Croatia Must Not Permit Defending The Most Murderous Regime Of Communist Yugoslavia

Former Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito
among the worst mass murderers
of the 20th century
Photo:Screenshot Daily Mail.co.uk

Nigel Jones of the UK Daily Mail wrote in October 2014 that “the 20th century witnessed death and slaughter on an unprecedented scale. It was the century of the Holocaust and two World Wars; of communist, Nazi, fascist and military dictators who between them killed more than 100 million people”. He compiled a list of the mass murderers that shaped the political maps placing communist Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito on the list as having caused the murder of 570,000 political opponents.
In an open letter by Andrija Hebrang, a Croatian prominent politician, supporting the removal of Josip Broz Tito’s bust from the Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia, published 25 February 2015 on Croatian Cultural Council portal we are reminded that “R. J. Rummel and prof. G. Heissohn claim that Tito’s place is among the top ten murderers in the history of humanity because he was directly responsible for the death of 1,170,000 people. As Tito got rid of witnesses to his own crimes the estimates of the numbers of his victims. And so, prof. P. Scaruffi publishes a number of 570,000 of Tito’s victims while the German Bild placed Tito among the world’s top ten of mass murderers, citing in 2007 the number of 1 Million victims…”
The highest barrier to moving into the ideal future of reconciled past, unity and optimal economic harmony that includes job creation, stripping off of corruption and nepotism in the work force, is, for Croatia, the still thriving divisions from World War II that keep supplying ink to the stamp of collective guilt, and that ink comes in the form of the Croatian left-wing politics holding onto their role as the heir to or successor of their communist past.
The Croatian Left-wing political milieu is not ready to condemn Communist crimes despite the fact that the European Union, of which Croatia is a member – has. The Croatian Left-wing political milieu persists in equating communist antifascism with democratic antifascism despite the fact that the two are very different as the former is severely marked by mass crimes that helped its survival over four decades after WWII.
When the Croatian Left-wing political milieu gathers enough strength to condemn Communist crimes, Croatia will have a chance of moving forward into a better future it’s citizens deserve. The cramp of defending communist crimes, either directly as in wrongly insisting that they were “necessary” to thwart what they call fascism or, indirectly, by omitting to actively condemn communist crimes, is still holding progress in Croatia hostage.

Croatian Constitution calls upon antifascism but also upon the condemnation of the communist totalitarian regime (of former Yugoslavia).

“There are no advocates of fascist heritage in today’s Croatia but there are stalwarts of communist heritage,” said recently dr. Miroslav Tudjman, member of Croatian Parliament and son of the late president Franjo Tudjman, adding that in the absence of condemnation of communist crimes and the communist regime, the place for the sculpture of Tito’s bust will remain a political question. “The conflict that arises from the place of Tito’s bust, wherever it is kept, will continue to be a point of disunity all until the history textbooks also reflect that the Constitution calls upon antifascism but also upon the condemnation of the communist totalitarian system.”

An example of maintaining the false superiority of communist followers, which distresses any human being bar the one defending communist crimes, could clearly be seen in the capital of Croatia, Zagreb, on Saturday 28 February. A couple of hundred anti-fascist protesters rallied in Zagreb’s central square to oppose a plan by the far-right Autochthonous Croatian Party of Rights (A-HSP) to hold a public presentation of its own army and an oath-taking ceremony in the same location, which was banned by the Ministry of the Interior with the explanation that it might disturb the public. Well, what disturbs the public more than a peaceful public display of a political party’s army is the fact that the same minister omitted to send the Tito-loving anti-fascist protesters packing, as well.

Even though the A-HSP party army did not show up in the main square because the party gathering was banned, anti-fascist protesters arrived there around noon, displaying a banner that read “United against fascism” and shouting anti-fascist messages.
Police were present in the square, securing a buffer zone between the “anti-fascist” protesters and members of the public. Several members of the public shouted insults at the protesters. Police, or the authorities, made no moves to remove the anti-fascist protesters from the main square. Such behaviour is designed to promote lies that Croatia promotes fascism and stall moves towards condemnation of communist crimes. Such behaviour must be quashed otherwise Croatia has no chance of thriving as a country founded on historical truth and justice.
Given the deep divisions that stem from WWII and post-WWII communist Yugoslavia era in Croatia, the new president of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic’s call for unity and togetherness, reconciliation of history… can, in essence, be interpreted as a call to “nation building” as a pre-requisite to achieving economic reforms that would benefit all and lift the standard of living of all in Croatia. The “nation building” can only be successfully achieved if it rests primarily on the values for freedom and democracy expressed through the endurance and bravery of Croatia’s 1990’s Homeland War while condemning most strongly all totalitaria regimes that ravaged Croatia until 1990. There is no doubt that through the post-WWII communist era members of the communist elite and members of the pro-communist elite after Croatia’s independence of the 1990’s made a great deal of money at the expense of the state and society in transition. Streets of Croatia are densely populated by individuals with amassed wealth that was impossible to amass – within the earning capacity of former Yugoslavia and independent Croatia economic circumstances – without the presence of corruption, theft, insider-dealings and favouritism. Widespread economic distortions created many conflicting vested interests and this makes carrying out economic reforms difficult across Croatia. Corrupt individuals thriving in each other’s pockets, harbouring each other’s ‘trade’ secrets of past and present is the padding around the spine of a politically resistant system that will continue thwarting economic progress and economic fairness to ordinary citizens unless the political marrow of former-communism is eradicated or, at least, watered down to impotence. And that means the condemnation of communist crimes in Croatia and their propeller – Josip Broz Tito. So, the sooner the authorities make it their business to remove the former communist regime (even by force if need be) as the epitomiser of democratic antifascism, the better. The sooner the totalitarian regimes of Croatia’s past are put on equal footing of irrelevance for today’s and future Croatia the better. This though, cannot be done without condemning Tito for his crimes and condemning his communist regime. As painful as it may come to many Croats, this is absolutely necessary otherwise, living by double standards (condemning crimes of WWII Independent Croatia while upholding as just, even worse in many ways, the crimes of communist Yugoslavia/Croatia) condemns Croatia to a life in perpetual tatters and perpetual political finger pointing while the ordinary citizens suffer insufferably. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)