Serbia was aggressor against Croatia: 180,000 Croatians ethnically cleansed to begin with

Had you visited the world’s leading news portals in the past couple of days you wouldn’t have noticed that 16 October 2012 was a very, very significant day in the ICTY for crimes and aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 1990’s.

You would have read a great deal about Radovan Karadzic who opened his defense on that day claiming that he was a tolerant man who sought peace in Bosnia! Indeed, he went on to say that he should be rewarded for reducing suffering, not accused of carrying out war crimes. This is the mastermind of Srebrenica and multitudes of other massacres!

There’s no end to this man’s calculated evil.

You would not have read in those leading media outlets that the significance of 16 October in the ICTY was NOT Karadzic’s deranged defense but the start of trial against Goran Hadzic.

In Hadzic’s trial prosecutor Douglas Stringer had in detail described how 50 civilians were chased into mine fields in Lovas and how executions of Croatians lasted all night at Ovcara (Vukovar). Stringer accused Hadzic of being directly involved in these and other executions of hundreds of people (Erdut, Ilok,Tovarnik…) as well as for forced deportation of 180,000 Croatians and non-Serbs, from the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina (Croatia), which was the first ethnic cleansing in the region of Former Yugoslavia.

The prosecutor maintained that Hadzic did all that in agreement with the leadership of Serbia and Yugoslav Peoples’ Army, who all joined in criminal enterprise of creating an ethnically clean Greater Serbia. For the first time the court heard about the deportations of Croatians into concentration camps in Serbia (Begejci, Stajicevo, Zrenjanin, Sid, Sremska Mitrovica).

The platform of Serbia’s aggression against Croatia has been put into detailed words in the Hague for the first time in ICTY’s existence!

Hadzic’s case reflects the stage of Serbia’s aggression against Croatia and the first crimes committed in Croatia’s War of Independence. Hadzic is also the last of 161 persons charged by the ICTY for war crimes in Former Yugoslavia to be put on trial.

One truly wonders how this blasphemy of justice can happen in these modern times when human rights, the rights of victims are proclaimed from rooftops everywhere. There were so many requests for subpoenas to Serbia for the provisions of evidential documents and which requests were denied by ICTY (e.g. in cases of Croatian General Ante Gotovina, etc).  The same prosecutors were also prosecutors in various other cases over the past fifteen or so years and yet not once the issue of Serbia as aggressor was entertained in such detailed manner. Why, I ask? To give Serbia enough time to cover-up tracks and put out enough lies so that equating the victim with the aggressor becomes a plausible political platform? To give Serbia enough time to help shelter Karadzic and Hadzic long enough so that it (Serbia) could cover up its trails of horror, including concentration camps within its own territory?

Is this the tolerance the EU has pinned onto the EU Medal of Tolerance received by Serbia’s former President Boris Tadic on 16 October!?

Conviction for horrendous war crimes will not evade Hadzic or Karadzic but the mud, vilification and injustice Croatia has suffered because of Serbia’s villainy will take many years to clear.

16 October 1991 was the day Blago Zadro, commander of Croatian defense forces for northern part of Croatia, was killed in the Serb attack on Borovo Naselje, vicinity of Vukovar. Lest we forget! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A.,M.A.Ps. (Syd)