reconciliation – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatia: A Nation’s Unrelenting Grief and Suffering On 29th Anniversary of Serb Aggression

November 20, 2020 by inavukic 6 Comments

Zeljko Glasnovic (Top centre), Jure Buric (bottom right corner), Tomislav Mercep (bottom right centre), Mato Mostarac (top right)

It has been a balmy breeze I stood in all this poignant week in Sydney, Australia, as I watched and participated in the profoundly moving emotions of the grieving Croatian nation. It was a week of the 29^th anniversary of the blood-soaked fall of Vukovar in 1991, of bestial massacres of Croatians by Serbs in Skabrnja, of the death of widely revered hero who tried with all his might and unstoppable courage to prevent the Yugoslav and Serb aggressor decimating the Croatian people – Tomislav Mercep (according to multitude of credible claims, convicted by Croatian courts of war crimes on basis of trumped-up charges) and the death of dr. Anto Kovacevic, political prisoner of former communist Yugoslavia and a fearless activist for democratic and independent Croatia. I faced and saw multitudes of inconsolably sobbing widows, widowers and grown children, brothers, sisters, neighbours… of those Croatians whose life was brutally and cruelly cut short in the 1990’s during the Serb aggression against Croatia.

To make matters horribly worse and to keep the Croatian nation in perpetual grief (and anger) Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and his government, which comprises of Serbs associated with 1990’s bloody aggression against Croatia, in this same week announces a new law that would provide war pensions even to the Serb civilian victims of the 1990’s in Croata! The agony Plenkovic and his government are inflicting upon Croatian victims of Serb aggression has no bounds it seems.

This Croatian government’s mindset is deplorable and depraved.

As far as I can see that new law does not even take into consideration the fact that most Serb civilians in the rebel-Serb areas of Croatia brutalised, ethnically cleansed of Croats, occupied for years by those Serbs, would not satisfy the definition of civilians because they were complicit in one way or another with the aggression, tortures, banishments of Croats, murders … any so-called Serb civilians participated in Serb hostilities against Croats in Croatia before and during the Homeland War and the new law and its regulation does not appear to provide measures of essential proof as to who was a “true” civilian and who was a “civilian combatant”, helping willingly the anti-Croat Yugoslav and Serb military on their path of destruction, murder, genocide, torture, rape, ethnic cleansing.

I did not see during this week of mourning in Croatia either the Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic or the President Zoran Milanovic summon the people of Croatia to look beyond grief, to believe that the deaths they mourned had not been in vain. The President Zoran Milanovic laid a wreath in Vukovar’s Ovcara memorial field where the Serbs in 1991 slaughtered hundreds of Croatian wounded and sick, carting them off to their execution at that spot from the devastated Vukovar Hospital but je said not a single word while or after laying the wreath; his lips did not move, not even in silent prayer for the slaughtered victims. Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic walked with the procession from Vukovar’s hospital to the Ovcara killing field, saying that “it is important to pursue information about those still missing,” from the Homeland War. But in that procession of remembrance he took with him his deputy prime minister, Boris Milosevic, a Serb, who came to Vukovar to lay a wreath for the aggressor and murdering Serbs who died during their bestial attacks against Croatians!

Speaking about the presence of Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Boris Milosevic in the procession of remembrance in Vukovar, Plenkovic said that “Croatia won the Homeland War and thus extended a hand for coexistence to minorities… These are the messages of the future, focused on the values we share…” To add salt to the wounds of the atrocious attempts to equate the victims with the aggressor in Croatia, the Special Envoy of the President of Serbia for Resolving the Issue of Missing Persons with Croatia, Veran Matic, also huddled in Vukovar with a wreath for victims. His presence is mockery of Croatians, both fallen and living – both he and Serbia’s President Aleksander Vucic have and had means to access information about the missing Croatians from the days of aggression and still after almost 30 years they all keep silent with that information, hiding it on purpose. And there are no messages to that effect coming from either the President or the Prime Minister of Croatia!

