Croatian Parliament Declaration On Position of Croats In Bosnia and Herzegovina

From Left:Zvonko Milas, State Secretary, Central Office for Croats living outside Croatia,
Zeljko Glasnovic, Member of Croatian Parliament for the diaspora,
Gordan Jandrokovic, Speaker of Croatian Parliament,
Marija Pejcinovic Buric, Minister for Foreign and European Affairs
Photo: Pixsell

The Croatian Parliament has Friday 14 December 2018 adopted the proposed Declaration on the Position of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) (PDF Declaration). Votes for were 81, against 11 and abstaining 4. Hence, the desired consensus was not reached, which leaves space for ongoing political manipulation and set backs in the lobbying for strengthening of the power in decision making as far as Croat role is concerned there. Issues that stand out particularly relate to the need to change BiH Electoral Act so that Croats are given the prerogative to vote for their own representatives in Presidency and parliament and those relating to the full and deserved status and recognition of the 1990’s war forces Croatian Defence Council (HVO).

Advocating strongly for equality of Croatian people in that country the Declaration (Link for PDF version of the Declaration and Amendments)calls for changes to the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its Electoral Act. It states that “The Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are a part of one and indivisible Croatian nation, regardless in which country and in which part of the world members of that nation live.”

In its ascent to parliamentary vote the proposed Declaration had given rise to numerous criticisms from the opposition, particularly Social Democrats, who held that it represented meddling in another country’s internal affairs. Accordingly, the original text discussed in parliament on 12 December has partly been changed.

Croatian people of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are standing on the fence of their survival. Their status as equal people to Bosniaks and Serbs in BiH is continually eroded to the point that, despite protests and attempts to change the Electoral law, their representative in the Presidency of BiH is elected by the Bosniaks. Without a doubt, and based on jurisdiction installed within the 1995 Dayton Agreement and subsequently in the Constitution of BiH, Croatia has an obligation in protecting the constituency, equality and interests of the Croatian people in BiH. Hence, given the developments since 1995 that saw increasing deterioration in the status of Croats in BiH that places their very existence there in jeopardy, the time has arrived when Croatia has no alternative but to formulate its clear political framework that would help achieve and sustain such paramount rights of Croatian people in BiH.

To say that the debate in the Croatian parliament on Wednesday 12 December 2018 on the proposed Croatian Parliament Declaration on the Position of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina was heated would be a monumental understatement. Not only was the debate that lasted some ten hours into the night heated but it clearly demonstrated the fact that a Croatian parliamentary consensus on the Declaration was almost impossible to achieve. The bottom line to the disparity on whether the Croatian parliament should pass such a declaration lies in the evidently irreconcilable views between the governing majority and parts of the opposition on the role Croatia should play when it comes to its direct stand ad activities regarding Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The “liberal” opposition headed by Social Democrats (former communist league of Yugoslavia) considers the declaration to be damaging and an encroachment into internal political affairs of a neighbouring country while another portion of the opposition, e.g. Hrvoje Zekanovic/HRAST who vied for a third entity (Croatian) in BiH, Zeljko Glasnovic/the MP for the Croatian diaspora who especially emphasised the need to cement the recognition of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) which was instrumental in protecting the borders of Croatia during the 1990’s war, considers that the proposed text is lukewarm and demands more concrete solutions favouring the protection of Croats within BiH. Proposed by the Parliamentary Committee for Croats Living Outside Croatia and the ruling Croatian Democratic Union the Declaration seeks to strengthen the position on Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina; to preserve the political subjectivity of the Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina particularly because of geostrategic influences being a first class strategic Croatian state and national interest.

The Declaration warns of marginalisation of the Croatian people in BiH and calls for changes to the Constitution and Electoral Act of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Declaration, of course, would have no direct power to make constitutional reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina but a consensus on such a political framework would have been likely to strengthen advocacy for major positive changes that would enable the equality of the Croatian people in BiH.

The Croatian Minister for Foreign and European Affairs Marija Pejcinovic Buric rejected criticism by the opposition that the declaration encroaches on internal political affairs in the neighbouring country. “The Republic of Croatia is only asking for the Dayton Agreement to be respected along with constitutional decisions by the Constitutional Court in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Pejcinovic Buric.

While the Declaration would not be binding for Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina, the BiH presidency in Sarajevo (for which the Croat representive Zeljko Komsic was recently voted in by majority Bosniak/Muslim vote) already views it as another attack on Bosnia’s sovereignty after the two countries became involved in a previous dispute about the Bosnian general elections in October.

In its current form the Declaration does claim that the election of Zeljko Komsic as the Croat member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency at October’s polls was not in line with the Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war because Komsic was elected mostly by Bosniak votes, not by those of Bosnian Croats.

