For Home Ready – Croatia, the War, and the Future

OPERATION FLASH 1st May 1995 Start Of Liberation Of Croatia From Serb Occupation And Brutal Aggression

May 1, 2020 by inavukic 7 Comments

“Defended and Created Croatia Without Zoran Milanovic
Keep and Love Croatia Without Zoran Milanovic!
Happy Operation Storm Croatia!”

Today, 1st May 2020, Croatia’s leftist president Zoran Milanovic walked out of a state ceremony in Okucani where memorial and wreath-laying was being held for the fallen in the military operation Flash that commenced the liberation of Croatian territory from Serb aggression and occupation. Milanovic walked away in protest after seeing one of the participants wearing a T-shirt displaying the salute “Za Dom Spremni” (For Home Ready). “This is a deliberate provocation,” Zoran Milanovic said. “I don’t want to be part of it.” Of course, Milanovic is bent on insisting that the salute was used by the Ustashe in WWII Croatia and comparing those who liberated Croatia in 1995, lost their lives for Croatia in the 1990’s wearing that same salute to WWII Ustashe. The fact that the salute is a legal insignia of a part of 1990’s Croatia’s defence formation means nothing to its current president Zoran Milanovic. He takes exceptional and sick pleasure it seems in comparing Croatia’s Homeland War veterans to WWII Ustashes!

What is that man doing in the office of the President?

Should the Parliament or the people not oust him – swiftly!?

Milanovic never fought for Croatia, he did not want a Croatian state, he was and is a communist, a Yugoslav, and is currently fighting tooth and nail it seems to avoid the inevitable destiny of his beloved communism finally crushing under the EU Parliament’s reckoning with it as a criminal regime. Croatian soldiers in 1990’s certainly did not belong to Milanovic’s echelon’s and he will it seems stop at nothing at continuing to vilify those who love Croatia! What a tragedy for Croatia! His protest today was noted by some of the world’s leading media such as New York Times and this was not to be kind to Croatia but to vilify and unjustly feed the communist myth about WWII Croatia!

Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Croatia, Croatian Homeland War, For Home Ready, liberation of Croatia, Operation Flash, Serb aggression against Croatia, Za Dom Spremni, Zoran Milanovic

Stand Down Croatia’s Ombudswoman

December 6, 2018 by inavukic 14 Comments

Lora Vidovic
Croatia’s Ombudswoman

In normal or functioning democracies the Ombudsman cannot investigate politics, let alone create its platforms or incite hatred based on politics and Croatia’s Ombudswoman Lora Vidovic is doing exactly that!

Croatia’s ombudswoman Lora Vidovic published a report on 19 November in which she accused a number of state institutions of endangering the fundamental values of the Constitution and allowing hate speech by being ineffective and tolerating revisionism and the use of explicit Nazi-era symbols

“Symbols and slogans of countries of the Axis forces are written or stencilled on bus stops, walls, stadiums and posters, but also on monuments to the NOB (National Liberation Struggle in World War Two),” said Lora Vidovic’s report.

Well, Ombudswoman – monuments to NOB need to be torn down. The communist Liberation struggle of WWII did not seek to liberate Croatia from oppressive Yugoslavia, it fought to keep Croatia within Yugoslavia!

Swastikas and ‘U’ symbols of the Ustasha can be seen throughout Croatia, as can the Ustasha salute ‘For the home, ready’. Those symbols also mark and accompany insulting commentaries on internet portals and social networks that foment humiliation and hate of the Roma, Serbs, Jews and others, Vidovic stated.

The Ombudswoman particularly highlighted the supposedly increasingly frequent forms of historical revisionism and its promoters:

“In the recent years, books and articles have been written and published, public forums held, documentaries filmed and TV shows broadcast denying or diminishing the criminal character of the NDH (Independent State of Croatia state in WW2). Such views are aired not only in nationalist media, but also in the official publications of the Catholic Church, and have found their way into the leading media outlets, including the public TV,” she said.

The focus of the document, however, is on the attitude of the authorities, mainly the government, led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union. She accuses the authorities of being ambivalent towards WWII.

“Given that the official reactions are inconsistent or often absent, the impression is that the authorities tacitly tolerate [the issue], which creates an atmosphere in the society that encourages the strengthening of revisionist attitudes,” said the report.

It is alarmingly concerning that Vidovic is still in her position as Ombudswoman in Croatia!

