Damir Markus – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Battles For Victims Of Communist Crimes And Croatia’s Homeland War

Damir Markus (L) Charles Billich (C) Damir Plavsic (R)
Phoro: AB

When politicians in positions of relative or specific power in Croatia, especially those beating the drum of integration between Croatia and its diaspora, visit the diaspora, which is made up of all sides of historical political spectrums, one would expect them to park their politics at the door and engage with all sides. Given that those in power in Croatia have so far shown little, if any interest, in ridding Croatia of the stronghold former communists have over the nation’s life, which is plummeting into living standard chaos and desperation for many, one would expect that the side that promotes remembrance of victims and justice for the multitudes of communist crimes that occurred during the life of communist Yugoslavia as well as the victims of Croatia’s 1990’s Homeland War would finally receive due notice, without any reservations. But no, what Croatia still has in its corridors of power is multitudes of unrepentant supporters of the communist system that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people and chased out in fear for their own life and survival, into the diaspora, equally as many. It still has too many in the corridors of power that avoid reckoning with the Serb and communist Yugoslavia Army aggressors who sought to destroy the Croats who wanted freedom from communist Yugoslavia.

If the spark of a push to decommunise Croatia fails to ignite big fires within the people to achieve decommnisation then the die-hard communist Yugoslavia supporters will go to their graves believing that all the murder had been worth it in order to achieve that deluded fantasy of a “worker’s paradise”, which in reality brought workers to their knees as inflation in the country, by late 1980’s, surged beyond 1100%. So powerful is ideology that a person can be brilliant in certain fields of professional pursuits and yet at the same time totally blind to one form of evil. And communism in Yugoslavia was evil. 1990’s Serb aggression against Croatia was evil.

How one views the extreme, pathological end of an ideology also influences how one looks at its norms. The young in Croatia are distressingly ignorant of the crimes of communist Yugoslavia, they are also ignorant of the fact that Serb aggression against Croatia in early 1990’s was based on intent to murder and intent to ethnically cleanse Croats from their lands (specifically one-third of Croatia that became known during the war [and after the Croats were ethnically cleansed and multitudes murdered] as Republic of Serbian Krajina). They are ignorant of these facts because the powers that be systematically cover-up the crimes or fail to pay due diligence to them and downplay the absolute need for self-defense and self-preservation Croats were forced into.

One way to remedy this situation and set Croatia on the right footing to full democracy based on a reconciled past is commemorate the victims of Communism in the same way it’s done for the victims of all totalitarian regimes. There should be no concept of competition in this as all totalitarian regimes carried almost equal loads of indulgence that resulted in human sufferings.

In dealing with the legacies of fifty-year communist dictatorship in Croatia (as part of former Yugoslavia), the transition to democracy, after the Homeland War ended and all Serb-occupied territory liberated or reintegrated (1998) official Croatia has never confronted itself with the issue of what to do with the perpetrators of oppression and human rights violations before 1990, and to what extent, and how, to compensate the victims; to punish the perpetrators of mass murders and purges. Multitudes of people were at one point or another imprisoned on political grounds, scores upon scores sentenced to death without a fair trial, scores upon scores assassinated and murdered both in Croatia and in the diaspora, the whole Croatian national identity vilified as extremist, properties confiscated or nationalised for the use and/or ownership of communist operatives … a screening procedure by which people who had been collaborators or informers of the secret police (UDBA) as well as high ranking party officials should be banned from prominent positions in the government, the army, and the courts has not been developed nor adopted. Lustration did not occur and it must, whether it be through a radical break or some negotiated compromise.

Croatia should not and must not forget any of those who paid for its present freedom from communist Yugoslavia in one way or another. Independent courts should impartially consider the possible guilt of those who were responsible for the persecutions, so that the truth about the communist past may be fully revealed. This is, however, only a dream of democracy amidst the court system that still harbours those who participated in the persecutions in one way or another.

Compensating the victims of communist crimes is the last thing Croatian political machinery in power wants to do. Compensating the victims of the 1990’s Homeland War is a far, far cry from any justice or human dignity; why, Croatia has not even claimed from Serbia calculated war damages amounting to some 44 billion euro! That says quite a lot about the will, or rather the lack of it, in Croatia’s power corridors to fully address the victims of Serb aggression and the losses Croatia sustained.

