Croatians – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Interview With Zeljko Glasnovic – Croatian Diaspora MP

October 13, 2018 by inavukic 5 Comments

Zeljko Glasnovic, Member of Croatian Parliament
representing the Croatian Diaspora
Photo: SBS Radio and Television Australia

By Stjepan Ivan Mandic, Fenix Magazine

Translation into English: Ina Vukic

Croatians In the diaspora carry Croatia in their hearts. Croatia must professionalise its administration and its public governance. It must have functional institutions that would implement laws. Independent judiciary that would guarantee safety in the administration of law must exist, Zeljko Glasnovic said.

Member of Croatian Parliament for Croatians living outside Croatia, retired Croatian Army (HV) and Croatian Defence Council (HVO) general Zeljko Glasnovic had recently spent two weeks visiting Australian Croatians. He led the tour of Australia, organised by Croatian Diasporan Voice Association, accompanied by other delegates from Croatia and was guest speaker at forums held in Melbourne, Geelong, Perth, Canberra and Sydney.

This interview was carried out with him after his return from Australia and in it General Glasnovic speaks about his meetings with Australian Croatians and about the impressions he brought back from there.

– Croatians in Australia are in a complete information blockade there. They are isolated because the Croatian media is constantly creating a perception of a situation that is not real, but false. Forums were organised and as part of these Jakov Sedlar’s film “Hundred years of Serbian terror in Croatia” was shown. Other guests were historian Igor Vukic who is systematically disassembling the myths about Jasenovac, publicist Josip Jurcevic and our best culturologist prof. Tomislav Sunic.

What did you speak about?

– I spoke about the state Croatia is in and the need to modernise the Croatian State, which is going very slowly. Given that the topic was “Croatia Uncensored” I too spoke without censure. And so, I also spoke about the Croatian diplomacy, which has so far been mostly inert. There has been no diplomacy for the economy nor have real conditions for people to return to Croatia been created. Unfortunately, it’s now coming to light that some of our diplomats were involved in criminal activities, and that was covered up and is still being covered up. It has to do with people who are anational, who have no feeling for the nation (state), who want to live a life of Monte Carlo style even though they have Balkan work habits. Nevertheless, the clearing away of such Yugoslav cadres is slowly progressing. I’ve heard that a lawsuit against an Ambassador for money expenditure is on the way and that lawsuits against the one who visited “public houses” and against the one who stole the furniture from the Sydney consulate and shipped it to his home in Croatia are also being prepared.

Which meeting had the most people attending?

– More or less all meetings were well attended. But, Sydney had the biggest number people. I gave a considerable number of statements and interviews, one of which was in English, for those who do not possess enough knowledge of the Croatian language to understand why we came there.

In the reports that came through there was a mention that you were the first member of the Croatian Parliament to officially visit the Australian War Memorial in Canberra?

– Yes, I took part in the Last Post Ceremony there and solemnly laid a wreath as sign of respect and remembrance for the members of the Croatian and Australian armed forces who participated in past wars and today’s conflicts across the world. On that occasion I handed over a gift of the commemorative plaque of the HVO First Brigade Ante Bruno Busic, which attracted significant attention and respect as expressed by one of the Australian War Memorial heads. In my statement for the media I said that the fact that we have no central memorial for all Croatian war victims who have fallen, from the Carpathian Mountains to the Austrian and Italian borders, is a tragedy for Croatia. I think that it’s a historical disgrace that, unlike other civilised countries that respect their dead and make the effort of burying their remains with the greatest of military honours, not one single Croatian government has even attempted to compile an official list of fallen Croatian soldiers from the First and the Second World Wars.

Zeljko Glasnovic at
the Australian War Memorial, September 2018
standing in front the War Memorial’s exhibit
of Tom Starcevich, Australian Victoria Cross recipient of Croatian descent

What do you think are the main deficiencies in the non-functioning of the Croatian state apparatus?

– Croatia must professionalise its administration and its public governance. It must have functional institutions that would implement laws. Independent judiciary that would guarantee safety in the administration of law must exist. There is nothing without safety in the administration of law. And that is where we must start. Unfortunately, the old Balkan brigand saying, which says ‘work little steal hard’, has remained in the Croatian blood. They take pleasure from deceiving the country. However, the biggest barrier for Croatia as a country is the communist mental heritage. It has completely demolished the moral and ethical values of the Croatian society, as does the Croatian media that systematically blocks all critical news. There is no democratically Christian and truly conservative media in Croatia. We do not have a truly Croatian television or something that would connect Croatians from the diaspora to the homeland. Recently, the state television has commenced broadcasting the so-called Fifth channel for Croatians outside the homeland. And all one can see there are repeats of old opuses and series but there are no concrete things to address the questions for the Croatian emigration such as postal voting, getting rid of double taxation etc.

