Kreso Beljak – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Zeljko Glasnovic MP and “The Lion in Winter”

February 15, 2020 by inavukic 32 Comments

Zeljko Glasnovic MP in Croatian Parliament 13 Feb 2020
Delivery of anti-corruption speech
Photo: Screenshot

When I watched the live video broadcast of Croatian Parliament sitting on last Thursday, 13 February 2020, while the Parliamentary representative for Croatians living abroad (for the diaspora), retired General Zeljko Glasnovic, it was his usually ardent presentation of the perilous woes that continue afflicting and stifling progress of democracy and, indeed, a society that provides opportunities for all its citizens to better themselves without the fear of nepotism, bribery and political allegiances. Without corruption as mainstay! His speech was about the urgent need to stamp out corruption, which, as he emphasised, even “SOA (Security and Intelligence Agency in Croatia) says represents the biggest danger for the Croatian state”. But, as he said, nothing is being done to actually deal with this debilitating issue; nothing is being done to call the “red directors of companies” (former communists) to account, who have destroyed multitudes of public companies and amassed personal wealth in the process, alarmingly impoverishing Croatia’s public wealth. That is why “there is no money for Croatian Defence Council/HVO, no money for Kindergartens and other critical matters…because at least 30 billion kunas (4.1 billion Euro) are stolen every year and taken out of the country. The left and right wing of the Party (meaning Communist party) are to blame for this. Life is good for them, but why not start with them, when we talk of the provenance of property legislation … what’s with the dossiers of former UDBa (Communist Yugoslavia Secret Police) operatives, some of them sit today in this Parliament…and when I talk about that it is prohibited on HTV (Croatia’s public TV channel), instead we have to watch shows that serve as confessional for those Khmers Rouge and those where their children rule like emperors…that in fact is censorship and we don’t come across discussions about that…What’s with the stolen properties by the Reds … until academic and other lustration are implemented we will not get far…but that is a taboo topic for HTV.”

Now comes the crunch of the day!

The real and distressing marker for the relatively widespread and repugnant animosity against Croatians living outside Croatia, or émigrés, which is constantly fed to the public by those in Croatia who had profited living under the Communist Yugoslavia regime and circumvented or refused to fight for an independent Croatia in 1990’s once 94% of voters voted at 1991 referendum to secede from Yugoslavia.

Croatian Peasant Party representative in parliament, Zeljko Lenart (otherwise a “torchbearer” for the likes of Kreso Beljak who says that communists did not kill enough Croats in their purges during and after WWII) stood up protesting against Glasnovic, saying: “…Glasnovic insults me as a parliamentary representative and I would like to say that in my family no one was member of the Party but I will also tell you that we did not flee to Canada and hide in Canada for 30 years like you and now you hold moral sermons and continue insulting …”. Glasnovic then approached Lenart, protesting to Lenart’s ugly provocation, calling him names (monkey, nit/louse…) saying: “I did not flee, you chased us out …”. And that in fact is the truth. Retired general Glasnovic was only 8 years old when in 1962 his family was forced to emigrate to Canada; their sizeable properties stolen by communists, family persecuted, denied the right to work, and members imprisoned as political prisoners in Communist Yugoslavia. His story of emigration is the story of hundreds of thousands of Croats who emigrated from Yugoslavia. But Glasnovic (like many others) returned to Croatia in 1991 to voluntarily join the Croatian defence forces (after having served in Canadian Army for 5 years and then French Foreign Legion/The Gulf War) to defend Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslav/Serb aggression once Croatians voted overwhelmingly to secede from communism and become an independent Croatian state. Croatian communities in the diaspora joined the fight for freedom once those living in Croatia had overwhelmingly voted to secede from Yugoslavia. This was their God-given and moral duty.

