Croatian Patriots Celebrate 100th Anniversary of Franjo Tudjman’s Birth And Kevin Spacey as Tudjman In New Historical Documentary Film

Franjo Tudjman the First President of Independent Croatia (L), Kevin Spacey as Tudjman in “Once Upon a Time in Croatia” historical documentary film 2022 (R)

The meaning of life for Croats today, on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Franjo Tudjman, we look and see his idea for us, and that is the sovereignty of the Croatian state and the sovereignty of the Croatian people. The Croatian people have until 1990 lived in communities with other nations for over 800 years, not by their own choice but by the violence of foreigners, but there has always in those centuries been a desire to establish a nation state. It was Dr. Franjo Tudjman who, like no other leader before him, succeeded in making this desire a reality as the bipolar political world of communist Yugoslavia collapsed. He succeeded largely because he knew how strongly Croatian emigration breathed with the idea of Croatian freedom, that he turned to us for help in the diaspora, that he believed in our pure love for a free homeland and for a free Croatian people, that he unconditionally gained our trust in him and in his work for Croatia and the Croats! 

For the sovereignty of the Croatian state and the Croatian people, the Croatian diaspora was in crucial times (late 1980’s and 1990’s) inseparable from Franjo Tudjman.

Villains and venomous people often say that Croatia’s freedom and independence would have come by itself, because they must in some way try to justify their own non-commitment to the fight for independence. However, all important research on this topic, all the facts and the whole truth show how very much Tudjman’s political considerations have led to the Republic of Croatia today being a country with its own territorial integrity and a respected member of the international community. Everything that happened in the 1990s under the leadership of the first Croatian President Franjo Tudjman was the basis for everything that the Croatian people proudly inherited wherever they lived and for achieving Croatia’s national strategic goals, i.e., independence and partnership membership in Euro-Atlantic integration.

Today, 14 May 2022, it is very appropriate to look at Franjo Tudjman and his scientific works, his activities, his behaviour, his political development throughout his life and we see that he has always consistently and constantly dealt with key issues in the Croatian people. His solidarity with the idea of ​​a sovereign Croatian people has been present since his youth in the 1950s. In the 1990s, he turned his idea into a reality of happiness and joy and the merits for and of all of us, except the communists or operatives of the former communist Yugoslavia.

His speech on May 30, 1990, at the inaugural session of the Croatian Parliament was a recipe and instruction on what should be done to achieve an independent and sovereign Croatian state in every sense and get rid of communism and communist achievements rooted in the people and authorities under the coercion of the totalitarian regime of the former Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, as soon as Tudjman passed away in 1999, the former communists muscled themselves into the Croatian government and political leadership, again, belittling the Homeland War and the 1990’s fight against communist Yugoslavia and the aggressor Serbs. In these moves, Croatian emigrants became forcibly pushed away from their homeland just as they were during communist Yugoslavia, forcibly, and Croatian diplomacy largely ignored and belittled key Croatians in the diaspora who, together with homeland Croatia, built and created an independent Croatia.

The latter communist weaving in the leadership of Croatia continues to this day. When it comes to democratic elections and voting it seems that the muscle of former communists in Croatia is stronger than that of those who fought for it and lost blood for it! To change this in future more patriots must turn up for voting at general elections. The truth is that the make-up and mask the Croatian authorities wear is to try to show that they are cooperating with the diaspora and thus maintain a false impression of cooperation with the emigrants and the diaspora. When it comes to all the Croatian governments since year 2000 there is no relationship of real cooperation or reciprocal respect because the Croatian governments have not wanted that in the fullest meaning of the word and concept. After all the diaspora was and is overwhelmingly anti-communist and those in government are overwhelmingly descendants of communist stock – born and bred communist one might say.