Why is it so?

– Because the left and the right UDBA wing doesn’t want that. Because they want to remain endangered by the Croatian émigrés, they’re scared of their monetary power and the knowledge they have accumulated while living abroad, in the world. And these people (living abroad) carry Croatia in their hearts. The Croatian diaspora is the largest business branch that invests into Croatia every year more that the whole lot of the foreign investments. It was like that during the 1970’s and it is so today. Croatians from the diaspora are as undesirable in the homeland just as, I often say, a Pork steak is at a Jewish wedding. But, it can’t go on like this for much longer. Croatians in the diaspora need not despair but fight for Croatia and for their own people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because, if it wasn’t for Croatians from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the four Croatian Defence Council (HVO) assembly regions we would not have a Croatian state today.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Australian Croatians, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Croatians, Igor Vukic, Josip Jurcevic, Tom Starcevich, Tom Sunic, Zeljko Glasnovic

No Dogs, Catholics Or Muslims Allowed

October 2, 2016 by inavukic 41 Comments

Civilians of Sarajevo in
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1993
running for cover to
avoid Serb snipers during the city’s siege
Photo: Chris Helgren/Corbis

The referendum held on 25 September 2016 in the entity of Serbian Republic (Republika Srpska/RS) within Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) regarding confirmation that 9 January should be set as public holiday for the celebration of the Day of Republika Srpska/Serbian Republic Statehood Day may to many in the outside world seem benign but given BiH’s geographic position coupled with the 1990’s history puts it all in a different light. But, in reality and in truth this frighteningly defiant move led by Milorad Dodik, RS president – and nourished and supported via Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s promises of financial supports – has all the hallmarks of officially legitimising war crimes, especially ethnic cleansing and genocide (including Srebrenica) committed during 1990’s against Croatians and Bosniaks/Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina/BiH in that self-proclaimed Serbian territory situated within sovereign borders of BiH.

It once again brings to a chilling reminder the chilling “banner”, the “warning sign” under which Serb aggression operated there in that BiH sovereign territory in the 1990’s: No Dogs, Catholics or Muslims Allowed.

OHIO, Nov. 21, 1995
from Centre left:
President Slobodan Milosevic
of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,
President Alija Izetbegovic
of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
and President Franjo Tudjman of the Republic of Croatia
sign the Dayton Peace Accords.
Photo: U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Brian Schlumbohm

In November 1995 the primarily US-driven international Dayton Accords peace agreement ended the war in BiH and it preserved BiH as a single sovereign state, divided into two largely autonomous parts/entities: the Bosniak-Croatian Federation and the Serbian Republic. Dayton Accords, although made having peace in mind, in essence meant that peace had no chance as no conductive environment was created for proper reconciliation, in many ways the Serb aggressor was rewarded with its own region to govern autonomously. Dayton Accords agreement had sealed the fate of BiH as a sovereign state made up of three constitutional peoples (Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs) into a perpetual state of ethnic rivalry, recriminations, dysfunction and fear that Serbs were only “an inch” away from achieving their initial goal of creating their own sovereign state from parts of BiH’s sovereign territory they’d cleansed of all non-Serbs.

Milorad Dodik had officially, with apparent newfound determination, begun threatening to hold a referendum on secession of Serbian Republic from BiH in 2014 if Bosnia does not become a confederation of three states (Serb, Croat and Bosniak). At that time he sought to seize on the Crimean referendum and subsequent Russian annexation as a political and moral guide and an example of self-determination in action, however wrong, tragic and misguided these actions may have been held by the leaders of the Western democratic world. Dodik had planned for the referendum regarding 9 January as the Day of Serb Republic/ Statehood Day (which date by the way coincides with the Serb Orthodox religious holiday) to be held on 15 November 2015 but this and any such referendum was thwarted via BiH Constitutional Court’s ruling, making such referendums illegal.

Milorad Dodik
September 2016
Photo: Reuters/ Dado Ruvic

Defying BiH Constitutional Court and BiH Parliament, to which Serbian Republic answers, the referendum held Sunday 25 September saw the Serbs living in that entity in overwhelming numbers voting Yes to declaring 9 January as the Day of Serbian Republic. The relatively very few Croats and Bosniaks now living in the Serb Republic (having returned there post 1995 Dayton Accords agreement) had refused to vote in the referendum because, in essence, the referendum represents Dodik’s rehearsal for an eventual secession of Serb Republic from BiH and, therefore, the destruction of BiH as the world knows it now.

