Julienne Busic – Croatia, the War, and the Future

September 1976 Hijacking of TWA Plane – A Detailed Reconstruction of the Evening in Which the Whole World Learned About Croatia’s Suffering Under Communist Yugoslavia

July 23, 2022 by inavukic 13 Comments

_{From left to right: Zvonko Busic, Marko Vlasic, Petar Matanic, Frane Pesut and Julienne Busic after arrest at Paris Airport. There are detectives behind them. Photo: The New York Times, September 13, 1976. | Photo: New York Times/archive}

Zvonko Busic believed that good things should be shared with everyone. What he lived, worked for and believed in, what he sacrificed for, is presented in his book “All Visible Things”, which is available on Amazon. From now on, we are happy to inform you, you will be able to have access to this part of Croatian history every other Wednesday and print it out free of charge, in Croatian and English, on the dijaspora.hr portal. Chapter by chapter, drop of blood by drop of blood, and life day by day in 33 parts – with only one goal! He will live on…

“The Hijacking

After the decision was made, I immediately began preparations. I started studying necessary materials, locating appropriate collaborators, and planned a meeting with Bruno to discuss the Declaration I intended to have printed in newspapers and thrown from the plane. The main handbook for making the bomb was the then popular ‘Anarchist’s Cookbook’. Julie was later accused of having torn pages out of this book in the library, which really upset and angered her, since she comes from a family of book lovers who would consider that an unforgivable sacrilege. She firmly insisted that all she did was photocopy the pages, not tear them out, although it was a totally insignificant point in the trial.

I studied airplanes as well. The plane, I believed, had to be appropriate for what I intended. The choice fell on the Boeing 727. The traditional characteristics one looks for in a plane – speed, size, type, and power of the motor – were not the most critical. What was important was that the plane had double doors, so that the first door could be opened from the inside of the plane, then closed, and then the second door opened, so that the well-known suction phenomenon could not occur, drawing everything and everyone out of the plane. This double-door element was used by the famous American robber and blackmailer, D. B. Cooper. After he got the money and released the passengers, he ordered the crew to take off and wait for further instructions. He also said nobody was allowed to leave the cabin without his permission, and he would kill the first one who dared. After they waited quite a while for instructions about where to fly, one of the stewardesses took a risk and entered the passenger seating area. But it was totally empty, although the doors and windows were firmly closed. It turns out Cooper had used the advantage of the double doors. He went into the middle door space, then closed the first door, opened the second and parachuted out. With the money! He was never caught.

I was not interested in money, but the double doors seemed ideal to me for throwing leaflets. That is why I chose the Boeing 727. I was fortunate enough to meet a stewardess who had been on that flight with D. B. Cooper. She told me in great detail how the entire action unfolded, never suspecting the source of my interest for Cooper and the Boeing 727. The first blow to my plan took place when I learned from the pilot, after I had taken control of our plane, that after the Cooper events, the doors were altered on that type of plane. Leaflets could no longer be thrown from the plane. What’s more, because of the possible danger that the leaflets could be sucked into the motor, they could not be thrown in any other way, either. So, we had to put a second plane in the air in Montreal. From there we then headed for Europe.

I did need a certain amount of money for the action I had planned. This was fairly simple; a close friend gave me 10,000 dollars without my having to explain any details about the action. He had complete trust in me, and I felt information should be given out sparingly even to the participants in the action. It was enough for them to know the basic plan; the details were known only to me. Julie knew the most, but even she did not know there was a real bomb in the locker of the train station. Frane Pesut, one of the participants, said he was ready to help Croatia in any way without knowing the details. Slobodan Vlasic also knew about the action in greater detail, but did not know the explosive was fake. He was the most knowledgeable in assembling explosives, so I gave him the task of assembling all the different parts of the alleged ‘bomb’ in the plane’s bathroom, which he did, thinking it was real. Frane’s finger even turned blue from holding the switch for thirty-two hours!