Former communists and their squadrons know very well that if lustration happened many of them from the Croatian authorities would have been booted out from their powerful positions had Tudjman lived longer, so even today those who criticize them and want them out of power are suppressed and oppressed and intimidated. I know that personally and I’m sure of it. Late one night in June 1995, when Dr. Franjo Tudjman was visiting Australia, we met and talked about the transition to democracy from communism. Tudjman told me these words: “Ina, we have a lot to clean up from the ranks of the authorities once this war is over and the whole territory of Croatia is liberated, then lustration will follow …” He passed away in 1999, unfortunately, from serious illness about a year after the complete liberation of Croatia from the Serbian occupation in 1998! And after Tudjman’s death, nothing could be expected from Stjepan Mesic and Ivica Racan except the anti-Croatian equating of the victim with the aggressor, the false criminalisation of the Homeland War and slanderous propaganda against Croats wanting nothing to do with communist Yugoslavia!

Historian Josip Mihaljevic, a participant in the recent academic conference in Zagreb on May 5, 2022, in honour of the 100th anniversary of Tudjman’s birth, pointed out that the Croatian reform movement began to develop in the 1960s and culminated in 1971 with the Croatian Spring and the lobby to redefine Croatia’s and Croats’ position within Yugoslavia.

“Recently available sources of the Yugoslav security intelligence services, primarily Josip Broz Tito’s chief intelligence officer Ivan Miskovic,” Mihaljević said, “show that Franjo Tudjman and Veceslav Holjevac are the founders of the entire Croatian national movement (of 20th century).”

Croatian patriotic emigrants, the Croatian diaspora was the dominant element of victory in the Homeland War and in the creation of an independent Republic of Croatia because Franjo Tudjman wanted so, knowing that without us from the diaspora nothing would come out of the desire for an independent Croatia. And that is why we are eternally grateful to him, and the thanks comes from all of us living in someone else’s world in which we can proudly keep our heads up high because of Tudjman!

Tudjman was very interested in Croats from exile and emigration and considered Croatia’s attitude towards Croats abroad an important political issue, key to the success of Croatia’s millennial dream. The ties between Franjo Tudjman and the Croats who fled communist Yugoslavia after World War Two began in 1966 with his sabbatical visit to the United States. There, as a member of the Executive Board of the Croatian Heritage Foundation, he met with some of the most prominent Croatian emigrants, intellectuals, who lived and worked in the United States. These meetings were of an official nature related to the maintenance of Croatian culture in the diaspora and the like and had no political character, but later served the communist regime to prosecute Tudjman for allegedly plotting to overthrow communist Yugoslavia along with Croatian political emigrants (as mentioned in the book “Tudjman’s First Political Biography” James Sadkovich, 2010 on page 192). Tudjman’s further ties and contacts with Croats in exile and patriotic émigrés continued in the 1970s, when Tudjman, as a political dissident, was prevented from public activities and publishing in communist Yugoslavia.

With the help of a circle of intellectuals gathered around the Croatian emigrant newspaper Poruka slobodne Hrvatske (Free Croatia’s Message), Tudjman illegally (because his passport was confiscated immediately after the Croatian Spring of 1971) visited Sweden and Germany in 1977, where he met with Croatian politicians and activists in exile. After his passport was returned to him in 1987, Tudjman travelled to Canada the same year, where he lectured to emigrated Croats and met with representatives of emigrant organisations. Tudjman visited North America again in 1988 and held a series of lectures and meetings with Croatian emigrants in Canada and the United States. In Autumn of 1988, Tudjman visited Germany, where he also gave a series of lectures to expatriate Croats. A number of patriotic Croats living in South America and Australia in those years also joined Tudjman’s lectures and talks while in Canada and the United States, and the weekly newspapers “Hrvatski vjesnik” (Croatian Herald) from Melbourne Australia and “Spremnost” (Readiness) from Sydney stood out in those times of communist bans and censorship as media sources of information and thoughts of Franjo Tudjman and his associates who announced a new hope and a new possibility and the final liberation of Croatia from communist Yugoslavia.