This odious, politically charged and offensive diatribe is actually directed against those who seek truth, not the government. It is designed to further silence those seeking processing of communist Yugoslavia crimes and continued corrupt practices in public administration. Vidovic politically charged report is an insult to democracy. Democracy seeks the truth, no matter how ugly or pretty it may be. It seeks to respect all manner of reaching the truth. Vidovic has made no attempt to process and give due weight to citizens’ complaints and pursuits to decommunise and democratise Croatia. Instead, she makes up stories and claims of neofascism, neonacism and hate speech supposedly being rife in the country. She has chosen to concern herself as ombudswoman to matters pertaining to the WWII Independent State of Croatia but not to those of communist Yugoslavia from which Croatia seceded in the early 1990’s! Ombudswoman Vidovic, evidently disregards the rights of all citizens to seek out the historical truth which impacts upon their lives.

From the Croatian ombudsman’s website we read that the ombudswoman’s role is to “… examine citizens’ complaints pertaining to the work of the state bodies, bodies of local and regional self-government units, legal persons vested with public authority and, in accordance with special laws, of the legal and natural persons.” She has done absolutely nothing, or very little indeed, about complaints regarding the lack of progress in cleaning the state-machinery from communist Yugoslavia public administration habits such as nepotism and corruption, lack of transparency in public administration, expenditure etc.

Her bias favouring the former communist regime is alarmingly stark and utterly unacceptable for a country that paid with rivers blood and obliterating destruction for a chance at democracy!

It is by no accident that soon after the Croatian Ombudswoman Lora Vidovic published this politically vitriolic study noticeably designed to aid the continued justification of unjustifiable communist crimes perpetrated against Croatians in former communist Yugoslavia during and post World War Two that a group of rowdy so-called antifascists on November 30th disrupted (fortunately unsuccessfully) at the City Library in the coastal city of Sibenik a promotion of Igor Vukic’s book ‘Labour Camp Jasenovac’. The book airs factual fresh findings on the World War II camp that throw a somewhat different light on that camp than the one concocted by the communists after WWII.

Instead of supporting revision of history that is based on facts, Vidovic calls it fascism.

“In recent years, books and articles have been written and published, public forums held, documentaries filmed and TV shows broadcast denying or diminishing the criminal character of the NDH (WWII Independent State of Croatia),” she added.

Her report says nothing about continued celebrations of the murderous communist Yugoslavia totalitarian regime! She claims that the government’s inaction on matters of WWII is not in line with the European Parliament Resolution on the Rise of Neo-Fascist Violence in Europe, which urges EU member states to take immediate measures to condemn and suppress all forms of hate speech and denial of the Holocaust, including the minimisation of Nazi crimes. Conveniently, Vidovic omitted to mention the EU resolutions and declarations for the condemnation of all totalitarian regimes, including the communist one – to which she evidently subscribes even in this day when Croatia’s past must be reconciled with facts in order to grow a healthy democracy!
Vidovic made a lame and twisted attempt to explain that her analysis of the current state in Croatia did not equate WWII Ustashe with the Homeland War veterans! “There are those who think that my analysis tramples upon the Homeland War and the bones of killed defenders. No! Homeland War was legitimate, liberating, and entirely different from Ustashe battles in the WWII Independent State of Croatia…today’s Croatia is different to the fascist Independent State of Croatia (WWII),” she stated.

One cannot but look with horror that Vidovic wants to criminalise the very muse that carried the Homeland War veterans through vicious aggression to independence – “For Home Ready” greeting!

Whether one accepts it on not, and taking aside the horrible crimes committed by all sides in WWII, the WWII Ustashe did take upon themselves the legitimate battles of liberating Croatia from the oppressive, dictatorial Serb-led Kingdom of Yugoslavia. That legitimacy stands on its own merit just as the Homeland War does.

A question begs an answer. How is the communist totalitarian regime to be condemned if its ugly truth is hidden and omitted from public dialogue that seeks progress? Regardless of Vidovic’s views, tearing apart the inherited communist regime’s processes still heavily present in public administration, such dialogue is not revisionism – it is a necessity of the truth. The office of the Ombudswoman should be the first institution in the land to respect and give due credence to both sides of such a public discourse and intentions. It is the last institution that should enter into the suffocation of one side of such a debate by conjuring up cruel innuendoes and utterly vicious claims.

The prerequisite for office of Ombudsman/woman should be objectivity and independence. Lora Vidovic displays neither! Democracy simply cannot grow in Croatia when its institution that’s supposed to “watch” over government or public administration is headed by a person (Vidovic) who seeks the outlawing of greetings such as “For Home(land) Ready” used by Croatians seeking independence during WWII and during 1990’s Homeland War as well as being prominent throughout Croatian history for centuries and fails to seek the outlawing of Yugoslavia’s “Red Star” and other symbols of communism, oppression and murder. This is blatant and purposeful denial of rights to all Croatians who fought, lost lives and continue the good fight for independence, self-preservation and democracy.