Commemorative events, laying wreaths at many mass gravesites and the Bleiburg field for victims of communist crimes and memorial cemeteries or gravesites for victims of the Homeland War have become a way of life in Croatia for many who keep the memory of hard-won freedom alive. While this in essence is a pursuit of human dignity and remembrance it is not enough for justice and for collective remembrance; it reduces national suffering to individual or group ones; it waters down the suffering Croats have endured under communism in Yugoslavia and under Serb-aggression as Croatia set about breaking away from communist Yugoslavia.

Ivan Penava (L) Ljiljanna Ravlich (C) Zvonko Milas (second from R)
Photo: Facebook

In recent months the Sydney, Australia, based world renowned artist of Croatian descent, along with his numerous family members a victim of communist crimes and oppression, Charles Billich, publicly announced his wish and plan to erect a memorial monument in Croatia honouring the victims of communist crimes and the victims of the 1990’s Homeland War. Without a doubt this gesture has national pride significance for the Croatian people and their suffering. Knowing the terrible history associated with those victims such a monument is surely a platform that lifts into a permanent conscience the debt a free and independent democratic Croatia owes to them. But, as it appeared via a recent visit to Australia by the Croatia’s state secretary for the government office for Croats living outside Croatia, Zvonko Milas and Vukovar’s mayor Ivan Penava, seen as representing a “leading” political mood hovering about Croatia, such honouring of victims of communist crimes and those of the Homeland War is avoided rather than encouraged. In the same party of visitors to Australia were also two men, heroic Homeland War veterans, Damir Plavsic and Damir Markus, writers, producers and activists of the theatrical play “The Battle for Vuovar” (Vukovar was devastated by Serb aggression during the 1990’s Homeland War and became the symbol of Croatia’s fight for independence from communist Yugoslavia).

The “political” representatives of this group visiting Australia, Zvonko Milas and Ivan Penava, made a point to meet with the former Western Australia Legislative Council member and former Australian Labor Party minister WA Ljiljanna Ravlich, a Croatian born former Australian politician whose father was a communist Partisan in the Yugoslav Army and whom she has proudly painted a portrait of with the (Red) star on his cap, but expressly avoided even acknowledging Charles Billich, let alone offering a hand-shake for his announced remarkable gift to Croatia in the form of a monument to victims of communist crimes and Homeland War. This expressed avoidance occurred at a Croatian club in Sydney where Billich attended to honour the visitors from Croatia even at the cost of having to leave his prior engagement as official artist of the World Polo Championships held this month in Sydney.

Ljiljana Ravlich with portrait
of her father – communist star on cap
Photo: Screenshot

Croatia’s veterans and defenders of Vukovar, Damir Plavsic and Damir Markus made the point of meeting with Charles Billich at the same Croatian club and visiting his gallery at the Rocks, in Sydney. They also invited Billich to give a speech at the Croatian Club, which he accepted, confirming yet again his determined and monetarily generous plan to erect the monument in Croatia to victims of communist crimes and Croatia’s Homeland War.

Through this episode at the Croatian club in Sydney it is clear that avoidance of dealing with due justice for victims of communist crimes and victims of the Homeland War strongly exists in Croatia but, fortunately, there are many, especially in the diaspora, who will persist at it until full justice is done. Ina Vukic

Croatia: Antifascists Vilify Veterans To The Disgrace Of The Nation

Monument to the HOS
9th Battalion Rafael Vitez Boban
raised in Split, Croatia – 9 May 2014

On 9 May of this year the mayor of the city of Split, Ivo Baldasar (a Social Democrat) presided over the unveiling of the monument to the 9th HOS Battalion Rafael Vitez Boban. Croatia’s communist lot, who boldly call themselves antifascists even though no antifascist organisation in the world protect from condemnation and processing of WWII and post-WWII communist crimes like they do, formed a so-called “Antifascist league”. These two events in Croatia on the same day did not occur by accident.

No Siree!

