British Historian, university lecturer, author, commentator, journalist, former Advisor to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Vice President of COK (Croatian Centre of Cultural Renewal) based in Zagreb, Croatia, Dr. Robin Harris has 27 September 2022 delivered a lecture on the importance of National Sovereignty at the Centre for the Renewal of Culture – New Direction Young Leaders summer school in Split, Croatia.
It was and is a most relevant lecture because it succinctly and most aptly paints the reality of today’s Croatia whose political and government echelons are poisoned with former communists or their undemocratically indoctrinated offspring who largely disrespect and ignore the reason why Croatia so intensely wanted to secede from former communist Yugoslavia. Rivers of blood and thousands of Croatian lives were lost to achieve the sovereignty of Croatia, independence from communist Yugoslavia and, thirty years on the transition from communist practices has not shifted much, fearmongering, oppression, corruption, nepotism, denial of horrendous communist crimes and mass murders, political prisoners…as if the 1990’s Homeland War had never occurred! What a tragedy for democracy and prosperity and freedom.
Here is what Dr. Robin Harris said in his lecture recently:
“…Lustration is a word, an idea, that by one means or another one would either break the link between the communist regime and the post-communist democratic regime or at least expose those who had been involved, particularly involved in the nefarious practices under the old regime so that anybody who decided to vote for them or promote them would know what they were doing. In practice it was also intended, and perhaps most importantly intended to change the atmosphere.
But in society collective guilt is a very important things and sense of collective guilt is always being manipulated by the media or manipulated by outsiders in one way or another. I’ll just give a little example: in the Croatian War of Independence, what they call the Homeland War, appalling atrocities were committed by the Serbs. Beyond description. Nothing that had been seen both in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, atrocities that nobody had seen since the Second World War. Now, far from actually apologising for that, what Serbs did and have done with great effectiveness is to refocus attention on real atrocities committed by the Ustasha, the Croatian fascist movement, essentially under the wing of the Nazis during the Second World War. So, in fact we forget the more recent atrocities which are still fresh, there are people walking with only one leg, or in some terrible mental state because of these latest atrocities, we’re meant to focus on things in the past.
This kind of manipulation is very important but of course on the other side this is part of what politics is about. We have to make our enemies, not personal enemies but the enemies of what we believe in, we want them to feel guilty. Or even if they don’t actually feel guilty, this is important, there is a distinction, we have to make them feel ashamed. Because shame is a public thing …
But in fact, because there has been no lustration, no exposure of who was what under the communist regime, cruel communist regime under Tito, here (in Croatia) or any other bits of former Yugoslavia, people are prepared and able to carry on, the elite of this country is able to carry on as if nothing happened. And as a result, almost all of those who are running the country in one way or another, I’m not just talking about politics but politics, business, and judiciary, these are people who are basically part of the old communist stock. These are communist mentality people who got their education, in many cases by stipendiat (scholarship), stipendiat which were available to those who were the offspring of communism party and were not to those who were not. And we are not talking just about those who were imprisoned.
And as late as 1988, former NDH (WWII Independent State of Croatia) Minister Artukovic was extradited and given a very long-life sentence, I can’t remember, for crimes committed during the Second World War. I’m not going to defend Artukovic, that’s not the point, but the point is this was about things that had been done decades before and not one successful prosecution has ever taken place in this country against anybody who committed any murders or atrocities under communism. Not one! Nor will it be because they do not want to know the truth.
The truth may as Our Lord says set you free, but it can also put you in prison.
And that unfortunately is one of the pillars of modern Croatian state – a denial of the communist past and the atrocities committed under it.
And I can say that to somebody from outside; I don’t care what anybody thinks. And that, the fact is that when the German court in Munich found two former very senior Croat Secret Policemen guilty of murder of a man called Djurekovic, they were finally extradited after a law that the Sabor (Parliament) had passed, stopping the extradition, had to be quashed and they were extradited and finally sentenced and now there is pressure that these people should be freed by the president of Croatia. And so not only is it true that nobody who had committed crimes under communism has been prosecuted here (in Croatia), the general view is that nobody who has committed crimes against Croats overseas should even serve any prison sentence at all. I would say this in fundamentally unjust and till you and others are prepared to face up to this and do something about it there will be problems in the Croatian state.”
Ina Vukic
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