As to Serb civilians being “civilian combatants” in aid of Serb aggression against Croatia I am reminded this week of the heart-wrenching story of a Croatian man from Croatia’s Vukovar who ended up in Sydney, Australia, to recover from unspeakable tortures by the hand of Serb “civilians” during the 1990’s after the International Red Cross had come across the Manjaca concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mato Mostarac told his harrowing story in 1995 to the ABC TV documentary program Four Corners, which was producing the award-winning documentary film “The Coward’s War”, headed by Australia’s renowned investigative journalist Chris Masters. I myself assisted as psychologist and interpreter in the interviewing for the documentary film of the deeply traumatised survivors of Serb aggression.

Mato Mostarac’s Serb neighbours in Vukovar broke into his yard in late August 1991, beat his wife who cowered in pain and was paralysed from it, and forcefully took him with other Croats in a truck to the Begejci concentration camp in Serbia, for a while in Begejci and then transferred to the Serb-held Manjaca concentration camp (Bosnia and Herzegovina); a death camp of brutality unseen since WWII. Serbs cut and chopped Mato and the other Croatian victims with a razor blade over their bodies and faces, tortured and raped or forced them to watch a detainee father rape his detained son and vice versa… Many indications show that Serb civilians were largely not civilians but cruel torturers and murderers of Croats, in aid of the communist and Serb aggression against Croatia. When I met Mato Mostarac, his whole face and body were marked with numerous thin and long scars from razor blade cuts… Here is a bit of what Mato Mostarac told us at the shooting of the 1995 Australian state television documentary ABC “The Coward’s War”:

„After they (Serbs) took their turns I was completely covered in blood. I had a white jumper on, and everything was soaked in blood. I ate all my blood, dried blood, it dried all over me. I’d pluck it together with the fibres from the jumper and all that. I’d eat all that event the blood from my hair. I ate everything … hungry…hungry…and they just give you water…“

As to the passing of Tomislav Mercep and on the fact that some consider Mercep a national hero while others (mainly die-hard communists of former Yugoslavia) consider him a war criminal, here is what, according to Fenix Magazine, Croatian newspaper base din Germany, dr Jure Buric (wartime Mayor of devastated Dubrovnik, former member of Croatian Parliament) said this week:

„Tomislav Mercep – for some a hero, for others a criminal. The latter have a court verdict they can wave around for something like that, and the former have common sense and a good memory of his heroic deeds at a time when a rifle and a cannon and a pencil and a bad word attacked him and his homeland. Is it heroism to defend his home? It is! Is it heroism to defend your people? It is!

And? – there is further and no further. There is no further, because when a man defends himself, he can do something dishonourable, but even that dishonourable deed should be viewed through the prism of reality and the moment when we cannot all control our emotions and actions, because it is not a ballroom dance with pleasant music and chess. The buzzing of bullets and destructive grenades are the music here, and on the board are living, not wooden figures. So who is who ?! A punishment is enough for an honest man if he realises that he did something dishonourable, because he has to live with it. He doesn’t even need a punishment that will make the other side happy and drive him to the grave ahead of time.

For such a thing, courts and court scales are needed, on which everything should not be thrown in order for the desired party to prevail.

With Tomislav Mercep, the court scales tipped against him and it was not easy for him or us to watch the hero rot, like my friend the late prefect Đuro Brodarac (who died in prison), who was met by the same fate.

Only you, the latter, rejoice in his death, but know that there are infinitely many more of the former – those who mourn him and pray to God for his soul!“

As to Veran Matic’s visit to Vukovar this week representing Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic, retired general and former Member of Croatian Parliament, Zeljko Glasnovic, summarised so clearly and aptly the widespread sentiments across Croatia and its diaspora in his Facebook status:

„Veran, continue to be “faithful to your fatherland” and do not tell empty stories once a year when you come to Croatia. What kind of reconciliation are you talking about, what kind of cooperation and search for the missing are you talking about? You know where they went missing, why don’t you tell us Veran? You come to worship falsely and provoke false sympathy. Did you lay a wreath in the centre of Vukovar where in April, 45 years ago, 200 most prominent citizens of Vukovar were killed by the army that fought under the same five-pointed star under which Vukovar was destroyed in ’91? Did you lay a wreath at a mass execution site near Vukovar where 400 Croatian soldiers were killed by the same communist villains at the same time?