Why did I not tell them everything? First, I knew we were all going to prison, since we planned to surrender after the media printed the leaflets and threw them over certain cities. This surrender was supposed to be one of the key elements of the action. After our surrender and after the passengers had spoken, we hoped, given the humaneness of our behavior toward them, that the whole world would know of the dictatorship in Croatia and nobody would be able to say that we, fighters for Croatian freedom, acted like cold-blooded terrorists, although the hijacking itself was a drastic action. I thought my co-defendants would have an easier defense after the surrender and receive a lesser sentence the less they knew of my intentions. Second, I wanted to have the whole action under control. I was afraid that if there had been real explosives in the plane, some unforeseen circumstance could lead to an accident and harm innocent victims. This was out of the question! On the other hand, if it was known the explosives were not real, something could also go wrong. One of us could expose this through our behavior, get panicky or something. Third, why hide it? At that time, I was quite paranoid, like most political emigrants. The Yugoslav Secret Service harassed us, spied on us, killed us, infiltrated into our ranks. Therefore, a secret you haven’t shared with anyone remains yours alone and you are its master; otherwise, it controls you.

The preparations went according to plan. In the spring, Julie and I traveled to Europe to meet with Bruno. He accepted the task of writing The Call for Dignity and Freedom. Julie hoped that Bruno, who was older and more mature, would maybe talk me out of the action. Of course, that did not happen. We spent most of our time at the Boden Lake. Julie had even gone to Herzegovina. It presented a certain risk, but she as an American could afford it. That June in 1976 was the last time I saw Bruno. They murdered him two years later when I was already in prison serving a life sentence.

Julie typed the leaflet text on a friend’s typewriter, Marijan Gabelica. I knew the police would investigate this so I did not attempt to hide this fact. It is true that Gabelica was the best defense. Before launching the action, we stopped at his place and returned the typewriter. When the police questioned me, I told them whose typewriter it had been. Gabelica really had no idea why I needed the typewriter. And since he didn’t know, they were unable to charge him with anything.

We bought the pots in a market and wrapped them up as gifts before going to the airport. We said we were going to a friend’s wedding. The metal detectors could not detect the clay, and even if they had found it in a baggage search, they would not have suspected anything. It might have seemed bizarre that I was carrying clay with me, but they would not have considered it a dangerous substance. Regardless of all my security measures, I still was unsure whether I was being followed or under suspicion, so I spent the day and night before the action bar hopping so I’d be seen ‘drinking’, and finally went to bed at dawn. Just in case I was being followed, I was sure nobody in his right mind would think that I could have performed such an action as a hijacking after such a ‘wild’ night.

The whole action was based upon a very nuanced psychological exercise. For more than thirty hours we were in absolute control of the situation in the plane, as well as holding several governments at bay, throwing leaflets, and dictating the printing of the leaflets in leading world media while flying over two continents – all without so much as a nail file in our pockets. If the fatal case with Officer Murray had not occurred, it would have been the most successful and unblemished hijacking in history. As it was, it left within me and the others a bitter taste, a deep regret and remorse that will follow us all our days.

Well-intentioned people have often asked me why I had to leave explosives in the locker at the train station. It seemed to them a senseless and unnecessary addition to a well thought-out plan. But this is not so. The explosives in the locker were every bit as important a part of the plan as the clay in the pots. It was intended to give credibility to my negotiations with the American authorities, the agents, and the police. The pots we carried with us were identical to the pot left in the locker, except that in ours there was clay, and in the other real explosives. Without this bomb, someone might believe we were bluffing. Besides that, it was my intention in the beginning to present ourselves as dangerous terrorists not to be fooled with, because that was the only way our demands would be met. Therefore, the bomb was an important element in the overall plan.

However, it is difficult to live with the knowledge that an innocent person died as a collateral victim of an idealistic action, for which he had no idea or interest. The issue of accidental, innocent victims is one that is always considered when an action with dangerous elements is undertaken. And I gave the most thought of all in my planning to this aspect of the action. That is why, after all, the hijacking took place without using any weapons whatsoever. But a tragedy happened where it was least expected, where there was not, it seemed, even a theoretical chance that things would go wrong.

I have already written about how I am almost positive that certain agencies were involved in the death of Officer Murray. The hijacking surprised both Americans and the Yugoslav Secret Police, and it would be difficult to prove that there was some kind of agreement between the two to compromise the action. But I am convinced there was. I claim this not to free myself from guilt. Guilt is above all a moral category. I have absolved the legal, judicial aspect of guilt through my 32 year-long imprisonment that I served longer than countless murderers, rapists, and career criminals. The moral aspect of my guilt is left to my own conscience and to the Almighty, regardless of whether Murray’s death was caused by the negligence of those who detonated the bomb, or a diversion by certain intelligence agencies. I placed the explosives in the locker and I carry guilt for the death they caused, regardless of what happened after their removal to the detonation site four hours later.