Croatian Parliament 13 Feb 2020
Zeljko Lenart MP (L), Zeljko Glasnovic MP (C), Miro Bulj MP (R)
Photo: Screenshot

Lenart, to my opinion rightly called “a nit” from political perspective that affects a nation struggling to implement that for which it fought and gave blood, has the gall to provoke Glasnovic with such malicious lies! Lenart has proven beyond any doubt that Croatia has indeed much to attend to if it is to decommunise and become a fair-for-all country. Instead of supporting Glasnovic’s speech and standing behind the need to stamp out corruption, Lenart attacks with provocation the man who advocates blanket and decisive actions to rid Croatia of corruption – the cancer that has all but chomped away the opportunities for many to make a decent living in Croatia. Croatia finds itself periled by mass exodus of young people, who have and are leaving the country in droves in order to earn a decent living abroad. Even if it were true that no one from Lenart’s family was in the communist party during the times of Yugoslavia, one thing stands out like a sore thumb: they must have sucked-up to or tolerated/supported communists for personal gain. The fact that he stands behind Kreso Beljak, instead of being abhorred by the murders of innocent Croats by the communists, for which Beljak says there weren’t enough killed, is an unshakeable indication that the latter must have been the case for Lenart’s family.

Croatian media had in its usual biased manner reported this incident from Croatian Parliament on Thursday 13 February as an incident where Glasnovic called Lenart by seemingly derogatory names! There was nothing about the real and critical issues for Croatia Glasnovic was talking about to which Lenart responded with provocation, and none that I could come across sought Glasnovic’s comments afterwards. All this is very symptomatic of the dire problems Croatia has and about which Glasnovic talks loudly: the absolute need to stamp out corruption and delve into the provenance of the wealth amassed through corruption and theft by many former communists, many of whom, or their descendants, are currently in positions of power in the country.

What became painfully obvious from Lenart’s malicious provocations is that it serves as proof of a vicious war going on in Croatia for the survival without repercussions of those who have illegally and through corruption amassed wealth by being in power, and/or who have participated in or shut their eyes to the mass murders of innocent Croatian people by communists during and after WWII. The battle for power between the former communists and most of their like-minded descendants and those who actually and with much sacrifice fought for an independent and democratic Croatia during 1990’s has reached the stage where possibilities do not exclude a justifiably brutal reckoning for the political trajectory Croatia will take.

The ugly resistance by communist (or former Yugoslavia) sympathisers to delve into real combat against corruption reminds one, in a way, of the political backdrop in James Goldman’s 1960’s acclaimed play “The Lion in Winter”, an intended political comedy about politics in the Middle Ages that transforms contemporary battles for political survival into often tragic consequences for a nation. Questions about the battle for succession and the demands of leadership have never felt more pertinent to me. What makes the messages from The Lion in Winter feel so immediate and fresh is how it bridges great political posturing and intense personal and domestic intrigue. The play is overwhelmingly about the battle over succession. After Croatia’s Homeland War ended completely in 1998 and after Franjo Tudjman’s death in 1999, those who placed their own life at independence’s disposal (the war veterans) and those who worked alongside them ensuring political lobby and financial backing as well as providing combatants to defend Croatia from aggression (the Croats in the diaspora) were the natural successors who would see Croatia rid itself of communism and its corrupt ways. Those who would preserve Croatia as independent and develop it into a full democracy. But, after Tudjman’s death the former communists would do anything to ensure that Tudjman’s and Homeland War’s natural successors were run into the ground and even pronounced the Homeland War as a criminal enterprise. It took 12 years for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague to acquit in 2012 Croatian Generals of “Joint Criminal Enterprise” (politically-driven) indictments.

“The Lion in Winter” political agendas translated into today’s Croatia, would see the plot where with the fate of their ideal country (communist Yugoslavia) at stake – forever – there are many former communists and their followers or descendants who are willing to survive by any means necessary and thus prevent the ultimate demise of the communist regime, threads of which still perilously remain ingrained in Croatia’s public administration and society. In these times of heightened attacks against those who fought and fight against communism, questions about the battle for succession and the demands of leadership have never felt more pertinent for Croatia.Those who are among the natural successors, including retired General Zeljko Glasnovic, continue to have a fight on their hands that needs to bring about the real positive consequence and values of the Homeland War come “rain, hail or shine”: to decommunise the country and usher in real or functional democracy to the streets (not the one on paper only) by any means necessary. Many in the political arena, though, fail miserably at recognising leadership, support it actively; it’s the old woe of egomania palpable in many. Regretful as this is, it is not insurmountable. This is the time to draw the battle against communism to a close and bring the combatants against it together to a conclusion. Will Croatian combatants against corruption know how to do that, how to join forces against the enemy, once again? Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-corruption, communist crimes Croatia, corruption, decommunisation, Kreso Beljak, lustration, The Lion in Winter, Zeljko Glasnovic, Zeljko Lenart