The communism lovers from various NGO’s are all about calling and labelling members of Croatian defence forces from the 1990’s Homeland War as fascists, maliciously and without any truth, except for communist political agenda, linking them to WWII Independent State of Croatia Ustashe! Some have even gone so far as to say that the monument in Split for a 1990’s Battalion carrying the name of WWII Ustashi Rafael Vitez Boban who formed the WWII Black Legion alongside Jure Francetic is designed to equate WWII fascists (Ustashe) and WWII communists/antifascists and this to them is not acceptable! The WWII Black Legion consisted mainly of Croatian and Muslim refugees from eastern Bosnia where large massacres and atrocities were committed against the population by Serb Chetniks and Yugoslav/communist Partisans. Communists or antifascists of Croatia still sweep under the carpet the communist crimes committed against innocent Croats, the scale of which far surpasses the crimes committed by the so-called WWII Ustashe regime.

There are it seems no limits to where Croatia’s antifascists will venture in order to protect their predecessors from being prosecuted and condemned for communist crimes. While many rejected to take part in creating the independent and democratic Croatia in the 1990’s – as they wanted communist Yugoslavia – they now enjoy and abuse the independence, democracy and freedom which they use to label Croatian veterans and indeed anyone who loves an independent Croatia – a fascist!
On 25 June of this year the televised program “Calender” by editor Vladimir Brnardic sparked Croatia’s antifascists into a new frenzy in which they labelled Homeland veterans as fascists!

Above Video: Croatian TV Kalendar program 25 June 2014, editor Vladimir Brnardic – transcript translated into English:
“Upon the embarkation of the Greater Serbia aggression against Croatia, Croatian Defence Forces (HOS) were founded 25 June 1991 as a military wing of the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP). HSP leader Dobroslav Paraga became its commander in chief, and Ante Paradzik undertook the duty of headquarters chief. Volunteering was exclusively the only criteria to enlist into HOS. Regardless of the label of radicalism that followed them at all times political party membership and nationality were not important. On the contrary, members of other nationalities and émigré Croats and a large number of foreign volunteers fought with HOS. Conscious of the fact that war was inevitable HOS leaders were preparing for the defence much before the eruption of the conflict.

In collaboration with the Slovenian police one of the first military training camps was organised in Zumberak (area between Croatia and Slovenia). From the very beginning members of HOS were active on all crisis battlefields. They were especially prominent in the defence of Vukovar, but also of all Slavonia, Dubrovnik, Banovina (central Croatia) and later in Livno and Bosnian Posavina then Mostar and other parts of Herzegovina.

The murder of HOS chief Ante Paradzik, in September 1991, sharpened the already high tensions between leaders of HSP and leaders of HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), the party in government. In an atmosphere of distrust pressure mounted to abolish HOS, whose members either joined units of the Croatian Army or went to voluntarily defend Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Despite the allegations of extremism it’s essential to emphasise that they fought honourably and not a single one of the several thousand members of HOS has been convicted of war crimes.

Although many HOS members were wounded and became profound war invalids and laid their lives for Croatian freedom their status due to political disagreements, especially with the head of Croatian secret services Josip Manolic, has been devastating, even after the war. It was only in 1996 that HOS was officially recognised and only in 2004, in line with Croatian Homeland War Veterans’ Act, HOS members were recognised as true defenders and a part of Croatian armed forces. It’s interesting that the only formation that retained the HOS name and symbols was the 9th Battalion Rafael Vitez Boban, which is included in the 114th Brigade of the Croatian Army. Those killed from HOS formations still await their memorial symbols and only the city of Split had in 2014, with the erection of the monument to the 9th Battalion of HOS, in a dignified manner paid its respects to the formation that had 46 of its members lay their lives for the defence of the Homeland.”

On 1 July 2014 Damir Markus from the town of Kutina arm of the Association of HOS Volunteers (UDHOS) published a firm statement and plea on the Dragovoljac (Volunteer) website protesting the labelling of Croatian Homeland War veterans as fascists. Indeed, he states that Croatia in the only country in the world that calls its army fascist!