So, I am not trying to absolve myself from guilt by means of some later reconstruction, but I truly believe that there was involvement by people who wanted at all costs to compromise the entire action. There seemed to be considerable concern and uneasiness among the American agencies as well. Several New York Times articles (September 12 and 14, 1976), only days after the hijacking, wrote of the ‘painstaking evaluations’ undertaken by the head of the bomb section in the wake of the ‘first such fatality in 37 years’. The department head acknowledged that “none of these experts wore protective gear when they approached the device… as they were required to under police regulations”, including Officer Murray, who was described as ‘a gung ho cop who was one of the first to take on a dangerous task’. However, ‘the cause of the explosion eluded them,’ but not the answer to the question of why the officers were not wearing required protective gear. ‘What clearly perplexed the bomb squad… was why the device failed to respond to impulses generated by the remote control mechanism that the police normally use to detonate explosives in the demolition pit.’ One theory the police pursued, according to the NYT article, ‘was that the remote control gadget did activate the bomb several minutes after it was supposed to, just as officer Murray and the others approached the device.’ This would be the exact scenario I had discussed with Ames: the frequency of the remote control device was overridden and disabled, and at the very moment the officers were bending over the bomb, all without protective gear, another ‘player’ with a different game plan activated the device. My discussions with Ames gave me even more concrete knowledge of the probability and logic of my conclusions. Of course I deeply mourn the death of the innocent police officer, but I’ve thought seriously and often about the entire case, and it always seemed to me that there was a dark shadow of the Yugoslav Secret Police, UDBA, hanging over it.

(Editor note: Two years after this book was first published in Croatia, an American intelligence expert and former NSA analyst, John Schindler, released the first well-documented and credible expose of the long-term UDBA-FBI connections and their collaboration in the United States and elsewhere (The Observer, January 4, 2016). This confirmed the possibility, even probability, that the explosion at the Bronx detonation site in our case could well have been sabotage:

Why Hasn’t Washington Explained the 1975 LaGuardia Airport Bombing?

http://studiacroatica.blogspot.hr/2010/02/dr-john-r-schindler-agents-provocateurs.html)

During the hijacking, I spent most of the time in the pilot’s cabin. Julie and Matanic communicated most with the passengers. Pesut and Vlasic represented a kind of understated threat; at least, that was how we intended the passengers view them. When I learned from the pilot that leaflets could not be thrown from the plane we were in, the situation became more complicated, but I did not despair. In fact, the entire time I had the feeling I was keeping the situation under perfect control. I knew the police had confirmed the explosives in the locker were genuine so I was not concerned that someone would get the idea we had hijacked the plane totally unarmed. Actually, in dangerous actions, this is usually the case – when the plan is made, the decision reached, and the action launched, one simply functions according to plan.

Then the shock came in Paris, when we got the news that a police officer had died. At first, I did not want to believe it; I thought the intelligence services had printed a special, false edition of the New York Times in order to destroy our morale. I sent Julie from the plane to call certain phone numbers and confirm the truth of this news. When I learned it was really true, it was clear to me that the action was over. There would be no further throwing of leaflets over Zagreb and Solin, where at that time the 1300-year anniversary of Christianity in Croatia was being celebrated. When I had been planning the hijacking, among several symbolic dates I had decided on this one. The knowledge that an innocent person had become a victim and a human life lost led to our immediate surrender. It was probably the most difficult day in my life, and I have had thousands of extremely difficult days. The intensity of feelings I experienced in just one day was immeasurable. From the belief of having a situation under perfect control, that I was doing something significant for the ideals I had fought for my entire life, and then to extreme desolation that things had taken such an utterly unexpected turn.

I did not completely despair, though, because what was begun had to be brought to an end. The surrender took place in an orderly fashion and without panic. First the passengers exited, along with my colleagues. The pilot and I remained until the end. Although the police ordered the pilot to come out before I did, he refused to do so, suspecting the Special Forces would shoot me. He insisted we leave together; he even put his arm around my shoulder so that, if that had been their intention, they would not be able to shoot me without endangering his life as well.

