dr Franjo Tudjman addresses the United Nations General Assembly 22 May 1992
By Dr. Slobodan Lang – 14 December 2012
(Translated by Ina Vukic)
On the 2nd of June of this year I went to Medjugorje and kneeled beside the visionary Mirjana, as she was receiving a message from Our Lady. I prayed for the freedom of Generals Gotovina and Markac. On the Day of Assumption of Virgin Mary, together with Mario Filipi, the war veterans and the young (led by Filip Kustro and Matea Kemenji), we crossed 25 kilometers to Aljmas. From day to day, during the past month, we prayed for the freedom of the Generals across Croatia. And it happened. It does not matter how much the lawyers and the Judges, how much the prayers and the truth contributed to this freedom. The indictment against Croatia, against defenders, against the politics of independence and against President Tudjman was rejected.
Only in Serbia and among some Serbs in Croatia was the astonishment greater than among Croatians across the world and Croatians in Croatia.
Despite everything, the reaction in Serbia came as a surprise. The reaction in Serbia was based on some incomprehensible expectation that the world considers the Serbs to be better than any other Balkan nationality. That the aggression, the occupation, the intent to change sovereign borders, ethnic persecutions and genocide over the Albanians, the Bosniacs and the Croatians are forgotten, and that the only victims of that time were the Serbs from Croatia, who were incited into rebellion by their leaders into chasing Croatians from their homes, into attack against Bihac, the danger of another genocide and finally into taking the very Serbs out of Croatia, leaving and abandoning some 10,000 of their own elderly, whom we saved in the Action «Let’s Save Life».
With the politics of their own leadership, the Serbian people (according to God equal to all other people) have in the past been led into crime and today, into the nonexistent world of North Korea and other totalitarian states of time past. It’s for the benefit of the Serbian people that they realise the truth and to join the other nations of the world as equals. This goes for some Serb leaders in Croatia, as well. They could begin by recanting the three undemocratic, automatic representatives in the Parliament which they gained through the corruption on Ivo Sanader. The rest of the Serbs could begin by publicly rejecting the lies about hundreds of thousands of victims in Jasenovac, because of which thousands of true victims could not be stated for decades, Yad Vashem deceived and Bogdan Bogdanovic (author of the Jasenovac statue) gifted to me his drawing upon which he wrote «Doctor, forgive me».
Authorities were caught by surprise. They did not expect freedom for the Generals, and I do not know whether they wanted it. All Croatian politics since year 2000 were led to hand the Generals over, neglect of their families and unwilling legal defence. They expected convictions against the Generals, against Operation Storm, against President Tudjman, against the whole of Croatian defence …
In Croatia, people were immesurably joyous and organised celebrations, bestowing upon the Generals certificates of honorary citizens, held Masses and celebrated in any which way they could.
After the Generals were freed and criminal enterprise rejected by the world court, the first one who managed to find his way out was President Josipovic – he invited all the Croatian Generals to his office. The former President attacked the current President for receiving the Generals who had defended and liberated Croatia from Serb aggression (whose president was this), who prevented genocide over other people and who were pronounced innocent by the international court. He also attacked the church and the faithful for praying for the truth and justice. He attacked the prayer.
Zoran Pusic, from the quasi civil, quasi organisation for human rights, in the Spring of this year, after the ICTY Trial Chamber’s judgment, assessed «disappointment of Croatian public with the severe punishment imposed upon the Generals was due to the fact that the media had spread false hopes that the Generals could get a mild sentence.» Just before the final judgment he stated that there was no doubt that a criminal enterprise existed. After the final judgment (the acquittal of the Generals) he remains quiet and does not show himself in public. He still hasn’t tendered his resignation from the position he has held for more than twenty years, President of the Civic Committee for Human Rights and there has been no other member who has ever spoken for that organisation, perhaps Pusic is its only member and is in conflict of family interests. Sister and brother, rule and accuse.
….
Confusion regarding the Hague judgment lasted only a few days. Initially there were attempts to push the opinion that the judgment meant that now is the time to pursue Croatian crimes. That appeared pale and inadequately convincing. Reactions from Serbia, Pupovac (Milorad) and Mesic (Stjepan) crossed the borders of good taste. «Human Rights» organisations went silent – except Helsinky committee from Belgrade whose president Sonja Biserko calmly repeated that Serbia must accept what it had done.
Already, after a few days, they recognise that further aggression against Croatia requires internal division among Croatian people, the Catholic church, the war veterans and President Tudjman. Always and again – a new attack against President Franjo Tudjman.
