatian army carried out atrocities against the Serb minority during its Operation Storm attack on the Krajina. At one point, the reports said, newly killed Serbs were being found at a rate of six per day. The EU report also goes further than previous documents, charging that Croatia's official position - that the 150,000 Serbs who fled the attack can return to Croatia - is a sham. Operation Storm, launched Aug. 4, captured 3,500 square miles of Serb-held territory in the Krajina in less than a week and fundamentally changed the strategic situation in neighbouring Bosnia, bringing the region closer to peace than at any time since war erupted here in 1991. The Croatian offensive followed the Bosnian Serbs' seizure of Srebrenica and Zepa, two U.N.-designated "safe areas" in eastern Bosnia, in July. More than 2,000 Muslim men are still missing from the Srebrenica attack, and the United States had released aerial photographs showing what it alleges to be mass graves dug by the Bosnian Serbs near the old silver mining town. After the Croatian attack on the Krajina, most of the Serbs living in rebel-held territory fled with the Croatian Serb leadership but perhaps several thousand remained. "The few Serbs who remained in the Krajina after Operation Storm have been subjected to a deliberately hostile policy which included killings, burning of houses, looting of property and various legal obstacles," the EU report said. "It is clear that grave breaches of international law have been committed by the Croatian authorities during and after their re- integration of the Krajina". "The report said the goal of this policy was to ensure that Serbs did not return to the Krajina region, which had been home to a strong Serb culture for more than 500 years. In a survey, the EU report said 60 percent of all farm houses had been burned in one-half of the Krajina, known as U.N. Sector South, while 30 percent had been torcehd in the other, called Sector North. "Official Croatian statements which invited the Serbs to remain or return must be regarded as being in complete disagreement with reality", the report added. Croatian authorities have denied any systematic policy of executions or arson, and say 370 people, including a number of soldiers, have been arrested for actions against civilians in the Krajina. "We welcome the arrests, but there's still far too little sign of effective policing of these areas," Alun Roberts, a U.N. spokesman in Knin, the Krajina's main city, told the Reuter news service. "The few old people left behind in these areas are reporting, in a consistent pattern, harassment and looting." The U.N. report highlights the village of Grubori, near Knin, as an example of the harsh treatment reserved for the Serbs who stayed behind. On Aug. 25, U.N. human rights monitors investigated a large plume of smoke and found the entire hamlet, of some 20 houses, in flames. One source quoted in the U.N. document said Croatian special police units had sneaked into Grubori and set it one fire. Only three panic-stricken elderly women were in the village; the rest of its inhabitants had gone to a meeting with U.N. representatives. That evening, human rights official returned to Grubori and found the bodies of two elderly men. One was on the floor of his bedroom in his pajamas with a bullet in the back of his head, the U.N. report said. The other was discovered in a field with his throat slashed. The next day, monitors found he body of a 90-year-old woman who had been burned alive in her house. A day later, investigators found two middleaged people dead in a field-shot in the head. The EU report also takes the Croatian government to task for recent legislation apparently aimed at ensuring that Serbs cannot come home. Croatia's constitution says fleeing Serbs will not lose their property rights. But the Croatian parliament recently voted to give Serbs who fled Croatia only until Saturday to return to claim their homes. About 150.000 Croatian Serbs still occupy one part of Croatia - silver of oil-rich land called Eastern Slavonia, or U.N. Sector East, on Croatia's eastern border with Yugoslavia. Under the current U.S. peace plan Easter Slavonia would return to Croatian control after three years of U.N. administration of the region and another two of a strong U.N. presence in the region. But, the report cautioned, "the behaviour of the Croatian authorities in the Krajina has created a psychological climate which must encourage the conviction of the Serbs in Sector East that their future in Croatian as a minority is at the very least jeopardized. ("The Washington Post", September 30, 1995)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SERB REFUGEES FLEEING FROM WESTERN BOSNIA

I am very disappointed with your recent coverage of the Balkan conflict. I cannot understand why you try to hide the largest exodus of refugees since the beginning of the war in former Yugoslavia. last month about 250,000 ethnic Serbs month about from Krajina and 150,000 Bosnian Serbs have been driven out by Croat and Muslim forces. Not a word was written about these refugees. I know that the chances of this letter being published are very slim. But I am sending it anyway because I believe "The European" should be the voice of all European nationalities. And you will have to admit that the Serbian people are part of Europe, too. (Sgd. Nemanja Zrilic, Henley- on-Thames, England, "The European", London, Septembar 28/29 - October 4, 1995)

PORTRAYAL OF SERBS DISGRACEFUL

The way the Serbs (in Bosnia and elsewhere) have been portrayed in media is disgraceful. Can we really believe in a simplified version of a war, where one side is always guilty, while the other side is a helpless victim? Cannot we see that the whole idea of the war in the Balkans is only a game of political (and economic) powers, applying a Roman saying: "Divide and rule"...and sell weapons, we should add. The manipulation of the mass-media is only serving the political interests and not the truth. The Serbs have been called ugly names in the media, but the most commonly used expression "rebel" is outrageous. Serbian people lived for centuries scattered in parts of former Yugoslavia other than Serbia, having the states of constituent nation. After secession of Croatia and Bosnia that status has been reduced to minorities and recently, to "rebel". Can we call someone who is defending his homeland a rebel? The latest and biggest exodus of over 200.000 Serbian people from Krajina happened almost unnoticed in the media. While America and Germany could hardly contain their joy, the biggest dream of a pro-Nazi Croatian (Ustashe) commander A.Pavelic has finally been completed: A Serb-free territory of Croatia, ethnically the cleanest country in Europe. This is the completion of a long process of intimidation of Serbian people by the Croatian pro-Fascist movement in the former Yugoslavia. The media manipulation goes further: Nato bombing of Serbs in Bosnia, falsely accused on the ground of staged and fabricated incidents, not only military, but also civilian targets, causing immense suffering and deaths of innocent people, shows total lack of interests for the truth. The aggression on Serbian people in both countries has got one aim: Remove (destroy) Serbs, as their non-compliance with the carefully planned division of former Yugoslavia is not in the interests of the West. (Sgd. Z. Delic, Kensington, "The Citizen", Johannesburg, September 18, 1995)