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

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Andrej Plenković, communist Yugoslavia purges, communist Yugoslavia secret police, Croatia, Croatian Homeland War, Croatian Parliament, Croatian Peasant Party HSS, Croatian Six, Julienne Busic, Kreso Beljak, Log revolution, political taunting, psychological violence by communists, Serb aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, treason, UDBA, Zvonko Busic

In Croatia: A Robe of Political Evil

January 12, 2019 by inavukic 8 Comments

Memorial cemetery of victims of Homeland War Vukovar Croatia
(inset: Kreso Beljak)

When in this day and age in Croatia the president of the Croatian Peasant Party (Hrvatska seljačka stranka/HSS) declares at the Serbian Orthodox Christmas soirée organised by the Serbian National Council in Zagreb that he deeply believes in brotherhood and unity between Serbs and Croats chills run down the spine. Chills run down the spine not because the concept of brotherhood and unity is an aversive concept generally but because, in this case, it refers to the slogan devised and used by the Yugoslav League of Communists during and post WWII to enforce totalitarian communist creed. This was the creed in which, in particular, Croatian plights for freedom of Croatia were mercilessly crushed and the pinnacle of that crushing oppression was activated in the 1990’s brutal Serb aggression against Croatia when the latter declared its independence and secession from communist Yugoslavia.

To wind back the clock when it comes to the pronounced and pervasive (if not forced) Serb-led imposition of conditions for the lack and impossibility for true brotherhood and unity between Croats and Serbs we need to wind the clock back at least one hundred years. On 5th December 1918 on the main square in Zagreb 18 Croats protesting against the formation of the first Yugoslavia (Serb led Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes/later known as Kingdom of Yugoslavia) were murdered and the 20th century era of Serb dictatorship and oppression accelerated in both speed and intensity. The first bloody Yugoslavia commenced, which not only murdered/fatally wounded Croatian founders of the Croatian Peasant Party, Stjepan Radic and Duro Basaricek, but in its rampage against Croats it pursued the decades long road of displacing and forcing into exile and emigration of Croats from Yugoslavia (Croatia). It imposed local rule by Serbs in Croatia; installed Serbs as local gendarmes in Croatia and installed Serbs at the head of military power, which committed heinous crimes against Croats and forced them to hand over their land to the Serbian Orthodox Church so that even such power could also hold Croats hostage in their own country. Then came the Second World War, Croats seeking independence from Yugoslavia but Serbs, armed with the force of Josip Broz Tito and his communists, succeeded in building themselves into the constitution of that Second Yugoslavia (communist), thus ensuring that any Croat plan for independence and self-preservation is smothered and criminalised. Communist crimes, marked by assassinations of Croats living abroad and hundreds of thousands mass graves of murdered Croats spread like wildfire. Democracies have Opposition in parliament; totalitarian Yugoslavia (Croatia) had its political emigration. When in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s Croatia mustered enough courage to again seek independence from Yugoslavia once again the Serb led aggression was horrendous. Croatia succeeded in defending itself and became independent and sovereign state. Then in 2000 came the former communists, who undeservingly call themselves antifascists, into power and with it the political degradation of Croatian independence, of Croatian national being and, sadly, this continues to the detriment of progress in democracy and self-preservation. The persistent equating of victim with the aggressor has a distressing thread that feeds nostalgia for communist Yugoslavia and attempts to trivialise, if not erase, the fact that Serb aggressor existed and exists.

That brotherhood and unity can exist in earnest between the abuser and the abused, or between an aggressor and a victim, without ensuring and contributing to justice being achieved, is evidently mean-spirited ammunition of politically evil individuals who apparently delight in the suffering of the victim or the abused, for personal political gain. Furthermore, such mean-spirited politics have the tendency to invade all aspects of culture, leaving fair-minded people dazed and speechless from sheer pain for humanity.