Then he gave the journalists gathered around the plane this widely reported statement: ‘This drama is over for the crew and travelers, but for Taik and his comrades it has only just begun.’ Many years later, I was flying from Split to Zagreb. As I passed the pilot in the aisle, he recognized me and asked with a wry smile, ‘So where are we flying today, Mr. Busic?’ The sincere humor in the voice of this man reminded me of the captain of the hijacked plane. I would say I am one of the few hijackers who has only had good experiences with pilots. Zvonko Bušić”

(Republished by Ina Vukic with permission)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: All Visible Things, Brian Murray, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, Frane Pesut, Hijacking TWA Plane, Julienne Busic, Marko Vlasic, Petar Matanic, Zvonko Busic

„Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021“ – Editor, Julienne Busic

April 9, 2022 by inavukic 6 Comments

_{From Left: Book Front Cover “Resurrected Faces of Vukovar”, Julienne Busic (Editor), Ante Nazor and Radomir Juric for publishers}

Understanding the reasons for and extent of the evil that Greater Serbia committed against the heroic Croatian city of Vukovar and the whole of Croatia constant reminders, credible corroboration, hermeneutical reading, and artistic interpretation of historical facts are required for the sake of the truth.

„Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021“, published by Croatian Homeland War Memorial Centre (headed by dr. sc. Ante Nazor) and Matica Hrvatska -Zadar (headed by dr. sc. Radomir Juric) in December 2021, presents unequivocally a book of remembrance and honour to the victims of Serb aggression. Furthermore, the ethnic cleansing of Croats and wanton destruction of Croatia’s Vukovar during and after its siege from 1991 referred to in this book come alive in our minds once more, nudging us to try and understand that which is often impossible to understand because of the aggressor’s depraved cruelty involved. It was published to mark the 30^th anniversary of the Vukovar tragedy that culminated horribly in November of 1991. The book was compiled and edited by the well-known author and Croatian freedom activist Julienne Busic and is presented in a bi-lingual edition, Croatian and English. Julienne Busic also wrote the foreword for the book and several of the texts. The book is a wealth of series of texts, illustrations, pictorial presentations, documentary material, created or arose during the period and resulting from the Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army aggression and Croatia’s Homeland War of 1990’s. All material presented relates to actual events that occurred during the years of the Homeland War in the city of Vukovar.

“Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021” with its contents is an overwhelming reminder of the cruelty Croatian victims either suffered, endured and/or survived because of Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army aggression. The great value of this book is not merely in its exceptionally well-chosen variety of evidentiary material of suffering in Vukovar but also in its psychological significance for the understanding of what had occurred in that depravity of Serb aggression; the aggression that saw repeated and incessant tragedies of brutal death, brutal rape, brutal torture, brutal destruction every day and every night for over three months in 1991 and afterwards in concentration camps. It is said that we must repeat seeing things that occurred those thirty years ago in Vukovar, to corroborate and verify repeatedly to understand them towards perhaps easing the deep pain that the memory of them still brings.

The renowned and widely respected journalist, a native to the city of Vukovar, Tihomir Vinkovic, knowing that many a reader who has known the horrendous suffering of Croats in Vukovar during Croatia’s Homeland War would approach reading this book with expectations of poignance, sorrow directed at the victims and even profound bitterness and anger directed at the Serb aggressor, introduces us skilfully to the historic Vukovar, both in its grandeur and its suffering. His text is followed by parts of the poem “Vukovar” by the Croatian artist and writer Tomislav Marijan Bilosnic entitled “Who are those who go against tanks”.

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living” section of this book is a rich collage of various government communiques, newspaper excerpts (domestic and foreign), statements regarding suffering in Vukovar by those key personalities and leaders at the time, who were tasked with verifying the existence of many mass graves and exhumed, tortured human remains of the genocide Serbs perpetrated with the assistance of the Yugoslav People’s Army in Vukovar. Accounts of Croats that are still missing, of raped women, of maimed civilians and soldiers, of the ethnically cleansed and forcefully banished from their homes – all of whom had lived through the nightmare that Vukovar was. These excerpts and records of historical facts of Vukovar 1991-1995 are a harrowing indictment against the Serbs and pro-communist Yugoslavia aggressors that Croats must never forget as Lord David Owen, the book quotes, said in February 1996 “Vukovar remains on the conscience of the world”.