You will show the true respect you are talking about only when you say ‘SORRY, WE HAVE COMMITTED AGGRESSION AGAINST CROATS, we killed you, we raped your wives, we killed your children, we looted and burned your homes, we demolished your churches, we took out eyes, cut off hands, ears and fingers of your defenders, we buried them in pits, because of us mothers do not know where the graves of their children are, we have turned your people into refugees, we killed civilians and the wounded, we massacred them, we abused them, we are still silent today about where your missing are, SORRY WE REPENT.’

The persistent equating of the victim with the aggressor does not make your kneeling credible, Veran, no matter how much you cause your knees to bleed in Ovcara and other execution sites, you and those who will come after you. Veran, what kind of delay in normalisation and the search for the missing are you talking about? There is no delay, WE do not know Veran where our people disappeared to, YOU know and are silent. Who’s at a standstill here?

Tell us, Veran, who carried out the aggression on Croatia – we defended ourselves, and died while defending our country for the freedom of our people. After your ‘pal’ Sljivancanin (Veselin) was released from prison (after serving two-thirds of 17-year sentence for ICTY war crimes in Vukovar conviction) he gave a statement that ‘he did not finish his job in Vukovar’, and you would like to reconcile? You are covering up crimes against Croats just as all Croatian governments are covering up the communist crimes from World War II.

Veran, until the last bone is found, until you all kneel and cry over your crimes, until all your war criminals are punished, until you pay the last penny, until you admit aggression, until you open the archives, NONE of you need to come to any of our anniversaries. ALL of you, Veran, are persona non grata in Croatia for me. And not only you, but also half of our government that cooperates with you as the UDBA (communist Yugoslavia Secret Services) did to cover up and forget as many crimes as possible. A prime example of this, despite all the relevant evidence, is the honourable man Nikola Kajkic, who exposed you and was no longer suitable for our institutions while in the case of the betrayal and surrender of our generals to The Hague they were very expeditious and quick: “Locate, identify, arrest, transfer “. You just continue kneeling, Veran, our killed people also knelt before you as you (all) brutally executed them – but they received no mercy.“

No memorial or monument to Croatian suffering such as Ovcara/Vukovar and Skabrnje during the 1990’s Homeland War should be a diving board for politics and especially not the politics of equating the victim with the aggressor. This is unacceptable, cruel and designed to keep the Croatian people who fought for and defended Croatia and Croatians for independence. Perpetual grief for the sufferings Croatians endured or fell victim to has not yet steeled the Croatian people for the future they lost rivers of blood for in the Homeland War. Grief should unite towards building a better future but, alas, the Croatian government and leadership continue interrupting that positive outcome from national grief…their sights are set on diminishing the value and the direction Croatian people took at the risk of their own lives from the very bloody dawn of Serb aggression. Time to put the foot down against the thugs in Croatian government and leadership who equate brazenly and cruelly the victim with the aggressor. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 29th Anniversary of Serb aggression against Croatia, Anto Kovacevic, Croatia, equating victim with aggressor, Fenix Magazine, genocide against Croatians, Jure Buric, Mato Mostarac, national grief, Nikola Kajkic, Ovcara, reconciliation, Skabrnja, Tomislav Mercep, transitioning from communism, Veselin Sljivancanin, Vukovar, Zeljko Glasnovic

Croatia – Heed The Book Of Amos

August 30, 2020 by inavukic 14 Comments

On 30th August 1991 sixteen Croats were killed and 95 wounded in Vukovar in the attack by the Belgrade-;ed Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian terrorists; Vinkovac and Nustar were viciously attacked also.

30^th August 1993 the International Conference on the protection of victims in Geneva coined a phrase: never since WWII has there been so many civilians exposed to the cruelties in war as those imposed by the war led by Serbia against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

30^th August 2020 the Croatian government treads a dangerous path of reconciliation with the Serb aggressor by taking more steps in equating the Homeland War victims (Croats) with the Homeland War aggressor (terrorist Serbs from Croatia and Serbia). Individual deaths of Serbs in Croatia during the war are given more or equal weight to the mass deaths of Croatians and ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs.

Amos’s message (The Book Amos) stands as one of the most powerful voices ever to challenge hypocrisy and injustice. Salvation comes through judgment, Amos teaches us. Hence, you must first be judged in order to be saved and what the Croatian government and President are doing is to free the Serbs and Serbia from being duly judged for their brutal aggression against Croatia and saved regardless of the fact they have not been judged.