Currently there’s one of the dirtiest scenarios ever being carried out.
Tudjman’s guilt is being transferred from acquitted guilt for “Operation Storm” crimes against Serbs and liberation of Croatia in 1995, to guilt for a bad Croatian defence in 1991 and the then torture of Vukovar commander Mile Dedakovic – Hawk.
In order to show Dedakovic’s current health state the Croatian television broadcasts ethically impermissible images of the patient and abuses human suffering, for which they accuse President Tudjman through usage of 20 years old film footage. Guided by NKVD (Peoples’ Commissariat for Internal Affairs) oder No. 00447 from 1937 Tudjman is instantly proclaimed guilty for Dedakovic’s current illness and suffering.
According to this Mile Dedakovic’s current health state cannot be blamed on the current President Ivo Josipovic, who is also the commander of the army, who does not follow up on the health of war veterans or their commanders or on the minister for war veterans Fred Matic, whose job in the government is to do that or on the minister for health Rajko Ostojic, who announced the politics of health nor can the doctors who should care for Dedakovic’s health be blamed …
In their public presentations the official media don’t call upon Josip Manolic, don’t state the members of the committee that produced the report, don’t state the names of those who tortured Dedakovic, don’t state the names of the doctors who treated him then, and don’t state the names of those who care for his health today and who are the only ones qualified to assess Dedakovic’s medical status now, before and for the future.
The goal of this shameful media action is not at all to help Mile Dedakovic-Hawk nor to help any other Croatian war veteran. The goal is to once again attack with lies and blacken President Franjo Tudjman in front of Croatian war veterans and the nation.
More than 20 years ago I contacted Dedakovic in Vinkovci, beginning of October 1991, and then in Zagreb.
As an adviser, on 28th February 1996, I sent the following to President Franjo Tudjman: “Dear President, I maintain constant contact with Mile Dedakovic – Hawk, trying to relieve the wounds as much as possible. I believe that in the coming period it would be useful for him to assist with the return to Vukovar. He has expressed that he wants to meet with you and I believe that such a meeting would solve all the differences. I await your decision.”
After that, today’s Academic, Ivica Kostovic, met with Dedakovic and he can inform about everything that was agreed upon.
Finally, and for all who wish to accept, I’ll conclude with my own life’s disposition which I have gained through numerous mistakes, painful experiences, learning, dangers and time spent within the Croatian nation.
I had worked together with President Franjo Tudjman for six years during the years of defending and creating Croatia. I have been alone with him, on travels with him, corresponded with him, at meetings with him, at assemblies, in his company … 1000 times. I got to know him well and I know President Franjo Tudjman as a man. Every man has his weaknesses and makes mistakes, so too Tudjman, everyone and I. Nevertheless, I emphasise that in public life I have never met a man who has more successfully connected the good and the vitality than President Franjo Tudjman. I am convinced that without him we would not have succeeded in creating or defending Croatia.
The crimes of Jasenovac, Bleiburg, the judgment against Aloysius Stepinac, the crimes of Goli Otok, the crimes after the Croatian Spring, the aggression against Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina … are always followed by the aggression of media lies, concealment, partial and twisted truth.
Vukovarans, veterans of the 204th, Branko Borkovic Hawk, detainees of Serb concentration camps, Danijel Rehak – do you accuse Franjo Tudjman?
All of you who think that the Croatian future must be based on faith in God, love for one’s own family and nation, with the respect of all people and good neighbourly relations with all countries – consider!
Consider the truth, consider your attitudes and have the strength to defend and represent them.
If you won’t defend Tudjman. Who will?
If you won’t defend the Generals, who will?
If you won’t defend Croatia, who will?
If you won’t defend anybody, who will defend you?
If you won’t believe in Christ, how will you believe in yourself.
Dr Slobodan Lang Photo: Pixsell
About dr. Slobodan Lang. Born to Jewish family 8 October 1945 in Zagreb, Croatia. Physician, author, writer, politician and former personal adviser to the first Croatian President dr. Franjo Tudjman. His paternal grandfather Ignjat was the president of the Jewish community in Vinkovci (Croatia) and his grandmother Terezija was a housewife. In 1941 Catholic priest Hijacint Bošković, distinguished Dubrovnik and Croatian Dominican, was engaged in an extraordinary attempt to rescue the Langs from Nazi persecution. Bošković traveled from Dubrovnik to Vinkovci with a special permit that allowed him to relocate the Langs to Dubrovnik. Langs grandfather refused to leave, saying that he “was the president of Jews in peace and he will stay one in the war”. Both of his grandparents were killed in the concentration camp during the Holocaust. He graduated at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine and is a specialist in social medicine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Lang)
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Very powerful. Very true. Croatia it’s time to awaken again. Cock-a-doodle-do but this time it’s not for the ruling coalition. It’s time for a proud nationalist government; don’t mistake nationalist for chauvinist.