The reader is then presented with the academic paper by Sanja Knezevic PhD, presented at the Eighth Regional Conference of the European Association of Women in Theological Research 2012 in Split, Croatia. This academic paper titled and subtitled “The Suffering and Resurrection of Raped Vukovar Detainees 1991 –1992: Does Postmodern Culture Tolerate Suffering? The abstract of this academic paper reads as follows: “The perception of women’s suffering in contemporary society is analysed, based on the statements of the abused and raped Vukovar women, which were recorded and made public in the book, Sunny (2011). The Vukovar story, which can be regarded as a prototype of women’s suffering and grief in all wars, shows that rape, the most serious crime against humanity and its divine image in 21st century society, still has no place in our consciousness.

In addition to not receiving any kind of civil rights in the sense of compensation for the pain they suffered, they also have not been offered psychological assistance or support. The perpetrators of the crimes against them have for the most part not been tried; society has not reacted to the seriousness of their crimes. Women who have endured rape and torture live with permanent repercussions, but they live.”

This thorough and confronting presentation of discussion and facts surrounding the suffering of Vukovar women and other detainees are a stark and sad reminder of how attitudes vary towards depravity of genocide and mass torture should only have one attitude and that attitudes encompasses intolerance with all its aspects.

There’s a very useful and clear Brief Review of the Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Battle of Vukovar written by one of Croatia’s leading historians Ante Nazor and the propeller that drives the practice and notion of remembering what occurred and how much suffering was endured by the Croatian people as a result of Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army aggression and utter brutality.

Otherwise, dr Ante Nazor, director of the Croatian Homeland War Memorial and Documentation Centre said this about the book:

“This is a collection of works on Vukovar, from art to history, and what is very important to emphasise are parts of books that have already been published somewhere, some are not, but it is important to emphasise that everything is translated into English and thus available to the foreign public to try to understand what was happening in Vukovar. We owe special gratitude to Julienne Busic, this is a person who considers Croatia her homeland, and with her actions before and now with this book she shows how much she cares about Croatia, so that the period of the Homeland War is not forgotten ”

There is a moving excerpt, from Julienne Busic’s, “2013 A.B. Simic” award-winning novel Živa glava / Living Cells that was inspired by the testimony of a young Croatian woman who was sexually and serially abused at the beginning of the Serb aggression against Vukovar and occupation of Vukovar for the purposes of creating Greater Serbia.

Julienne Busic said in January 2022, when this book was launched in Zadar Croatia: “I have a special connection with Vukovar, I worked on the excavation of the mass graves in Vukovar, and I saw everything and wrote reports and took photographs for reports for the outside world in English, and it must not be forgotten, it must be recorded for future generations.”

An excerpt, the chapter on War in Vukovar, from the book “Vukovar Hospital: a lighthouse in the historical storms of Eastern Croatia” by historian Ivo Lucic, 2017, is a shocking reminder of the Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army unthinkable cruelty Croatians were faced with and many perished under as the aggression ensued and progressed.

In this chapter dr.sc. Ivo Lucic aptly reminds the reader of how the tragedy of aggression against Croatia started: “The most important political decision the Croatian government made was to pass in Parliament, on June 25, 1991, the „Constitutional Declaration on the Sovereignty and Independence of the Republic of Croatia“ on the basis of results of a referendum held on May 19, 1991. In agreement with representatives of the European Community, the implementation of this proclamation was postponed for three months to resolve the crisis in a peaceful manner.

However, instead of peace, a fierce attack was launched on the institutions of the Republic of Croatia, its statehood and sovereignty, which caused immense human suffering and significant material damage. A civil conflict of sorts in Croatia quickly escalated into outright aggression by Serbian-Yugoslav military formations in Croatia. The Croatian Parliament passed the ‘Decision on

the termination of Croatia’s legal relations with the SFRY’ on October 8 and the ‘Resolution regarding aggression against the Republic of Croatia’, which reinforced the initial declaration. This was the day after the Yugoslav People’s Army air force attacked Banski Dvori in an attempt by the Yugoslav Army leadership to kill the President of the Republic of Croatia and his closest associates and stop the country’s path to independence.”

The book offers the reader a very touching excerpt from the book: “We Defended our Homeland: national minorities in the defense of Croatia”, authors Ivica Radoš and Zoran Šangut, 2013 which tells the reader Nenad Gagic’s story, the story of the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest from Pacetin, Croatia, who volunteered into the Croatian volunteer defence forces because somebody was attacking “his homeland!”.