But, Croatia stands strongly divided on this unnatural process of reconciliation.

The culture of competitive victimhood is detrimentally promoted by the minority Croatian government who has chosen to collaborate with members of former rebel Serbs in Croatia (the aggressors) rather than with those who uphold the values of the Croatian Homeland War of 1990’s. Using lies and half-truths the government of Croatia is helping its Serbian coalition partners to upstage the Croats as to who was the biggest victim in the Homeland War! The fact that Serbs were the cruel and genocidal aggressors and the Croats in absolute need to defend their lives and homes from such a cruel aggression has been buried for the sake of the government’s reconciliation politics that rest on competitive victimhood.

As elsewhere in the world so too in Croatia, the single greatest challenge in politics right now into which seemingly every single debate and issue and struggle Croatia has fits into is how we handle disagreement. The Croatian social media and independent media as well as some mainstream media are filled with bitter disagreements with what the Croatian government is doing:

Almost humiliating the Croatian people and veterans who fought the Serb aggressor and saved Croatia not only from continued communist oppression but also from continued oppression from Greater Serbia appetites in Croatia.

Just a few recent examples of humiliating the Croatians and their glorious victory over the brutal Serb aggressor easily slot into the formula for reconciliation which spells out disaster for the Croatian nation. These are the commemoration of six Serbs killed in Grubore on 25 August 1995, the comments made by Milorad Pupovac a couple of days ago that he will insist on making Serbs in Croatia feel safe…all in all, fuelling the competitive victim culture so that the Serb aggression ends up not looking so bad!

Many Croats in Croatia and outside it are angry, bitter, there is a lot of upset. The former rebel Serbs in Croatia as well as members of government, especially the communist Yugoslavia nostalgics, seem to have lost the capacity to disagree with the Croats who keep providing them with the need to reconcile the Homeland War through what it was: a victory over the aggressive neighbour (Serbia) who never acted neighbourly. The former rebel Serbs, Serbia, Croatian government and the Croatian President keep coming up with individual examples of supposed injustice to the Serb aggressor or their civilian population in Croatia who were not civilian but often armed and always aggressive towards their Croat neighbours. They have lost the national perspective of it all because they never had the Croatian national perspective and they never wanted an independent Croatia.

To butter-up this atrocious political garbage that panders only to former communists and Serb aggressor against Croatia in the 1990’s Milorad Pupovac, Member of Croatian Parliament for Serb minority, said a few days ago in his statement to the Croatian public television that “it’s a big deal that the Andrej Plenkovic cabinet and President Zoran Milanovic, together with us from the Serb community, have decided to change the trend and stop the spreading of hate produced by war.”

Well – no hate was produced by the war – hate against independent Croatia started the War and pursued its destructive path against Croats all the way, to today. Croats do not hate Serbs, many Serbs helped Croatia defend itself against Serb aggression, but Croats as a rule do not like injustice and liars!

The hallmark of every great civilisation is not how it handles agreement but how it handles disagreement. Handled badly, as the Croatian government and President do, disagreement with the national plight and deserved status inevitably leads to the development of hatred, that is, their disagreement with the Croatian national plight is interpreted as hatred for the Croatian national plight.

In the Book of Amos, Chapter 5 where it says “There are those who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground”; Chapter 6, where it says “you have turned justice into gall (bitterness), so all your righteousness tastes like poison fruit” what the prophet is saying is that if the quest for justice becomes bitter, even if you get it right, it tastes like poison to everyone. The cries for justice in Croatia for the Homeland War are very bitter because its government in association with its former Serb rebels and aggressors have turned away for justice to the Croatian fallen defenders in the war of Serb Aggression and justice for war reparations.

What the Croatian government seems to be wanting to achieve in its profoundly flawed reconciliation politics is the perception that there were only victims (Croatians and Serbs) in the Croatian Homeland War of 1990’s and no perpetrators of criminal aggression! This is the stuff powder keg for future unrest is made of and it has nothing to do with any ethnic rivalries between Serbs and Croats they are trying to peddle to the world but it has everything to do with falsifying the facts of that recent history, with hypocrisy equating victim with the aggressor.