Living in democracies outside Croatia we have long known that the establishment and strengthening of institutional means for the defence of citizens against the State’s arbitrary power, and redress for the injustices of its action or omission, are closely related to the advent of democracy. The figure of the ombudsman is a paradigmatic example, understood as a guarantee of individual freedom, provider of justice or public advocate. By its nature, its powers and its action, from the beginning it played in democracies an essential role in promoting the culture of human rights and, hence, in consolidating the democratic rule of law that is in its genesis. Croatia’s Ombudswoman has taken upon herself to spread her “protective” wings over those nurturing the justification of communist crimes and corrupt public administration, while ignoring or persecuting those who pursue condemnation of those crimes and who pursue advancement of democratic processes in public administration.

It is true that today thousands and thousands of Croatian men and women still feel the pain of wounds resulting from the violent and inhuman Serb aggression when Croatia sought independence from communist Yugoslavia. Human rights institutions, such as Ombudsman, have not developed strategies and actions that mitigate the adverse effects of this terrible past, taking into account the respect for historical memory, thus bequeathing a whole perspective of future. Established trust between citizens and the State is undoubtedly one of the fundamental democratic community pillars. Instead of respecting, promoting and defending the most basic of human rights – the right to truth – without compromise, Vidovic has decided to compromise the truth, even to conceal it or make up a truth. She attacks individual incidents in “social media” or other media that lend themselves to keeping the ugly communist truth displayed, seeking lustration and cleaning up Croatia from detrimental communist Yugoslavia heritage in public administration and life!

How can anyone in Croatia bear now to put their hands up and say something is wrong and senior people are doing the wrong thing if this is what happens to those who seek decommunisation. Vidovic would simply label them as fascists! She is not the only one, regretfully! Achieving full democracy and human rights remains a battle pursued only by the brave ones, despite and in spite of the Lora Vidovic’s of this world. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: communist crimes, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, Croatian Homeland War, decommunisation, For Home Ready, Lora Vidovic, Ombudsman, suffocating truth, Ustasha, Za Dom Spremni

The Killing of “For Home And Country”

March 6, 2018 by inavukic 19 Comments

HOS Croatian defence forces formation insignia with “For Home Ready” slogan

The pursuits of “forget the past, turn to the future” within Croatia’s halls of power have for at least two decades echoed ad nauseam. This past particularly being that of WWII past and post-WWII past – the conflicting coexistence of independent Croatia fighters (Ustase) and those who fought to keep Croatia as part of Yugoslavia (Communists). One would have thought that the 2017 creation of the Council for Dealing with Consequences of the Rule of Non-Democratic Regimes, sparked into being by the politically leftist or pro-communist driven controversy of the slogan “Za Dom Spremni” (For Homeland Ready) behind which slogan stood all fighters for Croatian independence, old and new, would actually deviate potential political earthquakes from political to historical level.

No such fortune in Croatia – regretfully.

The Council was created to work out a response to the question of how to deal with the enduring legacy of Croatia’s 20th Century non-democratic regimes: the WWII Ustasa movement with its legacy, albeit unrealised on a lasting level, of Independent State of Croatia, NDH, and socialist Yugoslavia, led by the League of Communists.

“The starting point is a clean break from all totalitarianism,” said Andrej Plenkovic, the prime minister in Croatia’s centre-right government said then in March 2017.

Those that want Croatia to become a truly functional democratic state that has well and truly rid itself of persistent and utterly damaging communist mindset rightly expected that the year zero of Croatian modern state, will be and remain the beginning of the Homeland war (1990).

But, such deserved expectations have proven to be painfully in vain. The Council has last week made recommendations for legal amendments that the salute “For Home Ready” (Za Dom Spremni) be made illegal but to allow the exceptional use of the ‘Za dom spremni’ when for instance marking anniversaries of 1990’s military units who used that slogan as part of their insignia during the Homeland War.

The Council failed to make recommendations that the communist Red Star be banned!

The current war for memory is a war for a dominant reading of the past – the tip of a very large iceberg, that has been standing in the way of Croatian “national reconciliation”. Franjo Tudjman, Croatia’s first president, juggled between the Red and the Black past of the WWII Croatia mobilising popular support for the independence from Yugoslavia. Today, Tudjman’s HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union Party) and its political leadership are pretending to seek heritagisation of his legacy, and emulate his methods in using the present to pacify the tensions from the past. So far, that unifying force that prevented further excursions into the past was a societal consensus on the Homeland war (1991-1995). Next to that, the EU future of the country – backed by all major political parties – was meant to bring Croatia closer to the West, and farther from the Balkans. Yet, after EU accession the country struggles in finding its own place in the family of European peoples, but also in leaving the past behind.