Yes Sunman, the problem lies is the fact the Cock-a-doodle-doo coalition have a natural leaning towards just tolerating the people’s love for Croatia in order to survive as government while making sure that those who created independence and democracy continue being dragged through the mud. They’d much rather carry the banner for the criminal Tito than pay respect to Tudjman who committed no crime and who wanted only freedom and prosperity for his people.
There are many who still resent the fact that Croatia is free and independent. Love for Croatia is a sore in the eye of all so-called antifascists. Defending Croatia and Tudjman from lies at all times is therefore essential and needed.
Stjepan Mesic and Josip Manolic – just awful. Wouldn’t wish upon anyone the presence of them and Croatians must tolerate it – it’s torture.
So True. Many can’t stand the fact that Tudjman was cleared by the ICTY along with the Generals and now are serving a new set of scenarios to blacken names and love for Croatia. They shall not succeed – there are too many who know the great truth and who love Croatia. Just hang in there for a while until the infidels expire.
Everyone I know regards the rise of Nikolić at the expense of Tadić as a clear message from Srbija that they wish to regress into a new era of stupidity. Anything arising these days from that region has little or no credence with anyone who possesses a brain and a heart.
How irritating it is that we are often viewed by the international community as two Balkan countries as if we had some kind of common destiny. The Serbs I know have no sympathy with Nikolić but their views are not heard. Shame.
It is clear that Dr. Lang is very loyal to Tudjman and is doing his utmost to shield and protect his friend’s reputation- I do not find any fault with this. Where I do find fault is the way in which he is doing it. Throughout his commentary he refers to the “official media” and blames them entirely, it seems, for the latest “attack” on Tudjman. He says that the media doesn’t tell the whole truth and is therefore implying that they have some kind of bias against Tudjman or some kind of secret agenda to blacken his reputation in the eyes of fellow Croatians and the world in general. Although I could be persuaded to believe Dr. Lang if he had any concrete evidence, unfortunately, as it seems to me right now – he is speaking purely emotionally and not factually. If we believe Dr. Lang that the media is and can be controlled and manipulated by those in power–well, then it would seem that the Croatian people are once again being led by the nose, are once again being lied to. How, in the light of these allegations, can it be expected that the Croatian people weigh the facts and then come to a conclusion based upon reliable and trustworthy data? Where do they go to get the truth and how will they recognize it as truth once they find it? Dr. Lang implies that the media has been controlled and manipulated by governments from WWII to the present –including I would suppose Dr. Tudjman’s term of Presidency. Are we to assume that the Croatian people were manipulated and lied to then as well?
Well Velebit, I don’t assume for one moment to protect anyone but you will agree that during Tudjman’s time, during the anti-Tudjman years when there was a great deal of push from those who did not want independent Croatia and push for de-Tudjmanisation, there was more “Yellow” press that printed or said or showed more anti-Tudjman, horrible and vilifying often, stuff than you can find any other time after his death. Some daily papers or magazines thrived on such rubbish and many are no longer in circulation. So, no, Tudjman did not control the media but today’s lot I believe do quite a bit. Thanks you your commend.
The media under Tudman was, unlike the years before and after it – far more independent than the pre or post Tudman years.
Seral, cough, Feral Tribune, Nacional, Globottomy couch couch Globus, Zarez, Komunist, and dozens of other dailies, weeklies and monthlies excoriated the “Tudman regime” with headlines about the “repression” of free speech (namely, the defamation law suit that the Tudman family lost in the “banana dictatorship” of Tudman, and Mssrs. Ivancic and Raseta of Feral actually having to do like every other citizen and follow procedures for mandatory military service – for which they / outside powers forced Croatia into making an exception for them (but not over a quarter of a million other citizens who were not respewing enemy propaganda).
During Tudman’s democratic Presidency, open hate speech was spewed against Croatians and the Catholic Church on a daily basis by politicians and the Yugoslav / greater Serbian ultranationalist media in Croatia – and went entirely legally unpunished and the writers wrote freely.