For the successful functioning of Bosnia at all its levels it is essential that all its constituent peoples [Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs] and citizens be equal, to trust and believe in Bosnia’s future,” the declaration says.

With this declaration the Croatian Parliament seeks, among other things, from the appropriate institutions in the Republic of Croatia the following:

In order to realise the constitutional, legal and strategic documents and the international obligations of the Republic of Croatia in relation to Croats in BiH and towards BiH:

– that the Republic of Croatia, as a signatory and guarantor of the Washington and Dayton Agreements, and a member of the Peace Implementation Council in BiH, report to the UN Security Council and the PIC Steering Board members that the imposed amendments to the Entity Laws and the imposed changes to the Election the Dayton Peace Agreement was severely violated. Since the balance between the constitutional position and the rights of the constituent peoples in BiH at the expense of the Croatian people, but also to the detriment of the stability and functionality of BiH, the Croatian Parliament charges the representatives of the Republic of Croatia to seek before the international organisations responsible for implementing the Dayton Peace Agreement respect for the Dayton Peace Accords and that the imposed changes be removed via changes to the Constitution and the Election Law of BiH;

– that the Republic of Croatia, as a member of the Peace Implementation Council and as a member of NATO and EU in multilateral and bilateral capacities, advocates and supports the urgent changes of the Constitution and the Election Law of BiH, which would lead to the harmonisation and standardisation of the equal constitutional position of the three constituent peoples in BiH, in an institutional and administrative territorial view;

– the appropriate institutions of the Republic of Croatia are invited to increase their assistance to institutions of education, health, culture, media and Catholic Church institutions in BiH;

– to include institutions of strategic importance for Croats in BiH in the form of financial assistance from the Republic of Croatia, with full respect for their program and personnel independence and the principles of project business aimed at realising real needs and solving specific problems;

– to establish financial instruments for investment in development and employment in the majority Croatian areas, in areas where Croats lived in significant numbers before the war and from which they were forcefully deported or displaced and thus prevent departure and support the return of deported Croats to BiH;

– to stimulate new investments of Croatian companies operating and investing in BiH, especially in places with the Croat majority, where the number of Croats has been drastically reduced due to the war, due to the discriminatory policy of national majority in the Entities and counties on whose territory they are, their access to employment is disabled;

– to encourage cooperation with all local, county and state entities and representatives of the Republic of Croatia who have experience in using funds from European and other programs in the design of future projects and cross-border cooperation that would respond to the real needs of all media in BiH, especially in the areas of to which economic, scientific, academic, cultural and other subjects fulfilling the needs of Croats have capacities for the purposeful and efficient use of available resources, but also in areas where parts of the Croatian people are in a state of inadequate meeting of the needs in these areas;

– to fully valorise the role of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) in the defense of the Republic of Croatia and the Croatian territories in BiH, but also in the preservation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the whole of BiH, and to support the resolution of the status and the existential questions relating to the defence population, especially the disabled and the victims of the Homeland War;

– to give equality to Croatians outside Croatia in exercising their right to vote with other citizens of the Republic of Croatia in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, by introducing postal, preferably electronic voting, and by considering harmonisation of the number of representatives representing Croats outside the Republic of Croatia with the proportion of that population in the total number of voters.
Ina Vukic

Judenfrei Serbia – The Right To Forget!

Zeljko Glasnovic,
Member of Croatian Parliament for the Diaspora
26 January 2018
Photo: Screenshot

The concept and practice of political correctness that has evolved during the past couple of decades has also given rise to the phenomenon of oppressive righteousness that is in many ways misguided and incomplete, hence, giving rise to a need to push back against it when it spills over into absurdity, and injustice.

Thursday 25 January 2018, ahead of the international marking of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) Serbia opened at the UN building in New York an exhibition, called “Jasenovac – The Right Not to Forget”. On the face of it and given the occasion one can support the ethos and the core of human identity that trickles through such exhibitions: remembrance of victims of all crimes.

However, that ethos for Serbia’s exhibition at the UN becomes an insignificant secondary matter, even visibly and disturbingly unintended by the exhibition’s organisers (Serbia) when one focuses on the fact that in this exhibition Serbia – once again – omitted to remember its own WWII Holocaust victims. It has, one could say, forgotten the 94% of Serbia’s WWII Jews its WWII Milan Nedic government exterminated by May 1942, thus becoming boastfully one of the first “Jew-Free” (Judenfrei) nations in Europe. What this exhibition at the UN demonstrates clearly is that Serbia doesn’t really care for the victims of the Holocaust, for perpetuation of remembrance of the Holocaust victims, but it does care about covering up its own Holocaust history and pointing the guilty finger at Croatia and camp Jasenovac. Serbia of today demonstrates the continued oppression against Croatia in similar ways it operated during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and during the post-WWII communist Yugoslavia.

