Croatia: Majority (Croat) Rights Vs. Minority (Serb) Rights

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, President of Croatia (L)
Ivan Penava, Mayor of Vukovar (R)
Photo: uredpredsjednice.hr

When the Constitutional Court of Croatia (of any country) evidently and blatantly misses the beat of its own country’s heart (and reason for existence – in the case of Croatia that reason is victory over brutal Serb aggression in the Homeland War) then one could justly pose the question of whether the nation should permit such undermining of its defining morality and character that are the beacons for justice and, if you like, full democracy. When minority rights are taken out of the context of national suffering and the need to pursue justice for the victims of brutal aggression, one inevitably ends up with major problems and discontent; and blatant unfairness at the basic human level. And so, while on the one hand Croatia battles a political crisis with overtures of restructure of its government, Serb minority rights claims are in a hot seat that requires determination and resolve to end Serb provocation in Croatia once and for all.

For most lawyers, constitutional courts’ success in protecting democracy should be measured by their jurisprudential record – their performance according to legal professional standards of appropriate decision-making. On this view of things, courts are essentially reactive institutions. The only power they have to influence the quality of democracy is to interpret democratic rights in the cases they happen to be asked to decide. For many political scientists, this legalistic measure is inadequate. What needs to be assessed is the actual impact of a court’s decisions on the overall quality of democracy, i.e. life in the country that cannot ignore the priority of essential needs of its people, or majority. On this account, constitutional courts have much greater agency than lawyers give them credit for. They should be seen as political institutions with the capacity to adjust their decisions according to their likely effects. Especially in developing democracies such as Croatia, which still has a long way to go towards delivering justice for victims of Serb aggression of early 1990’s. But given that most judges still sitting in that court in Croatia are remnants of the Yugoslav communist minds the political pull or effects of Constitutional Court judgments have so far mostly gone towards Yugo-nostalgia rather than independent Croatia. If it were the latter Croatia would not, almost 30 years after the Homeland War still be gasping and pleading for justice and human fairness towards the enormous number of victims of Serb aggression.

Ivan Penava, the Mayor of Vukovar, has Friday 19 July 2019 accused sections of Croatian society of turning their heads away from the Homeland War and its victims.

I hear in the statements these days: He does not respect the Constitution, we are modern, we are liberal and we insist that the Constitution be respected. Gentlemen, for 28 years you have not respected that same Constitution and now you have the cheek to come to a city that was destroyed and bombarded with 6.5 million grenades … You hold such attitudes and you come to Vukovar to ask the Mayor if he will respect the Constitution. Yes he will; this has never been an issue. The Mayor will be the first to respect it. However, I ask you where your humanness and cheek are, when you give yourself the right to come here and ask such a question,” Ivan Penava told reporters accusing parts of the Croatian society of having turned their heads away from the Homeland War, from the raped, the missing, the killed and raped and do not see problems with which the people of Vukovar are faced.

“We are not talking about Peter and Mark here. We are talking about thousands of those killed and imprisoned, of hundreds that were raped and again of thousands of displaced people, of those whose rights were denied them. For many of these it’s unfortunately too late for any kind of justice,” concluded Ivan Penava.

This Penava reaction comes post Croatian Constitutional Court decision of 2 July 2019, which determined that Vukovar City councillors from the Serb ethnic minority should have the same conditions as councillors of Croatian ethnicity. I.e., among other things that Council meeting minutes, agendas etc. should be made available in the Serbian Cyrillic script.

According to HINA News Agency report Mayor Ivan Penava said Friday that for the town authorities it was not at all disputable whether or not he would respect the decision of the Constitutional Court, which concluded that the rights of the Serb national minority in Vukovar had to be improved, and he also said that no law was self-contained purpose but must be in the service of the people.

In August 2015, Vukovar changed its town statute to say that the collective rights of the Serb minority [re street signs, government building signs etc.) in the area of the town of Vukovar are to be ensured when the conditions are met.

Under this change, councillors in Vukovar of Serb extraction could get documents issued in the Serbian Cyrillic language/script, but only if they made specific written requests for that.