Feral, Komunist, Zarez, etc. recycled the preceding day / week / month of Milosevic’s / Izetbegovic’s media hate speech and agitprop which was nothing short of an open call to genocide against Croats – freely – and entirely unpunished.
Just the other week, Tihomir Dujmovic was fired by Vecernji List specifically for his critical article of Josipovic.
The entire country knows this.
Everyone at Vecernji List, under the illegally privatized media monopoly Styria, knows they can’t write about Dujmovic’s very political firing at the allegedly “center right” paper Vecernji.
You tell me, when was it freer, today, when journalists are fired for questioning / criticising the soft-spoken Josipovic, or during Tudman’s presidency when papers for years repeatedly claimed that 41 school children were slaughtered on Aug. 18 by retreating “Ustasa cuthroats” who “forced” “Krajina” Serbs to “defend themselves”?
Tudman’s was spot on all along: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqbJOVlEzng
So true Amerocro! Exactly what I meant.
When one looks into the media ownership model – and the not so private political affiliations of the non-foreign owned press, not to even mention the foreign-owned press corporations agendas / their home nations’ policies towards Croatia, it is obvious that objective coverage of events and news in Croatia is the LAST thing on their mind.
This is supported by the second-rate, recycled Yugoslav journalistic style – where there is no hard news, just opinion.
They even use the same cliche phrases to demonize political opponents of their Yugoslav Changrilla they endlessly troll about in their incoherent ravings and rantings.
To answer Velebit’s question – yes, the Croatian people were lied and manipulated – by the sham “dissidents” who opposed Croatia’s existence, Croatians’ biological survival, and the fall of their loser Socialist Serb dominated / controlled welfare state they thought they would be able to be the ruling caste of, even if under Cika Slobo who to them was just another Tito anyway…
I think the case of Tudman, and how right he / his policy was and remains, is best evidenced by the Nov. 16, 2012 judgement – which in its reading decimated nearly two decades of lies, agitprop and hate speech by the sham “dissidents” who are still waging their propaganda jihad against Tudman – which again, demonstrates just how right he was, but above all, how effective a statesman he was ; – )
The Croatia haters can eat their empty hearts out.
The best example of the state media being against the first (and to date, only Croatian) President was best demonstrated last year when Zoran Sprajc on Dnevnik ran a piece on Vukovar, written and edited by a known KOS operative who was rehabilitated after 2000 and returned to his job, about how Tudman, contrary to the facts, elementary logic, and even words of Stari Jastreb himself, “sold” Vukovar for UN recognition, and then Sprajc interviewed an uninvestigated and unindicted JNA war criminal who was a willing Joint Criminal Enterprise (Martic / Babic / Hadzic / Milosevic / Mrksic) participant and commander of the genocide / ethnic cleansing campaign against the City of Vukovar and Podunavlje.
Yes Americro that episode served to the public by HRT journalist Zoran Sprajc sent shivers of anger and disgust through many veins. I wrote about it too:
http://inavukic.com/2012/01/12/rupert-murdochs-news-corporation-hacked-phones-croatian-tv-doctored-story-on-fall-of-vukovar/
I myself am half Croatian,but I do not see how this is a good thing.In my eyes EVERY general during the Bosnian and Herzegovinina War and the Croatian War is a War Criminal and they should all be locked up for good.
Well Hercegovac – that’s the difference between full blooded and half blooded anything. The full blooded people usually respect the fact that for someone to be called a war criminal he/she must be pronounced so by court of justice and not by opinions of people like yourself. Go back to the dark ages please and leave justice to evidence and courts of justice where people have the human right of defense and prove their innocence if they are innocent. Your Croatian half could be good but then it may not be, nationality does not matter in proven crimes, but what you’re talking about is just sheer idiocy and stupidity.
I beg to differ,according to your logic even if the person is a known War Criminal,but the court of justice does not pronounce him so,he is not a war criminal?
So if a Serbian General,lets say for example Mladic was also found not guilty you would not be mad or feel that something is wrong?
Oh you can feel that something is wrong BUT that is not evidence and feelings are not justice for all, they are personal. Feelings usually come from different sources including rumours, hearsay, hatred, bigotry … Justice for all require proof beyond any reasonable doubt. That is what democracy is in a sense: you are innocent of a crime until proven guilty by a court of justice.
that’s right coming from serb, look at your own generals your not Croatian, serb Yugo end of story
Look the word izdajica Yugo, That’s what u are
Look up the word Izdajac, That’s what u are LOL
ZA KOLINDU ZA HRVATSKU BEZ COMMUNISTA ZAP