Using half-truths and lies has evidently become the material of Serbian leadership’s genetic makeup.

Perpetuating the false (brazenly increased) numbers of Holocaust victims that perished in Jasenovac – when reality of victim numbers was most likely up to ten times less than what Serbs claim, purposefully distorting history, when facts point to Jasenovac being an extermination camp for communist Yugoslavia purges (headquartered in Serbia) years after WWII ended, perpetuating its lies that Croatia’s Blessed Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac was a Nazi/Ustashi collaborator when independently researched facts (e.g. Dr. Esther Gitman) show that he saved both Jews and Orthodox Serbs during WWII, can lead only to one conclusion: Serbia’s propaganda agenda continues to fixate on vilification of the Croatian nation of today and of the past.

It is, therefore, an indisputable, albeit an act of human depravity, that Serbia, with the help of political lobby coming from the likes of Israeli Holocaust selective historian Gideon Greif and Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s shallow but politically bent Efraim Zuroff , has with this UN exhibition given itself “Judenfrei Serbia – The Right To Forget”.

It’s a shame that official Croatia hasn’t responded determinedly to this UN exhibition regarding the Holocaust and mounted its own exhibition in the same UN building, at the same time – exhibiting the truth and including all Holocaust victims within the territory of former Yugoslavia. But then, to come up with such constructive, just and enlightening response to Serbia’s exhibition requires a good will and determination and unity for exhibiting WWII truth, which appear to be calamitously lacking in Croatia. The corridors of Croatia’s government power-wielding echelons have been and are destructively riddled with communist Yugoslavia sympathisers in whose personal interests it is to permit Serbia to do as it pleases when it comes to guilt for sins committed against humanity during WWII – as long as the communists of the time are thus shielded from having to answer for their own sins against humanity!

Certainly, Croatia has plenty of capable and professional academics, historians, researchers, politicians, clergy, journalists and activists who have (especially after the 1991 secession from communist Yugoslavia) been pointing to and unveiling the facts about Jasenovac, about Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, about the WWII Independent State of Croatia – all of which facts blow the Serbian and communist Yugoslavia propaganda out of the water! But, these people act in relative isolation from each other so that such demonstrations of truth appear as personal endeavours rather than a nationally coordinated one.  Official Croatia has done absolutely nothing to rein in the wealth of information and facts, which point to its true WWII history (not the one generated by Serbia and communist Yugoslavia).

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said at the Belgrade-sponsored Jasenovac exhibition’s opening on Thursday evening that its goal was to prevent the deaths at the concentration camp in Croatia from being downplayed. “The goal of this exhibit is not just to introduce the international public to a lesser-known chapter of WWII. It is also to warn about the dangers from a revival of the ideology and political practice which led to such atrocities,” he said.

Apparently official Croatia tried to stop Serbia’s UN exhibition on bases that it promotes untruths and falsities but it withdrew from that upon discovery that the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres (a Socialist from his past political activities) had approved for the exhibition to go ahead even if he qualified that permission by saying that the UN has distanced itself from the exhibition and its content!

But the Croatian foreign ministry said that the use of Jasenovac for “everyday political and propaganda” purposes was “unacceptable”. The exhibit was prepared without the participation of Croatia’s Jasenovac Memorial Centre, said Croatia’s Foreign Minister Marija Pejcinovic Buric.

 

Maria Pejcinovic Buric
Croatia’s Foreign Minister
Photo: HINA

We express deep respect for all the victims of the Ustasha regime and in the strongest possible terms we condemn all its crimes and particularly crimes committed in the Jasenovac camp,” a foreign ministry of Croatia statement said. “Because of the respect for the victims, we consider it utterly unacceptable to use the suffering in Jasenovac for propaganda purposes or the goals of daily politics,” it said.

Croatian foreign ministry response to the exhibition is fine but the Croatian government failed to capture and express the essence and the meaning for the Croatian nation this exhibition targets. Certainly, majority of people see that it is an attack on Croatia and its people because, besides posting falsehoods about Jasenovac, it actually implies that there is a threat of revival of the ideology in Croatia that led to atrocities of the Holocaust during WWII.

While Croatian politicians such as HDZ’s (political party with governing majority in the parliament) Miro Kovac reacted for Croatian media to Serbia’s exhibition with: “What official Serbia is doing now is, unfortunately, what was seen in the communist Yugoslavia, and that is a continuation of imposing a campaign of collective guilt and genocide against Croatians. Franjo Tudjman was strongly opposed to this…”, the official reactions have been inappropriately scarce.

