The Croatian Six Photo:ABC
Australia’s The Sun Herald continued its write-up February 12 on the deeply likely miscarriage of justice and cover-up by the Australian Federal officials during late 1970’s against the “Croatian Six” for terrorism.
“The case is now cited by a leading American counter-terrorism expert, Professor John Schindler, of the US Naval War College, as a ”classic” agent provocateur operation run by the intelligence agency of the then communist regime in Belgrade, known as the UDBa, against exile communities seeking to dismantle the Yugoslavian federation.
Former UDBa officials involved with running the operation, or who knew directly about it, had told him it was ”one of their great successes”, Professor Schindler said. ”They succeeded in discrediting the Croatian diaspora in Australia completely.”
According to the Sun Herald article three out of six of the Croatian Six have lodged a new application for a judicial review in News South Wales, Australia.
Back in Croatia, the foreign minister Vesna Pusic has in the past year suggested that Croatia might consider withdrawing its case against Serbia for Genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) if certain conditions are met by Serbia. E.g. resolve the matter of the still missing thousands and thousands of Croatian people, victims of the Serbian aggression against Croatia in the 1990’s. This, would be a terrible mistake. Croatians throughout the world have suffered too long from the Serb-led attacks, campaigns of lies and desctructions and only a firm hand via court/legal actions can clear the negative stigma and questions against the Croatian people that will be left if Croatia withdraws its case in the ICJ.
While individuals on any side, who have committed crimes, need to be punished, it is cases such as the one before the ICJ, the one against Croatian Six, etc, that actually have blanket effects of either branding a whole nation with negative stigma or peeling off that stigma so that millions of innocent individuals who feel the stigma because they love Croatia could beathe with some deserved relief. Ina Vukic, Prof.(Zgb); B.A.,M.A.Ps. (Syd)