A further element of defiance and repulsive attempt to legitimise genocide and ethnic cleansing committed by Serbs in this referendum can be seen through Biljana Plavsic’s comments as she voted in the RS representative office in Belgrade, Serbia. Biljana Plavsic, whose actions in 1992 as a member of collective presidencies of both Bosnia and the breakaway Serbian Republic of Bosnia constituted crimes against humanity and who actively supported the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats in Serb-held lands, who is an ICTY convicted war criminal said last week that the referendum represents a defense of Serbian Republic – of that in which she herself had participated in the 1990’s.

Whether the leaders of Croatians and Bosniaks living in BiH consider Dodik’s defiant move with the referendum as some kind of an internationally acceptable foundation for a movement that would split BiH into three different ethnically defined sovereign states (Bosniak, Croat, Serb) is at this stage a disquieting point occupying a great deal of political analyses space throughout the world. As desirable as contemplation of such a division of BiH into three sovereign states may appear to each of the three ethnic groups at this moment may be, this articulated in the media desirability or political assessment in essence masks the real and dangerous prospect of the possibility of repeated Serb violence and aggression against Croatians and Bosniaks in BiH.

Croatian refugee families from Serb Republic
still today in their thousands seek return to their rightful homes in Banja Luka.
Photo: HINA

Dodik’s defiance with holding the referendum and his subsequent defiance of the BiH State Prosecutor by refusing to answer a summons to appear before the prosecutor regarding his breach of the Constitutional Court order that declared the referendum illegal, are acts that are very likely to motorise the Serb population’s energy for renewed attacks against non-Serbs in BiH. Dodik has found it handy to interpret everything commented against his referendum as threatening to his personal safety and so:
“I will not go to the prosecutor’s office in Sarajevo but I am ready to give a statement in any other judiciary office in the Serb Republic,” Dodik told a news conference 27 September 2016. He therefore rejects the jurisdiction of the government of Bosnia Herzegovina to which Serbian Republic entity must answer. He has therefore, in his mind and in his deeds already cut Serbian Republic’s ties with BiH.
“If Dodik fails to comply with a summons, and fails to justify it, the prosecution will then issue an arrest warrant,” said Bosnia’s Security Minister Dragan Mektic, a Bosnian Serb.

Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina
with entities of
Serb Republic/ Republika Srpska
and Croat Bosniak Federation

All this says that Bosnia and Herzegovina is in a more dangerous state than at any other time since Dayton Accords in 1995, with looming possibility of renewed violence and crimes against humanity. It confirms that, despite atrocities committed in early 1990’s and guilt confirmed via international criminal tribunal and domestic criminal courts, Serbs have not learned to keep their fingers off sovereign territories and state borders that have been established/recognised on an international level for many decades. Collective catharsis associated with the atrocities and war crimes as some guarantee of lasting peace in BiH has made no progress despite Dayton Accords and the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). This latest behavior of Bosnian Serbs evidences the fact that reconciliation in BiH (in former Yugoslavia, really) has been a pipe dream, and a utopian dream concocted by the West and the European Commission who thought that equating the aggressor with the victim would reap positive results of reconciliation and peace. Permitting Serbian Republic to exist within BiH in the first place was the beginning of that pipe dream, which was above all cruel to the victims of war crimes and, as such, it was never going to work. Daytom Accord should have either split BiH into three distinctive sovereign states (Bosniak, Croat and Serb) or insisted on retaining BiH as a single sovereign state without entities or divisions of autonomous territory between its constituent ethnic/national groups.

But as things have panned out, the world must cringe with disgust watching the referendum signatures of the majority of the genocidal Bosnian Serb “nation” celebrating without an inkling of shame or remorse their “state” founded on war crimes, forced deportations, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, genocide, torture…and all that permitted by way of world leaders’ benign political statements that offer only political analyses of the past and no visible intention for decisive involvement to stop such lunacy that is creating new victims of the imposed ethnic Serb superiority in that region. This is a true perversion of justice for the victims of crimes against humanity and freedom to live peacefully anywhere within one’s country’s sovereign borders.