Miro Kovac
Member of Croatian Parliament
Photo: fah

Given the heartbreaking effect this mean-spirited and inaccurate as to facts exhibition at the UN has had on Croatian masses in Croatia and abroad, one expected the Croatian Parliament to set aside a time in its agenda with view to drawing up a strategy that would protect its people’s future from such Serbian scum (sorry, I find it difficult not to refer to lies as scum). But no – no such ingenuity or fairness from that lot that’s leading that parliament at this time!

One saving grace for such a parliament, though, was the speech delivered in Croatian Parliament on Friday 26 January 2018 by the independent Member of Parliament General Zeljko Glasnovic, representative for the Croatian diaspora. Here is what he said regarding the matter:

“…Basic human rights are jeopardised in Croatia. Which rights? The right to equality before the courts of law, the right to private ownership … not even 5% of land titles have been sorted, and yet we impersonate a plural democracy…

…is the right to truth a basic human right? When we’re talking about the truth here you have an exhibition about Jasenovac on East River, New York … 700,000 victims – falsified history again …when are we going to comprehend that a large professional Greater Serbia brokerage still reigns in Croatia, here in this country, that purposefully hides the true lists of those victims not only from Jasenovac but from the Second World War… when are we going to be conscious of that …

…From abroad, we are looked upon exclusively on the basis of the history of the Second World War, we still do not have an official history of that period… seated here are some people…doctors of history, science etc…what’s happening here? Do we wonder about that… in Josipovic’s days there was 50% of people in the government cabinet who were collaborators of former UDBA (communist Yugoslavia secret services), members of the Communist Party, and Yugophiles, like Dejan Jovic, why are we astonished!

… they are paid…they are paid professional antifascists to hold Croatia on the prosecutor’s bench … they’ve crept into the media, into NGOs etc…what can we expect! … what’s with the archives we are trying to retrieve from Belgrade? I spoke about that in terms of succession (from Yugoslavia) that they must be returned … what has happened …Nothing… global public is still being deceived with them …

…Slovenia has written a book “Slovenia in 1945” mentioning 17,000 victims killed by the communists after WWII…naming almost all, released to the worldwide market…where are our victims …nowhere … total autism of our professional archivists and professional antifascists…and then we are astonished…the Armenians placed a DVD into Time Magazine some years back addressing their tragedy when they suffered under Turks…a total success …Ukraine…Holodomor …every city in Canada has a memorial to victims of communism …

…and Serbs are in front of us, they’ve formed a commission for war victims after 1944 … what are we doing about that issue, we have 18,000 names recorded…Roman Leljak went recently to Serbia and found lists of thousands upon thousands Croats killed in Serbia in 1944 … I’m giving this list I’ve written for the media to the government to see what’s happening here …

…what’s the inert Croatian diplomacy doing …nothing … the Memorial area Jasenovac … that exhibition now being held in New York …an agreement was assembled on 28th March 2017 between Serbia’s Ministry of Education and the Holocaust Institute in Israel, what is the response by the Jasenovac Memorial Centre which to this day falsifies Croatian history and its well paid for that …

…when are we going to condemn the Greater Serbia imperialism … the core of all evils in these areas … and here are seated some people who don’t know who attacked them … and I repeat that like a parrot until I’m six meters under … that the biggest problem here is Greater Serbia imperialism, which from 1912 to 1990 murdered hundreds of thousands in these areas …ether wearing the cockade or the five pointed star …

… and there is silence, he has been rehabilitated as Titoism, that murdered hundreds of thousands of people, has been … and while we stand here today to remember the victims of the Holocaust when are we going to remember the victims of communism … hundred million victims …

…what’s the worst here is that we have destroyed minds and brains among us … that is the biggest barrier for Croatia … communist mental heritage …

…and finally, what kind of a future does a country that pays for the falsification of its own history have … how can it conduct any international politics…horror!

Video extract from Croatian Parliament Friday, 26 January 2018:

If there is no struggle, there is no progress,” said on August 3, 1857, Frederick Douglass when he delivered a “West India Emancipation” speech at Canandaigua, New York, on the twenty-third anniversary of the event. Truer words said have been rare indeed when it comes to fighting oppression that perpetuation of lies and falsification of history bring. Croatia has many struggles on its hands in achieving the truth of its existence: a free and democratic state. The struggles though need to accumulate into a single, focused and organised force whose aim is to perpetuate the truth and shed the communist mindset and which has its heart in the Parliament – will this happen? We wait in expectation and anticipation. Ina Vukic

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