Indeed, Kreso Beljak’s declaration at the Serbian Orthodox Christmas soirée in Zagreb on Sunday 6 January 2019 has the hallmarks of evil politics. Certainly, there was no brotherhood and unity when 18 Croats were murdered in December 1918 in Zagreb for protesting against the formation of Serb-led Yugoslavia; certainly, there was no brotherhood and unity when the founders of his political party, Stjepan Radic and Duro Basaricek, were murdered/fatally wounded in Belgrade in June 1928; certainly there was no brotherhood and unity when multitudes of Serbs holding powerful positions within the communist Yugoslavia apparatus and committed or ordered the committing of heinous communist crimes against Croats in WWII and post-WWII Croatia and, certainly, there was no brotherhood and unity when Serbs embarked upon the vicious and genocidal aggression against Croats in the 1990’s. And this pathetic, deplorable figure of a politician, Beljak, tells the world he still believes in brotherhood and unity between Serbs and Croats! He may believe what he likes but when his belief is imposed upon the nation that still suffers gravely from the Serb aggression then his words deserve nothing less than condemnation and profound contempt.

“We live in an age of genocide, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and torture, evil threatens us in ways radically different from tsunamis and financial panics. Nature unleashes its wrath and people rush to help the victims. Evil politics shows its face and we seem paralysed over how to respond” (Political Evil, Alan Wolfe). Beljak’s declaration regarding brotherhood and unity was surely well thought out prior to its utterance at the Serb soirée in Croatia; it was uttered to insult and belittle the enormity of suffering endured by Croats in the defence of their homeland against brutal and genocidal aggression. I see no large rallies in the streets of Croatia against such politics as Beljak’s, which tear away from the truth of Serb aggression. Apart from some media of mentions to that effect, I see no affirmative actions to oust Beljak from the Croatian Peasant Party, I see no actions to strip him of the parliamentary seat he currently holds (the parliament created amidst the horrendous Serb aggression against Croatia), I see no person in the government slapping him on the wrist (to use a metaphor) for his utter cruelty towards the Croatian nation… Croatia needs to get very serious about the problem of evil politics used to undermine its own, rightful and righteous sovereign existence.

One of the chief goals of democratic politics is to achieve justice, restituting wrongs not just for particular people but also injured nation and injured groups within it. Concentrating on Croatia as a victim of Serb aggression, which it has been for over one hundred years, would not be an incidental by-product of a cultural awakening in the country where the current political quagmire is suffocating a fully orderly life, but should be an essential feature of Croatian democracy.

It was the Homeland War veterans with the other freedom and democracy aspiring people that risked becoming the victims of Serb aggression in the 1990’s – for democracy. But, today, the values defended and fought for in the same Homeland War do not enjoy enduring national pride that ensures justice and deserved acknowledgement for victims of Serb aggression. How then are we to take the apparent fact that, for sizeable segments of the Croatian population, the suffering of those who placed their life on the line for democracy and freedom – became victims – seems more likely to invite apathy or disdain? Much of Croatian politics increasingly resembles a grim contest to prove who can be the most mean-spirited; who can talk us into believing that Serb aggression did not really occur or, if it did, that it was not that bad.

In pondering upon such a question I’m reminded of the work of American social psychologist Melvin Lerner, which gives us a clue as to how or why this grim reality exists. In the 1970s, Lerner and his collaborators were struck by the widespread phenomenon of “victim blaming”.

Lerner’s explanation was that we are equipped with a cognitive bias he dubbed the Just World Hypothesis. Its implied proposition is that the world distributes rewards and punishment equally. In situations where we are confronted with suffering and are unable to do anything to alleviate that suffering we tend to resort to the assumption that the victims somehow brought their fate upon themselves. Hence, came the pressure from the EU corridors and beyond to equate the victim with the aggressor and many Croatian politicians from the former communist echelons picked up on such deplorable political harangue – with deviant glee.

Since Serbs appear to understand and promote victim politics, using them to continue denial of their aggression, ethnic cleansing and genocide in order to realise the Greater Serbia dream, then perhaps we are entering a historically right time to press on with lustration in Croatia. Giving justice particularly to the multitudes of victims of communist crimes. One can justifiably conclude that it is the severe lack of prosecuting communist crimes the injects “courage” into individuals to pursue justification of communist crimes and, hence, wrap nostalgia for communist Yugoslavia into “desirable” robes. Unless prosecution and condemnation of communist crimes in Croatia is achieved there will never be real justice for all in Croatia, nor prosperity of a functional democracy and self-determination. Booting Beljak out of the parliament (and Croatian Peasant Party) would be good sign of at least some justice in Croatia for the victims of the Homeland War in particular. Ina Vukic