By way of referendum for Serb Republic Statehood Day Bosnian Serbs are erecting a monument to those who committed genocide. This comes without real sanctions and practical intervention against this shame for humanity as all of the political analyses and statements by world leaders about this appear more benevolent toward this Serb cause of celebrating genocide than toward anything else. Turbulent times are on the cards once again for Bosnia and Herzegovina; for Bosniaks and Croatians. Together with political instability in Macedonia, violent protests in Kosovo, the destabilisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina will have a destructive influence on the entire Balkan region. The referendum in Republika Srpska also perfectly shows how history can be used to drum up hostility between nations. Desirous of peace and life without fear, a life that moves away from daily infliction of pain contained in politically live reminders of the 1990’s war, Bosnian Croats may do well by utilising this latest practically unchecked Bosnian Serb defiance and seek their own independence or autonomy within or without BiH. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Balkan War, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Serbs, Croatians, Dayton Agreement, Milorad Dodik, Muslims, national divisions in Bosnia, Republika Srpska, Serbian Republic, Serbians

From Croatian Diaspora – Meet the New Archbishop Of Chicago, Blase Cupich

September 20, 2014 by inavukic 30 Comments

New Archbishop of Chicago
Blase J. Cupich

Pope Francis will on Saturday 19 September 2014 name Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Washington, a prelate closely identified with the Catholic Church’s progressive wing, to be the next archbishop of Chicago.

Cupich was ordained a priest in 1975 and has experience as both a Catholic schoolteacher and pastor. In 1998, Pope John Paul II named him bishop of Rapid City, S.D., and Pope Benedict XVI moved him to Spokane in 2010. His family heritage is Croatian, on both maternal and paternal sides – his grandparents were the ones to make the US a home in the early part of the Twentieth century, never losing their Croatian identity and roots as the family grew, multiplied and blended into the “American” life.

Blase Cupich visited Croatia in March of this year, not missing to visit the house in the village of Ladanje Donje, Parish of Vinica, near Varazdin, where his grandmother was born and lived and from where in 1917 as a 17-year old girl seeking a better life she headed to America (United States). In Nabraska Barbara Bahun married Ivan Majhen (who came from Karlovac, Croatia) and they had four children, including the daughter Maria who married Blaz (Blase) Cupich, and they had nine children, including Blase Joseph, the new Archbishop of Chicago.

Bishop Blase Cupich in Varazdin, Croatia March 2014

Bishop Blase Cupich in Croatia
March 2014

Via this link you can access the video from Archbishop Blase Cupich’s visit to Croatia this year in which he talks, among other things, about his Croatian heritage (video in English and Croatian).
When Archbishop Joseph Kurtz was elected president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2012, then Spokane’s Bishop Blase Cupich said that the decision reflected the pope’s desire for pastoral leaders.

“Pope Francis doesn’t want cultural warriors, he doesn’t want ideologues. That’s the new paradigm for us, and it’s making many of us think,” he said to the New York Times.

In the run up to the 2008 US presidential election, Cupich, who was then bishop of Rapid City, S.D., wrote an essay for the America magazine in which he reminded Catholics of church teaching that deems racism a “sin.” “To allow racism to reign in our hearts and to determine our choice in this solemn moment for our nation is to cooperate with one of the great evils that has afflicted our society. In the words of Brothers and Sisters to Us, “It mocks the words of Jesus, ‘Treat others the way you would have them treat you.’”
Prior to the Washington State voting on same-sex marriage in November 2012, in August, Cupich wrote a letter to be read at Masses which was remarkable for its comparatively affirming language even though the line that was to be taken by all bishops was to vote against the referendum on same sex marriage. He praised those who are ”motivated by compassion for those who have shown courage in refusing to live in the fear of being rejected for their sexual orientation.”
Also in line with the pope’s focus on the poor, Cupich spoke at a Washington, D.C. conference in June this year against economic libertarianism, calling inequality, “a powder keg that is as dangerous as the environmental crisis the world is facing today.” (The Washington Post article, 3 June 2014)

Cupich gained a national platform in the US when he was tapped to lead the bishops’ efforts in implementing new policies to protect children from sex abuse, even criticising the bishops themselves.

“Catholics have been hurt by the moral failings of some priests, but they have been hurt and angered even more by bishops who failed to put children first. People expect religious leaders above all to be immediate and forthright in taking a strong stand in the face of evil, such as the harm done to children and young people by sexual abuse,” he wrote in 2010.

Such snippets from Archbishop Blase Cupich’s public appearances bring him forth as a prelate of the Catholic Church’s progressive path into the life that we call modern, but never to abandon the spiritual and moral grounds that make us human and compassionate as citizens of the world and particularly Christianity. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)