There is a distinction between legal term and psychological term of victim. When in law we talk about a victim what we mean is that there was a perpetrator of a crime and then the person who suffered that crime and in order to restore justice one has to fight for the right of that victim. When justice collapses in the society hope collapses with it. So, it is always important tom think about how to figure out what is right. That is the right or healthy thing to do, but in the psychology of competitive victim culture, which appears to be promulgated by the current politics of reconciliation in Croatia, there is a wrong or unhealthy side. As Psychologists have for decades talked about competitive victim culture this what is happening in Croatia at the moment is fundamentally unhealthy. The reconciliation politics that the Croatian government is pushing for in partnership with the Serb aggressor is trying to train the victim (Croats) that they are not victims, the only victims! Accelerating the destructive competitive victimhood in the Croatian state.

When we are talking about victim culture, psychologically we are dealing with something vary difficult and very dangerous and that’s why Amos talks about not turning justice bitter.

Competitive victimhood narrative in Croatia falls into the usual formula: you did this, yes but you did this … both sides, Croat and Serb are forced into a competition to see who has been hurt the most, when the truth and justice is a very simple thing to deliver. And this is utterly wrong. It is a fact that Croatia was attacked in 1990’s by Serbia and rebel Serbs from within. The Croatian government is pandering to the European Union undercurrents of politically and morally corrupt push for equating victims with aggressors so that peaceful co-existence may be achieved. What a monstrously corrupt and unfair proposition!

Amos stressed that social justice was the key to building an enduring future. Unfortunately, many people fail in Croatia to heed him – the social justice for Croatia has only one entry door and that door is to heed the message of 1990’s 94% of voters choosing to rid themselves of Yugoslav communism and oppression – completely. This has not been done, this door has been shut by former communists, if anything, the powers that be since year 2000 are chipping that choice away, making it almost null and void by forcing a reconciliation with the unrepentant aggressor, who did not and does not like that choice the people made. The possible consequences of such reconciliation politics are too ugly to contemplate.

The Book of Amos tells us that the transgressions that require judgment are nearly entirely comprised of acts of oppression. It is hard to read the book of Amos and not conclude that the Lord is deeply moved when one nation deals cruelly with another, or when the weak and helpless in society are crushed by the powerful. The entire book of Amos shines a powerful light on society, revealing its dishonesty, corruption, and violence. That being the case, overwhelming disaster naturally follows.

Croatians must not allow competitive victimhood to become a debilitating issue for the independent nation that arose from the rivers of blood during the 1990’s Homeland War. They must take action against the injustices with role models that uphold and act on the truth behind the fight for independence. Otherwise, they will be rendered helpless and their future controlled by the very same force that attacked Croatia and its people.

For real and lasting reconciliation facilitating forgiveness among groups involved in brutal conflicts, even in intractable conflicts, requires reducing competitive victimhood which stems from the conflicting parties’ motivation to restore power and a positive moral image. While Croatian Serbs and the Croatian government are trying to dig out any event that saw even a single Serb killed wrongfully in Croatia during their aggression against Croatia and flag that as overwhelming evidence to say that Croats too were brutal, if not more brutal than Serbs, there will be no reconciliation. The Croatian government and President have got it wrong! One cannot bring about lasting and true reconciliation post a brutal and genocidal aggression without the aggression being nationally condemned and called by the name it deserves! One cannot ask for forgiveness for a deed if that deed has not been established in the national creed as a deed that requires forgiveness. The Croatian government of today with its Serb partners are trying to further erode the factual history of the Croatian War of Independence and that the War did ensue because of Serb aggression; brutal one at that!

The way things stand at this moment it appears that the people rather than the government in Croatia take heed of the Book of Amos. Changes that give true credence to Croatia’s War of Independence as the foundation modern Croatia is built on are on the horizon, visible from the Croatian grassroots. They are in the unrest and painful discomfort that the current government reconciliation politics are causing among a widespread Croatian population that voted for independence, that fought for independence, that has lost family lives for independence. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Book af Amos, competitive victimhood, Croatia, equating victim with aggressor, reconciliation, Serb aggression against Croatia