At the beginning of 1989, a group of Croatian dissidents decided to launch an initiative to establish a democratic political party, a people’s movement that would later be called the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). This gathering, like all meetings regarding the creation of an independent Croatia at the time, was held in secret, usually in private cottages, away from the communist police. The support and share of Croat emigrants were fiercely and crucially present in this initiative. At the end of January and the beginning of February 1989, Tudjman wrote the Preliminary Draft of the Program Basis of the Croatian Democratic Union, in which he presented his views on the attitude towards Croatian emigrants. The HDZ’s program framework states that the Croatian people have special reasons for concern, but also because their historical misfortunes have scattered about a third of their national identity on all continents of the world. The continuation of this document emphasises that further disintegration should be prevented, and the return and connection with the homeland of such many emigrants that only a few nations have should be encouraged.

In June 1989, at the Jarun, Zagreb, the founding assembly of the Croatian Democratic Party (HDZ) elected Franjo Tudjman as the party’s first president. Tudjman’s proposal for the HDZ Program Declaration was also accepted, which included the issue of attitudes towards Croatian emigrants. The founding assembly was attended by many prominent emigrants who personally witnessed this huge step towards Croatian independence and on their return to the countries in which they lived began a movement of unprecedented masses of Croats and expatriates rushing to help in every sense and need to realise Tudjman’s or Croatian dream. So, soon after the founding of the HDZ, party branches began to form among Croatian emigrants. The first organisation of the HDZ in the diaspora was founded on July 9, 1989 in Zurich, Switzerland. On the occasion of Tudjman’s arrival at the Slavic Congress in Chicago in November 1989, HDZ branches were established in 16 cities on the North American continent. In the autumn of 1989, the first branches of HDZ were established in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and at the same time a significant number of party branches were formed in Australia. By establishing branches in all countries of the world inhabited by Croatian emigrants, HDZ had formed itself as a kind of global or planetary Croatian national movement to which most of us have contributed by voluntary work, sacrifice and/or financial generosity. Here, in Australia, we have dozens of Croats who outstandingly advocated for an independent and sovereign Croatia, a sovereign Croatian people, almost superhumanly advocated for a free homeland, and we have thousands and thousands of Croats who personally helped and contributed to the creation of an independent Croatian state and firm encouragement of Franjo Tudjman to proceed.

And for that reason, thousands upon thousands of us Croatian patriots in Australia say loudly today: happy 100th birthday, Franjo Tudjman! You still live in our hearts. Thank you!

Personally, I am glad that today we are among the first people living outside Croatia to see a new film by director Jakov Sedlar “Once Upon a Time in Croatia” in which the role of Franjo Tudjman is played by world-famous and award-winning actor Kevin Spacey. The world premiere of this film took place in Zagreb on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. This film is an amazing display and portrayal of Franjo Tudjman’s thinking and aspirations, vision, and circumstances of creating an independent Croatia and was successfully made despite the boycott and lack of funding by Croatian state institutions. This latter fact is added to the list of destructive efforts and moves of former communists and / or their children and grandchildren to trample and belittle everything we all fought for together, without them, in the 1990s. They know in their grumpiness and perversion that no one before Franjo Tudjman has done more than him for the lasting and world-recognised independence of Croatia! And that is why they are boycotting this film about him. And the rest of us? We shout eternal glory to Franjo Tudjman and thank him! Ina Vukic

Remember The Month of September – For Croatia!

 

While Australian Croatians eagerly await in September the visit from Croatia of several outstanding people in the long-drawn and painful battles for free and democratic Croatia it is to be noted, with profound sadness but also with pride for the courage of Croatian people, that the month of September is marked by fierce battles against the Serb and Yugoslav Army aggressors for freedom and democracy. The aptly named tour of Australia “Croatia Uncensored” is organised by the Association “Croatian Diasporan Voice” and with the collaboration of various Croatian Community Organisations across Australia the tour has all the hallmarks of leaving a decisive footprint on the stage of toilsome efforts still in need of unwavering Croatian people’s dedication, both in Croatia and in the diaspora, if Croatia is to become a just, successful and free of communist heritage country for which rivers of Croatian blood were spilled during the 1990’s war.

