Statements and actions served upon justice and truth (let alone upon Croatian people/not those who pretend to be Croatian at heart as well as origin) by the Croatian foreign affairs minister and first deputy prime minister Vesna Pusic on her recent visit to Serbia are the stuff SICK and TREASONOUS are made of, in my book and in the book of many!
What is she still doing in that important public position!?
Why has she not been made to stand down and move away from any parliamentary or government position (where she is on account of being elected by the people)?
Why has she not been sacked yet?
Why has lustration not started with her – yesterday! She comes from highly positioned communists of former Yugoslavia. She comes to her public positions filled with poison against Croatian truth and truth in general, really! She comes from the position where in late 1990’s she was close to former president Stjepan Mesic in his vicious political attacks, saturated with lies, against the first president Franjo Tudjman …
Vesna Pusic went to Serbia Monday 24 February and said on Serbia’s TV that today’s government in Serbia “is not responsible for war crimes”, but that other people are who led them (Croats and Serbs) at the time are to blame.
“We had directed blame to Slobodan Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj, “Pusic said to TV B92, and added that the current president of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolic, was not in any position and that today’s people in Serbia’s government would surely not support that which these two had done during the war”.
What chance have decency and justice got when such highly positioned officers such as Pusic have the gall to equate victims with aggressors!? Well there is one chance: sack Pusic from her position of power!
It is known that she comes from the communist stock of former Yugoslavia who did not want an independent and democratic Croatia in the first place (in 1990 onwards), so such obscene comments don’t surprise! But what does surprise is that she is still in her position of power even though she purposefully omitted to say in Serbia:
Croat leaders in early 1990’s did not start the war, they were merely facilitators of people’s will and vote to secede from Yugoslavia and create an independent Croatia and your people (Serbs, led by Milosevic) unleashed terror, murder and destruction against Croats then.
Serbia’s leaders of today including Tomislav Nikolic and Aleksandar Vucic were and are extreme Serb nationalists, very loud in saying that parts of Croatia’s territory such as Vukovar, Karlobag… are Serbian territory thus inciting unrest and intolerance. Beside’s it has been said that Nikolic is implicated in one way or another the mass killing of Croatian civilians in the village of Antin, near Vukovar in 1991
Why Pusic found it necessary to visit Serbia at this time it’s unclear. It is assumed by some that it might have been associated with the fact that Croatia’s lawsuit against Serbia for genocide at the International Court of Justice has not been withdrawn and hearings are to commence in a couple of days, Monday 3rd March. However, she has stated after returning from Serbia, where sentiments of anger and betrayal stared at her at home (political parties in opposition and media criticising her statements for Serbia’s TV) that she went there to pick up the aerial shots taken of Croatian territory by Yugoslav authorities in the 1960’s so that these shots will assist in ascertaining who has built what house or building illegally since then!
Betrayal, treason, lies and twisting of the truth against Croatia is what her statements to Serbia’s TV represent.
What she should have said is well expressed in email broadcasts by Tomislav Kuzmanovic, a respected lawyer living and working in the USA (original text translated into English):
“Unfortunately, war crimes are often a tragic consequence of war conflicts. Croatia has suffered disproportionally to a large extent in this during 1990’s. All that is needed is to compare Vukovar of 1991 with Knin of 1995 and the difference will be clearly seen between those who were destroying everything in their path and those who were liberating their own, making sure that the damage was as minimal as possible and carrying out a professional military action. As any country where the law rules and not the people, the legal processes take time, they’re not perfect, and sometimes they bring solutions that are not satisfactory to either the prosecutor or to those against whom the crime had been committed. The politics of our country did not incite to crimes, on the contrary it forbade them. If we look into the criminal court, ICTY, even the Trial process in the case of our Generals confirmed that the politics of our country did not incite to crimes. I would say to my colleagues in Belgrade that we should, of course, move towards the future but, nevertheless, my colleagues in Belgrade still need to know and understand that we will never accept the equating of responsibility for war crimes nor will we ascribe the responsibility for those to the previous government of Croatia because they, and I emphasise, are the responsibility of the individuals who committed them. Irrefutable facts show that Croatia suffered enormous material damage and what’s most sad there are the losses of civil and military lives. Comparing the number of those accused and those so far convicted from all nationalities at the international court, ICTY, show and bear evidence that there is no legal or moral basis to the equating of responsibility”.
Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)