The Vomit Principle in Serbia’s Political Spin

August 16, 2020 by inavukic 8 Comments

The “Vomit Principle” in modern marketing trends hasn’t eluded Serbia’s politicians. The vomit principle is a political tactic that wilfully disgusts people in order to grab their attention. When it comes to Serbia’s denial of its horrendous crimes in its pursuits of a Greater Serbia, stretching into Croatian territory and the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990’s, then it has almost perfected the “art” of the “Vomit Principle”. Serbia’s politicians, whether in Serbia (for example Aleksandar Vucic, Ana Brnabic, Ivica Dacic) or in Croatia (for example Milorad Pupovac, Boris Milosevic) or in Bosnia and Herzegovina (for example Milorad Dodik) are sticking to their marketing message, sprouting their their passively-aggressive slogans and genocide denials ad nauseam. You’d think they’d get sick of saying the same thing at every turn. And if by any chance, you are asking why I’m putting Serbs from Serbia, Serbs from Croatia and Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the same cauldron here it’s because both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina had ethnic Serbs living there who emerged as rebel Serbs (rebelling against the states’ secession from communist Yugoslavia), mounted terror against non-Serbs in those two countries, and were joined in that fight by Serbia with its deadly viciousness. If Croatia’s minority government had the courage and prudence to side with the Croatian Serbs that fought with Croatians against Serb aggression (and there was a significant number of them) we would surely now be looking at a different political scenario, perhaps even at a good progress in reconciliation. But it didn’t and it doesn’t! It sides with Croatian rebel Serb camp that promotes Serbia’s politics in Croatia.

No matter how many times they repeat their spin based on fabrications, there will always be someone who has missed it. So, repetition is essential to the point of making people feel sick. This is the “Vomit Principle” and it shows particularly at that time when you realise that the spin, the message, the slogan, has been said so many times that you feel that if you hear it or say it once more you are just going to throw up and that is the point at which people hear it. In other words, all marketing that achieves intended results relies on a message which resonates, repeated often enough until it penetrates the minds of your intended audience and gets them to take whatever action you want.

And Serbia wants the world to forget that its aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina ever occurred! That the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the mass rapes, the torture, the sheer wanton destruction it committed during 1990’s did not occur and if it did occur then it was justified to pursue such course of action because Serbs say in deceit that Croatia, for example, engaged in genocide during World War II. I will not go deeply here into the fact that WWII history regarding Croatia when it comes to, say, Jasenovac camp and the numbers of people who perished there, was largely fraudulently written by Serbs and other communists and, judging by relatively recent research into WWII, it does not represent the true picture, or actual facts. I will not go deeply here into the fact that, for example, Serbia (its leaders of the 1990’s aggression) were convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague of genocide in Croatia, and Croatia was not.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic took part in a commemoration ceremony Tuesday, 4 August 2020 in Sremska Raca near the borders with Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ceremony marked the day when, in 1995, the Croatian military’s Operation Storm, which marked the end of the war for Croatia’s independence from communist Yugoslavia and was organised by official Serbia in remembrance of the Serbian victims and refugees.

“We will not celebrate the tragedy of the Serbian people, the killing of Serb civilians, the killing of the Serb children. We will not be humiliated,” Vucic said at the commemoration in Sremska Raca. “Reconciliation, yes. Humiliation — no,” said Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic!

Knowing the fact that there are no known civilian victims during Croatia’s Operation Storm on 4^th and 5^th August 1995 and that the exodus of some 200,000 of Serbs from Croatia at the time was actually an ordered evacuation that was directed by Serbia itself puts a bitter taste and outrage to these words uttered by Vucic, yet another of many times!

Then, at around the same time, Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, regurgitated Vucic’s vomit against Croatia. “We want reconciliation, peace, we do not ask you to apologise, admit the genocide in Jasenovac, but we want you to let us mourn that day or those days. We want reconciliation, but not humiliation, which we will not agree to.”

Serbia continues pressuring Croatia to admit to genocide it did not perpetrate in WWII against Serbs in order to continue denying the genocide it, itself, perpetrated in 1990’s in both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina! The gut-wrenching thing in all this is that pro-communist Yugoslavia political/government leadership of Croatia does nothing to alert the world not to succumb to the nausea infecting the world from Serbia. Even, if that leadership or government of Croatia is in coalition with the Serb activists in Croatia in order to sustain its minority government, it has no right to keep silent in the face of continued barrage of lies and denials of the 1990’s murderous aggression coming from Serbia!