He says: “If we intend entering into history as the only nation which won’t process all war criminals, regardless from which war, in the name of all of us who have defended and created this country we ask you to please ensure that we don’t become a rare state in which its own army is labelled fascist.

The last of the many media outbursts in which formations from the Homeland War, especially HOS, are equated with fascism points to a clear tendency to generally criminalise the values of the Homeland War. For the first time since Croatia’s independence HOS is openly and unambiguously called a fascist organisation, i.e. an Ustashe formation, in the announced lawsuit ‘Antifascist league’ versus the author Vladimir Brnardic, who in his TV program Calendar examines the events from the war. How is it possible that the so-called ‘civil associations’ like that phantom one called ‘antifascist league’, which is well funded from the state budget, openly name-call and vilify as fascists the volunteers who defended the Homeland in 1991 – 1995? In which country of the world is it at all possible for an association or an individual to call their country’s victorious army formations criminal and treat them as fascists?!!

Let alone the fact that we have repeated many times that we have no connection with World War II but that we are a formation founded during our holy Homeland war and in reality are, as are all other Croatian army formations, the answer to the Greater Serbian fascism. It’s becoming more and more evident that our clear responses cannot bring results also due to the fact that the anonymous individuals who hide behind the phantom civil associations are still conducting calls to account from WWII. That is their right.

But, they do not have the right to draw us into their dirty games and it’s scandalous that the institutions of authority permit such things. In any other country the institutions would have long ago gone about sanctioning of subjects who vilify the values of the war for freedom of the Homeland and the formations that reined in that freedom. In our country, regretfully, the situation is reverse. Not only the WWII and post-WWII criminals are not sanctioned but also the terrible crimes committed by the Greater Serbia fascist hordes during the aggression against Croatia have not been investigated. In light of this, the paradox that the Croatian army formations are called, nothing more and nothing less than fascists is possible and that historians like Vladimir Brnardic, who objectively research the Homeland war, are threatened with lawsuits for promoting fascism!?!

Of course we also are contemplating lawsuits but it’s difficult to undertake anything under the law when we do not have the protection of the state and when the ghosts from the past vilify the Homeland War without signing their name to their deeds from within phantom associations. We invite all the state institutions to protect us in this, i.e., to respect the law of the country and to not succumb to the laws of phantom pressures of ghostly associations, who still live for retributions for events that occurred 70 years ago”.

Turning the clock back to 24 February 1990, Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman said: “The advocates of the hegemonic-unitarian or Yugoslav state attitudes see in the goals of HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) nothing except a demand for a rehabilitation of the Ustashe NDH (WWII Independent State of Croatia). They forget, though, that NDH (The World War II Independent State Of Croatia) was not merely a ‘puppet’ creation and ‘fascist crime’ but that it was also an expression of both the political aspirations of the Croatian people for their independent state and of the perceptions of those Croatian aspirations and its geographic borders within the international factors, in this case the government of Hitler’s Germany, which tailored a ‘new European order’ on the ruins of Versailles. Accordingly, NDH was not a mere whim of the Axis forces but rather a consequence of the quite specific historical factors.”

Of course, as one would expect, the 1990’s anti-Croatian independence pro-Yugoslavia communist forces hurled around the world and in Croatia maliciously branding this speech by Tudjman as pro-fascist and “as a beginning of turning the Ustashe into good and patriotic boys”, reiterates Novi List journalist Ladislav Tomicic with a mean spirited slant.

Who benefits from labelling Croatia’s independence defenders of the1990’s as fascists? Certainly not Croatia! No one but communists or false antifascists benefit! Do Croatian authorities truly want such social rot to take hold? It would seem that the answer to the latter is yes and that yes is closely associated with sabotaging growth of democracy and freedom. Why else would authorities tolerate the situation where antifascist organisations and their individual spawns label the country’s honourable veterans as fascists?

Croatian veterans of the 1990’s had sacrificed everything to defend Croatia from Serb and communist Yugoslav People’s Army aggression and atrocities. They sacrificed their lives for democracy and freedom only to find themselves vilified and falsely accused as being fascists, as being an extension of WWII fascism! This is beyond insulting! This is a disgrace for the whole of the Croatian nation! This cannot be tolerated! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)