Visiting Australia from Croatia in September will be Croatia and worldwide acclaimed Croatian patriots and tireless advocates for a free and truly democratic Croatia from the word “go”. They are retired Croatian Army and Croatian Defence Council general Zeljko Glasnovic, Member of the Croatian Parliament for the Croatian Diaspora, Dr. Tomislav Sunic, author, political commentator, former California State University professor and former diplomat of the Republic of Croatia, Dr. Josip Jurcevic, acclaimed historian, University Professor in Croatia and author, Igor Vukic, political scientist and scientific researcher into the factual truth of WWII Jasenovac camp and Jakov Sedlar, acclaimed film director who will, during this visit to Australia, hold a World Pre-premiere of his new movie “1918-2018: Hundred Years of Serbian Terror in Croatia (From Karadjordjevic and Pribcevic to Vucic and Pupovac)”.

As significant for the life of progress in achieving a truly functional, free of communist mindset, democracy in Croatia this Australian tour is, it is also a moment that calls upon us all who are of Croatian heritage, especially, to remember the month of September that was when Croatia was burning, ethnically cleansed of Croats and non-Serbs, pillaged and raped – was being murdered and massacred!

It is important to remember the aggressor’s bloody threats and deeds but especially it is important to remember the extraordinary courage and dedication to freedom demonstrated by Croats in the Homeland and in the Diaspora at the time. Here are some of the events that ensued during the month of September as the war of aggression forced Croats into self-preservation captivity.

On 14th September 1991 Marko Babic destroyed 5 Yugoslav Army tanks on Trpinjska Street in Vukovar. During that same month this Croatian veteran lost his parents, who were taken from Vukovar by the Serb aggressor to Bobota village and murdered.

At the same time, as Babic was destroying the aggressor’s tanks and armoured vehicles 150,000 Croats from Vukovar were lined up on Trpinjska Street for forced deportation. In shock, the world watched this tragedy unfolding in the heart of Europe.

The 16th and the 23rd of September 1991 saw an eight-day battle (called the September War) for the town of Sibenik. This was an exceptionally important battle because had the aggressor taken the Sibenik bridge or any other spot along the Adriatic Highway, South Croatia would have ended up torn into several smaller or larger pockets. The public had already got to know the evil Serb leader Ratko Mladic (currently serving ICTY life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes…) who at that time led the 9th Yugoslav Army Corpus. The September War is particularly remembered by the downing of two Jugoslav Army aircraft, which was accompanied by the well-known cry from Croatian forces “Both, both, both have fallen!” (“Obadva, obadva, oba su pala!”). The courage of the Croatian defenders in Sibenik was so enormous and strong that the Serb aggressors were forced to withdraw after eight days of their aggression. This was the first of the great Croatian victories recorded in the Homeland War.

11 Croats killed and 50 wounded in Nova Gradiska in September 1991. The 21st of September 1991 was the saddest day of the war for people of Nova Gradiska. Yugoslav Army airplanes first attacked the toll booths at the highway and then destroyed the town, aiming at vital objects, attempting to break and intimidate all Croatian patriots, civilians and defenders but also to murder all the love and loyalty of the Croatian people for Croatia. They did not succeed.

End of September 1991 saw the evacuation of the hospital in Pakrac – threat to life was immense, Croatian efforts to save lives were remarkable, yet another tragedy – prevented; in the face of so much destruction and civilian lives that had already been lost in Pakrac.

September 1991 saw the beautiful town on Dubrovnik surrounded from the sea by enemy blockades that ended up in the siege of Dubrovnik and the later attempts to destroy it. The siege resulted in the deaths of 194 Croatian military personnel, as well as 88 Croatian civilians.

The town of Drnis and many other Croatian towns saw Croats leaving their towns and villages, being displaced and banished from their homes in September 1991. On 14th September 1991 Yugoslav Army attacked the town of Drnis. On the 16th the Croatian authorities released danger warnings to all Drnis and its surrounding villages and areas. Under that terrible attack and its consequent fear for life the Croatian people of Drnis – the elderly, women, children, the sick… left their homes in search for safer places that could be found in Croatia at that time. There weren’t many!