The Vukovar council voted for the changes in November 2013, proclaiming Vukovar a “city of special significance” exempt from Croatian minority rights legislation because of what it suffered when it was besieged and destroyed by Serbian forces in 1991.

The move came after months of protests sparked by the official introduction of bilingualism, as envisaged by Croatian law in places where a minority makes up more than 30 per cent of the population, as Vukovar’s Serb community does. It must be remembered though that this percentage has been disputed on the fact that no credible census was had to establish it and that the percentage claimed could well have been falsely boosted by Serbs who are registered as living in Vukovar but in fact reside in Serbia.

However, Croatia’s Committee on Human and National Minority Rights complained about the statute changes and requested an evaluation of their constitutionality.

2 July 2019 Constitutional Court decision overturned some of the Vukovar Town Council statue changes, decreeing that Serbs – whether councillors or members of the public – must be able to get official documents in their own language and script.

Miroslav Separovic, President of the Constitutional Court said that Vukovar Town Council will have to extend the level of the rights of the Serbian ethnic minority and that the court will not tolerate any delays because nothing has been done so far.

While the President of the Republic of Croatia cannot comment on the decision of the Constitutional Court Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic did, however, on Friday 19 July, point to Article 8 of the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities, which states that these rights must be interpreted and applied with the aim of respecting the minorities and the Croat people, developing understanding, solidarity, tolerance and dialogue among them. Grabar Kitarovic holds that under such circumstances, when the fundamental human rights are neglected, the necessary prerequisites for the expansion of special rights that have to become a democratic standard in Croatia have not been procured and she agreed that it is bad to delay them. However, she called for the same criteria to be applied to proceedings against war crimes suspects and that the declaration by appropriate authorities regarding those cannot be delayed, either. Such an attitude is a good prerequisite for regulated relations based on the trust of the majority people and members of the Serbian national minority, especially in the wounded Vukovar.

The Republic of Croatia must pay particular attention to Vukovar, and it is also a duty of the top state authorities to demand the resolution to the injustice felt by the population of Vukovar. It is inconceivable that nobody has been made responsible for the massacre at Borovo Selo and that no one solved the question of 30,000 concentration camp detainees, the missing … How will we justify this from the constitutional as well as from the moral aspect?

Because of this, the position of Ivan Penava, the Mayor of Vukovar, may not be called as disrespectful of the Constitutional Court’s decision, but an invitation, which I personally support, to finally close the issues of the past and thus provide a sincere opportunity for the future. I do not want any separation or conflict between Croats and Serbs, but I call for patience and consideration, which implies accepting the fact that Vukovar is still treating its wounds. I hold that the obligation of state institutions is to make more effort as soon as possible and find the best solutions that will not cause tension and distrust among people, but rather the opposite,” said President Grabar-Kitarović.

Indeed, even at the merely basic level of human fairness one cannot condone the pressure (from Constitutional Court) to implement promulgation of minority rights when that same court has done nothing to pressure the minority (Serb) to act of the rights of the majority (Croats). By saying this I am aware that while deliberating its decision on Serb minority rights in Vukovar the Constitutional Court was well appraised of the majority rights that stand behind the initial limitation, suspension or ban of the Cyrillic script in Vukovar! Ina Vukic

Croatia: Taste Of Marx’s Theory Of Socialism In President’s Marginalisation

Banner at Zagreb Protest
against Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic
12 February 2018
Banner says: “Serbia must answer for genocide in Croatia
and pay war damages”
Photo: Davor Kovacevic

Stating her official presidential view about the people who protested against the arrival of Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vucic in Croatia, many of who were Croatia’s Homeland War veterans and war widows, Croatia’s president Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic said:

“…We cannot permit individuals from the margins of the political spectrum or from the margins of any type of thinking dictate our politics.” (HRT TV News 13 February 2017)
Prsident Grabar Kitarovic concluded that the policies and inter-state relations should be determined “by us, statesmen and stateswomen, as well as a vast majority of our citizens who support Mr Vucic’s visit to Croatia…”!