It fought a bloody defence from Serb/communist Yugoslavia aggression in early 19990’s, in Homeland War to leave the past behind and yet the powers that be keep churning up new ways to keep the past alive.

The Council’s failure to address the Red Star, communist totalitarian regime’s insignia in the same way as it treated the WWII salute used by the NDH devotees spells unrest and strangles any chance of true progress with Croatian national state reconciliation. It failed miserably at setting Croatia’s modern history right. It failed to direct the torchlight of a democratic future Croats fought for in 1990’s against communists and communist Yugoslavia aggression.

It failed to recognise and acknowledge the plight of the massive Croatian diaspora for true freedom from communist totalitarianism, which drove them away from Croatia post-WWII!

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic first mentioned setting up the Council for Dealing with Consequences of the Rule of Non-Democratic Regimes (totalitarian regimes) in December 2016 during a row over a plaque with ‘Za dom spremni’ installed in Jasenovac as a mark of the area where where a number of Croatian fighters were brutally murdered by the Serb aggressor in early 1990’s, situated near the site of the WWII concentration camp, where Jews, Serbs, Roma and Croatian anti-fascists were killed between 1941 and 1945.

Andrej Plenkovic made no mention at the time of the even more horrific and numerous communist crimes during the era and and the need to deal with those. That certainly send uneasy, fretting messages to all who had hoped that the Council would deal equally with the insignia and symbols of both WWII NDH and communist Yugoslavia.

They were right to fret for last week’s decision by the Council stinks with communist power still on the loose in Croatia.

Former communists did not want an independent Croatia, did not fight for it in any decisive or significant way but usurped the victory of others over communism to hold onto the idea that communism was somehow responsible for Croatia’s freedom and democracy! A revolting state of affairs. Utterly disregarding the horrors of the communist totalitarian regime.

After the final meeting of the Council last Wednesday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic held a press conference along with the president of the council, Zvonko Kusic, who is also the president of Croatian Academy Sciences and Arts.

“Since the issue of the work of this Council was related to the concrete case of the HOS plaque, it’s clear… that this chant on that plaque is contrary to the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, there is no dilemma there. But [Kusic] also acknowledged the fact that under strictly prescribed conditions it could be used in exceptional situations,” Plenkovic said, completely bypassing the fact that in announcing the formation of the Council in March 2017 an expectation was created to deal with symbolism of totalitarian regimes in general, not just the HOS (Croatian defence forces) memorial plaque in Jasenovac.

He rejected journalists’ suggestions that the government is not condemning the legacy of the Ustasa regime, but added that this refers to “a completely different context” – the use of the chant by the HOS in the 1990s war.

“‘Za dom spremni’ on the HOS’s coat of arms can be used only exceptionally, only in relation to those situations, sites or cemeteries, where HOS members were killed. This permission does not change the conclusion that the slogan is unconstitutional,” Kusic said.

After Plenkovic’s comment in March 2017 that the point of establishing the Council was to make “a clean break from all totalitarianism”, media have speculated about whether it would suggest a ban on both ‘Za dom spremni’ and the Communist red star, which was used by the Yugoslav anti-fascist Partisans and the Yugoslav People’s Army.

The European Court of Human Rights in 2008 ruled in favour of a Hungarian politician, Attila Vajnai, who was handcuffed and sentenced to a year’s parole in 2003 for wearing a red star, saying the ban violated his freedom of expression.

The ECHR established that the red star is still a symbol of the international workers’ movement and the fight for a more just society, as well as a legitimate symbol of the left that it used by some political parties in Europe.

Kusic also said on Wednesday that the red star and other symbols of Communism carry both positive and negative connotations, and that the link to the anti-fascist struggle is “undisputable”, but lawmakers can decide if some Communist symbols incite violence or hatred.

But Kusic conveniently disregarded the 2012 Knin, Croatia, court decision that ruled that the salutation “Za Dom Spremni” (For Home – Ready) has been known throughout the whole of the Croatian history, from the times of Nikola Subic Zrinski (1556 – 1566), and as such it does not signify any so-called “Ustashe attribute” with which it is burdened.

No doubt about it – lustration at all levels is called for. Otherwise not only will love for free Croatia perish completely under the communist thumb but with it all dignity for the humanness and justice in the “For Home and Country” mindset known and cherished always by those of the West whose democracies have developed exactly because of it. Ina Vukic