Whether Serbia’s usage of the “Vomit Principle” strategy in its politics to wash away its 1990’s mortal sins against the Croatian people, as if they were never willfully committed, will force Croatian current leadership to further compromise the absolute need of Croatia to defend itself from the murderous Serb aggression is yet to be seen. According to some media sources Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Barnabic has even during the past week “told” Croatia to stop using the term “Serbo-Chetnik aggression” when it comes to Croatia’s Homeland War! Will Serbia’s use of the “Vomit Principle” force a reconciliation founded on the cruel equalisation of the victim with the aggressor? It’s certainly heading that way it seems and it spells no blissful future that depends on truth; it spells a long painful future of unrest among the Croatian people, for certain.

Let’s take a look at what is evidently standing behind Serbia’s leadership’s words – behind what Vucic and Brnabic are saying. In terms of psychology Vucic’s and Brnabic’s, indeed of all Serbia’s leading politicians of decades past, telling lies and pointing fingers at others especially for unrelated acts (for example WWII) has evidently become a way not to admit that which makes them feel ashamed and they do not want to be judged for crimes Serbia has perpetrated. Serbia should be ashamed of its aggression against Croatian people who wanted out of communist Yugoslavia, which, by the way, Serbs controlled to a large extent. Then, of course, the relatively recent trends in historical research into facts of WWII Croatia have revealed several crucial facts regarding WWII Jasenovac and regarding Blessed Alojzije Stepinac that cause anxiety and panic among Serbs who had participated in writing the history of WWII Croatia, based on lies and cruel fabrications. There is the extensive research by American dr Esther Gitman on the rescue and survival of Jews in WWII Croatia which point to the fact that there were Croats, including Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, who made it their task to rescue Jews and others, but still, after WWII Serbs led the persecution against Blessed Alojzije Stepinac with trumped-up charges of Nazi collaboration. Then, British dr Robin Harris published also a biography of Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, based on similar facts. But, wouldn’t you know it (!), Serbia has recently placed Israeli historian Gideon Greif on its payroll and Serbia’s lies get new reinforcement.

Historical archives being open after Croatia seceded from communist Yugoslavia in the 1990’s has enabled historians to delve into researching the history of Jasenovac camp. The results that are emerging from this research give a significantly different picture of WWII Jasenovac. This picture based on discovered documentation is definitely set to throw the false picture Serbs and their allies painted into garbage; onto the heap of human misery and deceit. Serbs and their allies have already maliciously dubbed this research as “Holocaust denial” and “Historical Revisionism”! Some notable researchers into WWII Jasenovac camp have been Blanka M. Matkovic, Igor Vukic, Vladimir Horvat and Stipo Pilic, to name just a few. They all point one to the fact that the myth about WWII Jasenovac camp was a cruel myth devised to prop-up the oppressive communist Yugoslavia regime and the Serb determination to cover up their own terrible participation in the WWII extermination of Jews and their hatred for any kind of independent Croatia.

And so, it has surfaced relatively recently that the myth of Croatian genocide against Serbs in WWII is based on lies and fabrication – and this feeds Serbia’s “Vomit Principle” with ammunition made up of lies. Associated with this principle are Croatian Serbs’, who were directly or sideways associated with the rebel Serb faction in 1990’s Croatia (Such as Milorad Pupovac and Boris Milosevic), constant attempts to characterise the “For Homeland Ready” (Za Dom Spremni) Croatian salute, used for centuries as a mark of patriotic love, as a salute that promotes a genocidal character of Croatian fight for independence! Serb aggression and the need for Croats to preserve their lives amidst the brutal aggression means nothing in their warped minds. They lived in Croatia as the 19990’s war of aggression arose, they live in Croatia today and yet they are activists for Serbia’s anti-Croatian politics! And with this, they all call for a future that is threaded together by peace and reconciliation between Croatia and Serbia!

Surely, Serbia’s use of the “Vomit Principle” cannot possibly succeed in achieving reconciliation because that would mean that Croatia has finally cowered to the pressure of liars and aggressors and that, in no small ways, spells out yet another myth Serbia has managed to forge and place on the world’s stage! To the detriment of humanity and truth! Ina Vukic