The Croatian Six illustration by Simon Bosch
There’s no doubt that Yugoslav Communists/antifascists, led by Josip Broz Tito set out to blacken all people who called themselves Croatians after WWII. Of course, the fact that a part of the Croatian nation (members of Ustashi regime) had collaborated with Nazi Germany during the war, took active roles in the Holocaust, made things very easy for the Serb-dominated Yugoslav secret police, army, government.
The hot iron used to brand all Croatians as terrorists, killers … was the Communist propaganda, overt and covert, that pointed to Croatia as the only state in the Former Yugoslavia that actively participated in the Holocaust.
The fact that 94% of Serbian Jews had been exterminated in Serbia by mid-1942 had entered the historical records (written by the Communists and the Allies) as murderous deeds perpetrated in Serbia by the occupying Nazi-Germany forces and not Serbs. Many, it seems, thought nothing of the fact that the government of Milan Nedic and the Serbian Orthdox church during WWII were only too eager and quick to collaborate with the Nazis and help bring the Serbian Jews to the slaughter.
All Croatians that fled Communist Yugoslavia after WWII, if not murdered, were branded extremists, terrorists and fascists. The fact that majority had nothing to do with the Ustashi regime or politics during WWII was unimportant. Croatians, wherever they lived, had to be destroyed for their love of Croatia had posed a threat to Communist Yugoslavia which worked tirelessly and dirty at creating a world image of a regime of “brotherhood and unity”; that Communism was the solution for peace and prosperity.
The Sydney Morning Herald has February 11 published an article “Framed: the untold story about the Croatian Six”, by Hamish McDonald.
The Herald investigation strengthens suspicions that the Croatian Six, all young tradesmen and Australian citizens of Croatian birth – were framed for terrorism, each spending up to a decade in prison. Their trial and subsequent convictions may represent one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history.
Six Australian-Croatians were accused of terrorism and sentenced to 15 years, each, in late 1970’s, serving 10. Vitomir Virkez (i.e. Vitomir Misimovic) became the Crown witness at the trial against the Croatian Six (Max Bebic, Vic Brajkovic, Tony Zvirotic, Joe Kokotovic and his brother Ilija Kokotovic, and Mile Nekic).
The bombshell that a Serb national (Vitomir Misimovic), posing as a Croatian, infiltrated into the Croatian Community and informed Yugoslav diplomats (UDBA) of activities of alleged terrorist acts by Croatians was initially revealed by the Australian ABC Television journalist Chris Masters in 1981.
Yugoslav UDBA’s (secret police) role in the persecution of the Croatian Six in Australia was withheld at the trial by Australian officials. Former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Fraser said that had the court known the information about UDBA’s involvement the verdict of the Croatian Six would have been not guilty.
Attempts to mount a judicial review of the case of the Croatian Six had failed in early 1990’s. One wonders how much of such a dismissal of the request for judicial review in Australia had to do with the fact that Serbs had waged a war in Croatia and had at that time occupied one third of it? Politics can get nasty and find its ways in all walks of life; often oblivious of justice.
This is just one of many examples how the Serb-led Communist Yugoslavia secret police (UDBA) worked around the world in their task of blackening the Croatian communities as extremists, terrorists. The full story “Framed” can be purchased via amazon.com for a mere US$1.99. It promises to offer an eye-opening read into the ways whole nations can be branded with a heavy stigma that future generations could spend a century, if not more, in trying to remove. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)
A quote to relate: “It may be” said Cadfael, “that our justice sees as in a mirror image, left where right should be, evil reflected back as good, good as evil, your angel as her devil. But God’s justice, if it makes no haste, makes no mistakes.” (Ellis Peters, 1913 – 1995, The Potter’s Field)