This year, 2022, marks yet another jubilee to celebrate in the realisation of freedom for Croatia – the May 1992 front door entry as member state of the United Nations. Between 1990 and 1995 thousands of Croatian freedom fighters descended upon the battlefields of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from all over the world, sacrificing their lives and millions of them struggled to drive away the utterly cruel Serb and communist Yugoslavia aggression. The victory against the cruel and genocidal aggressor was glorious for Croatians and it was to usher in democracy centred around all people in Croatia and beyond. How the Croatian nation has fared, without shedding communism and its mindset from all of its public administration, social and political milieus, as promised it would the very day of announcing secession from communist Yugoslavia in 1991, over the last 30 years is something we sadly and bitterly resent, knowing we cannot change that past, but the future is in our hands. Communist mindset, corrupt behaviour in public institutions and government still hold the reins that keep Croatia back from becoming a full democracy.

It is a nation’s duty to remember not only the heroism but also the suffering that fight for independence that were and are etched in the history of its existence and its hopes. And such memory is stronger when heroism and suffering are personified in people we live with, people we know and people we trust. And so, today, 24 February happens to be the birthday of twin brothers Zeljko Glasnovic and Davor Glasnovic, who had at time of raging war of aggression in Croatia come from Canada to lend a crucially helping hand in the creation of the independent state of Croatia on the battlefields and to take a heavy load of suffering through wounds and in Davor’s case – unspeakable torture as prisoner of Serb concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Today still, they serve as example of steadfast hope and determination that Croatia will one day be strong enough to decommunise; to rid itself of the insufferable canker that communism is.

I wish Zeljko and Davor Glasnovic a very happy birthday and know that many join me in these wishes.

Zeljko Glasnovic is a general of the Croatian Army (HV) and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and a politician.

Zeljko Glasnovic spent five years in the Canadian army, and a year and a half in the French Foreign Legion. In August 1991, he came to Croatia and joined the National Guard Corps. During the war he fought in Lika and on the Southern battlefield, and after the fall of Vukovar he moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina, to Tomislavgrad where he had to train new units.

In April 1992, he took part in the fighting in Kupres, where he was seriously wounded. He received a bullet near his heart, and it was said that he told his comrades-in-arms to leave him with a bomb he could use on himself should Serb enemy approach and start drawing. However, his comrades did not listen to him, so they dragged him across the snow-covered mountains to the Franciscan monastery on Šćit in Rama, from where he was transferred to Split Hospital. He spent two months in a hospital in Split, after which, still not recovered, he escaped and returned to the Kupres battlefield. In October 1992, he took over the King Tomislav Brigade. At that time, his twin brother Davor was captured in Kupres and tortured in Serbian camps.

He was first politically engaged in the November 2015 parliamentary elections. He is known for his firmly right-wing political views, especially in the area of the need to decommunise Croatia, and until July 2021 he was a member of the Croatian Parliament for the Croatian Diaspora.

Zeljko’s twin bother Davor Glasnovic also returned to Croatia from Canada to contribute to the defence of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the war of Serbian aggression. He was a member of the Special Unit of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia / SP GSHV Battalion Frankopan. On July 31, 1993, he was released after 13 months of torture in that Serb concentration camp, without one ear, in plaster, with a traumatised body that included having his knees drilled with electric drill, skin on his back torn away and an unbroken spirit for the freedom of Croatia.

Here is what Zeljko Glasnovic wrote about his brother Davor on July 31, 2021:

“On this day in 1993, after months of torture and Golgotha in a Serbian camp, my brother was released. The DORH (Public Attorney) never did anything against his torturers, nor were Croatian institutions interested in talking to him. They were not interested in where he was but instead, he was on the Serbian list of war crimes suspects in an area where he had never been during the period he was in their captivity.

While our defenders with fabricated indictments are sent to The Hague, executed, called war criminals, their dignity mocked, their victimhood belittled and forced to pay compensation to the families of killed aggressors who attacked our country, amnestied Chetniks and their families have special privileges, pensions, statuses, honour, reputation and even power. They are victims! This is a paradox that will last until lustration is implemented and final liberation of the Croatian home, which is still in the jaws of Yugozomboids, in which all defenders will be restored to their dignity and in which all victims will be able to tell their stories out loud, their abusers will be punished, and justice will at least partially be satisfied. For there will never be true justice for the fate of all victims, at least not in this world.”

God bless and Happy Birthday!
Ina Vukic