September 1991 also saw the so-called “Battle for Army Barracks” (Yugoslav Army barracks) when for the first time Croatian forces finally got their hands on some heavy weaponry.

Defending Croatia and its ideals and pursuits for democracy from the communist Yugoslavia might and mindset is far from over. Much work and dedication is still needed to complete the task set during the 1990’s Homeland War.

If you are in Australia between the 14th and the 24th of September 2018 you may wish to join the “Croatian Uncensored” tour and contribute to unity and support. Please visit the http://www.glashrvatske.com.au for tour details. Ina Vukic

Hope Needs Your Help – Fundraising To Prevent Croatian Veteran Suicides

Croatian movie director and producer Jakov Sedlar has for several months now been on the trail of securing funds for the production of feature movie “2761” – a movie about Croatian Homeland War veteran suicides. It’s a tragic story that emerged from 2761 personal stories and the movie aims to influence prevention of suicides especially among those experiencing the personal dilemma whether to commit suicide or not, not to kill themselves. It’s a tragic story not only because of the number of veterans who have committed suicide but also because of 156 veteran wives and 52 children who have also taken their own lives. That is a dreadful story. On reflecting upon the plans for the movie Sedlar said on Croatian TV in March 2017:

I think we have a responsibility towards our country and towards our people to undertake certain things about which we must talk … if we won’t who else will talk about these things.

Jakov Sedlar
Croatian movie director and producer

Valentin Perkovic, a member of the leadership team of “Croatian Diasporan Voice” (Glas hrvatske diaspore), to which I myself proudly belong, has started a “Gofundme” online fundraising campaign with view to raise funds that would make up the shortfall needed to complete the movie project. I look forward to seeing as many as possible people, especially those of Croatian heritage, across the world joining this worthy cause with their donations.

The link to the fundraising page is:

https://www.gofundme.com/jakov-sedlars-2761

That’s the number of Croatian war veterans – branitelji – that have taken their own lives since the Homeland war. This tragedy has come about mainly due to the consequences of PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A lot of them have felt marginalised in society very similar to the Vietnam War vets of the seventies.

Croatian movie director and producer Jakov Sedlar famous for brilliant films like “Gospa”, “Četverored” and documentaries on people like Croatia’s own football legend Joe Simunic.

We understand that one film cannot stop this completely but even if it stops one person from taking their own life it will be worth all the money and effort. This feature film will be made up of 45 of the best Croatian actors and filming will start in January 2018. The whole project comes at a cost of $900,000 and there is a shortfall of $190,000. The donators’ names will be shown in the credits at the end of the film. Please give what you can as every dollar counts.” Quotes from Gofundme fundraising page.

 

 

Amidst soaring concern about veteran suicide, lack of coordination, rising dissatisfaction and criticism about the inadequate government-backed and government organised supports for veterans suffering PTSD communities of veterans in Croatia and their supporters are self-organising, and Croatian Diasporan Voice as an organisation outside Croatia is a supporter as are numbers of others.

While helping a suicidal person can be a difficult process, remember that the assistance we all provide could save someone’s life. The movie “2761” is one of many ways of helping prevent suicide and this manner of help via donating funds towards the production of the movie is a role many of us can play.

Scientific research looking specifically at combat-related PTSD in Vietnam era Veterans suggests that the most significant predictor of both suicide attempts and preoccupation with suicide are combat-related emotions that creep into the mind and heart. Many Veterans experience highly intrusive thoughts and extreme emotions about acts seen committed during times of war. These thoughts can often overpower the emotional coping capacities of Veterans. The same applies to the veterans of Croatian Homeland War as its course and foundations have often been interpreted, especially by former communists in Croatia who did not want an independent Croatia, in the same ways as those of the Vietnam War; all the more reason for us to stand behind and support with donations the making of “2761” movie. Thank you – all! Ina Vukic

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