The reader is presented in the book with letters written by world leaders to the President of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, including a letter from UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, January 9, 1998, in which she concluded with these words: “As you begin the difficult and delicate process of restoring human rights, order and prosperity to Croatia’s recovered territory, you can take heart that a just cause has triumphed, and that those who gave their lives for it did not die in vain.”

The book concludes with a series of moving reproductions of paintings and statements by Austrian artist Hermann Pedit (1933 – 2014) who was present at the Vukovar exhumation of victims in 1998 and then, at his “Night of the Soul” exhibition at the Mimara Museum, which opened on September 16, 1999 with a meticulous review, Dark Body, by Academic Tonko Maroevic, presented his opus dedicated to the Serbian war victims.

“Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021” is not only a book of brief and yet all-encompassing record of insufferable cruelty against Croats in Vukovar at the hands of Serb and Yugoslav People’s Army aggressors but it is also a book that channels those victims into the field of resurrections, of live presence in our lives today, so that we may assist in lasting remembrance of this painful heritage of Croatia, which brought Croatia’s independence and freedom despite the cruelty.

Ina Vukic, Sydney, 9^th April 2022

The Resurrected Faces of Vukovar 1991 – 2021

While the Kindle version of the book is expected soon the book itself may be purchased via contacting Croatian Homeland War Memorial Centre

Email: centar@centardomovinskograta.hr

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Ante Nazor, Croatia, Croatian HOmeland WAr Memorial CEntre, Ivo Lucic, Julienne Busic, Matica Hrvatska Zadar, Radomir Juric, Resurrected Faces of Vukovar, Sanja Knezevic, Tihomir Vinkovic, Tomislav arijan Bilosnic, Vujovar, war crimes

Croatia: The Treason In Kreso Beljak

January 19, 2020 by inavukic 9 Comments

Today many countries’ laws forbid acts that are called treason, including insurrection and attempted coups (internal treason) and cooperating with foreign powers and enemies abroad. More loosely, people use the word to mean any serious betrayal of trust. Dictionaries define a traitor as a person who betrays someone or something, such as a friend, cause, or principle.

It is incredulous, gut-wrenching and above all improper that the Croatian Parliament has not, even after more than a week, found a way to suspend (pending inquiries) its Member Kreso Beljak from sitting in Parliament; from speaking in Parliament! Had a member of parliament of a truly democratic and statehood conscious parliament come out with such vitriol, blatant lies and hate speech against own people, against own country, as Kreso Beljak has in the past nine days, that member of parliament would be suspended immediately and investigations/discussions about the intent and effects of his/her statements undertaken with view to considering appropriate measures against that member of parliament.

Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) president and member in the Croatian Parliament, Kreso Beljak’s treasonous, shocking, depraved, reprehensible recent Tweet is not, by a long shot, a Tweet that is clumsy and unfortunate as he, in his unconvincing and cold apology Monday last, called it. His Tweet was yet another demonstration of the psychological violence and communist taunting against Croatians who rejected communism during and after World War II in Croatia and after WWII. This psychological violence continues to this day and is part and parcel of communist terror methods in their efforts to devalue and vilify, indeed, make life difficult in what the victorious Croatian Homeland War of 1990’s brought to the Croatian nation – independence and democracy.

What is equally reprehensible is the fact that “official Croatia” appears to have settled for Beljak’s apology for the Tweet and gives no indication of any plan to take Beljak down, suspend or remove him from Parliament pending investigation into the damage and inflicted offence his words have upon Croatian people.

Such suspension/removal would be, if for nothing else, justified for Beljak’s suggestion that the war in Croatia between 1991 and 1999 was waged and caused by Fascists in ex-Yugoslavia and those in other countries who escaped UDBa and Yugoslavia’s communist purges!

The truth is that the Yugoslav Army with Serbia and Croatian rebel Serbs attacked Croatia in 1990/1991(from Serbia and from within Croatia via rebel Serbs) when Croats showed intention to secede and then voted overwhelmingly in referendum to secede from communist Yugoslavia. The consequent war of aggression against Croatia (and Bosnia and Hercegovina) was indeed brutal, genocidal, bloody and merciless.

Beljak’s words are treasonous, against Croatia and its fight for sovereignty and democracy.

Photo: Twitter screenshot

On 10^th of January 2020 a certain “Renato” published a Tweet that said: “My family was targeted as well but we lived in NY! Yugo-nostalgics fail to realize that there were over 100 political assassinations outside of Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1990. The UDB-a was active in every Croatian immigrant community in the USA, Germany, Canada and Australia.”

Kreso Beljak on 11^th January 2020 tweeted a reply: “Over 100?? Obviously not enough. We sow (saw) who did the shit and who made all of the wars from 91 to 99. Fascist in ex-YU and in other countries who unfortunately escaped UDBa.” (UDBa being communist Yugoslavia Secret Police)

On 14 January 2020 Beljak published an apology: “In relation to my clumsy and unfortunate tweet. That tweet is a part of a wider discussion, filled with insults and lies. But, not important. I am sorry if my tweet was construed as my support for political assassinations. That, of course, is not true. I am sorry If I insulted anybody. I made a mistake.”

Further proof of Beljak’s treasonous mind and action is evidenced in his statement in publicly televised Croatian Parliament session on 15 January 2020. When Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic reprimanded Kreso Beljak for his tweeted statement and called upon him to apologise more, Kreso Beljak replied: “…I understand the gravity of what I said (regarding UDB’s killings of Croats)… I wish that you had repeatedly asked for such an apology as you heard from me from those who supported terrorists who killed people for Croatia, instead of letting such people on your official site support your candidate… ” (meaning 2019 Presidential candidate Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic who was HDZs (Croatian Democratic Union’s candidate).

When and what terrorists killed people in the name of and for Croatia after the Second World War (the period to which Beljak’s words are related)!? The truth is that there were no terrorist killings from the Croatian side for Croatia and factual history has not recorded any. Indeed, the terrorist killings that did occur in relation to Croatia were the murders and assassinations of Croats by Serbs and UDBa (Yugoslavs), never the other way around!

When did terrorists after WWII kill people for Croatia? NEVER!

When did terrorists after WWII kill people to stop Croatia’s independence? ALWAYS!

Even if one looked into a number of court judgments from the West (e.g. Australia from late 1970’s to early 1980’s re the Croatian Six; in the USA 1970’s re Zvonko and Julienne Busic and others plane hijacking/aircraft piracy) etc. there were no convictions for terrorism, let alone for killing people! One may find in these judgments the words “attempted terrorist acts” (such as in the case of Croatian Six/ which attempts were a fabrication by Serbs) BUT, likewise, one will find that terrorist acts were not proven nor evidenced by any acts the accused had performed. Aircraft piracy was at the centre of Busic case in New York. In the case of Croatian Six there was no deaths in question and in the Zvonko and Julienne Busic case there was an incidental related death of a policeman, however that death was not brought about or caused by Busic’s hands nor had they intended for the death to occur (official US court judgments and documents show this). The death of the NY policeman was reportedly and evidently caused by the policeman’s failure to follow procedure in deactivating a bomb to which Zvonko Busic had alerted, in a timely manner, the NY police.

It is utterly unacceptable to permit a member of parliament to get away with such hateful, treasonous speech and profound lies about Croatia’s path to independence with a “please apologise” slap on the wrist as it is happening currently in Croatia. These statements by Beljak are treasonous and hateful. A government that fails to protect the honour and good name of the country it leads, like Croatian government and Parliament has done in the past week, is a government and Parliament that are not fit to lead a nation! We must not forget that the very same Parliament was inaugurated on 30^th May 1990 and that soon after, in August, the Log Revolution (Balvan revolucija), an aggressive insurrection by ethnic Serbs in Croatia had announced the bloody war of Serb aggression to come. Croatians, both those living in Croatia and abroad, defended Croatia’s independence from communist Yugoslavia in the Homeland War of 1990’s. It is due to that very courage and suffering that Croatia is today a member state of the European Union; it is, thanks to the victorious Homeland War that Croatia currently presides over the Council of the European Union. It is the duty of Croatia to deal swiftly and decisively with those like Beljak who continue running the nation down, distressing its people with lies, psychological violence and political taunting.

What are you waiting for Croatian Parliament, Croatian Government!?

Your duty of care towards your people and your State is evident!

Ina Vukic