Marginalisation is defined as exclusion from meaningful participation in society. Marginalisation in a broader sense can refer to a lack access to vital information and public discussion and thereby the marginalised’s ability to participate in public affairs and act as citizens is thwarted or devalued.

The idea of powerlessness that marginalisation brings links to Marx’s theory of socialism: some people “have” power while others “have not”. The powerless are dominated by the ruling class and are situated to take orders and rarely have the right to give them.

Some of the fundamental injustices associated with powerlessness are inhibition to develop one’s capacities, lack of decision-making power, and exposure to disrespectful treatment because of the lowered status.

Oppression at its “best”.

Given that people who attended the protest come from all positions on the political spectrum (from left to right/ or vice versa) it is not clear which one of these the president considers marginal. It is also not clear whether she actually meant only to label as marginal citizens the individuals who dared to protest.

It is clear that by labeling protesters against Serbia’s president’s visit Grabar Kitarovic employed a yet another distasteful tactic to suppress the many attempts, including those by a number of Members of Croatian Parliament, that called for Aleksandar Vucic’s both personal and state apology for the horror of aggression they waged against Croatia in the early 1990’s.

It is clear that everyone attending the protest felt directly insulted by the president’s insinuation of marginality. The media went wild. The president won no brownie points within her electorate (the Croatian voters) but lost quite a few. The protesters won quite a swell in support throughout Croatia and resentment about being considered as marginal spread like the Bubonic plague.

Presideent Grabar Kitarovic would have done well for her political agenda had she researched the enormous potential in political power marginalised people can assemble. She would have discovered that, for instance, the people in Britain who felt that they had been pushed to the margins of society were actually the driving force behind Brexit (Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2016 research findings). While the marginal people in this case of Brexit votes are those belonging to society’s margins of income and education etc. the Croatian president has created marginal groups for public discussion input, which of course, could come back and bite her at next presidential elections were she in mind to run.

Vucic’s visit to Croatia accompanied by Grabar Kitarovic’s marginalisation of freedom of opinion of some and the angst, the revolts, the protests all this has caused among a significant part of the community may yet prove to be a “wake up call” for those who insist that reconciliation cannot occur unless the Homeland War history and associated issues are reconciled first. And they are many! Certainly they cannot depend on their president with much certainty. Vucic or Serbia will most likely never give in to demands for war damage reparation not for full disclosure of all missing persons from the War. And Vucic said as much during his visit to Zagreb.

In 1991, the government in Belgrade, Serbia, aided the rebellion of ethnic Serbs in Croatia, who seized control of nearly one-third of the country and expelled hundreds of thousands of Croats. The tables turned in 1995, when about 200,000 ethnic Serbs fled to Serbia, despite being asked by Croatia’s leadership to remain in Croatia, when the Croatian army retook the occupied territory. An estimated 20,000 people were killed and thousands are still missing from the five years of conflict.

As for the past, we agree on almost nothing, but at least we understand that the other side has a different view,” said Vucic, who as a lawmaker during the war urged Croatian ethnic Serbs to attack Croats and hold onto the occupied and ethnically cleansed of Croats territory. “However, Serbia and Croatia will have to forge much better relations in the future, whether politicians like it or not,” he concluded almost defiantly.

Since when did real and brutal aggression become a matter of view!?

With Grabar Kitarovic’s energy focused on the process of being more friendly with Serbia at the expense of blotting out or suppressing or pussyfooting around burning issues from the War and Serbia’s aggression, there’s a danger the concerns of people at home will be ignored further. And there you have a formula for endless more years of despair and disquiet.

So much for her being the president of all Croatians! She has just sent groups of Croatian citizens into marginalised social standing or outer limit or edge of society. She has excluded the protesters from participating with recognition on the discourse about genuine public interests. I do look toward coming across Grabar Kitarovic’s clarification as to which groups from the anti-Vucic protests she considers to be on margins of thinking or political spectrum. The Croatian Homeland War veterans involved have a duty towards the state of Croatia to seek clarification of this. Ina Vukic

Croatia: Distressing Taste Of Red

Celebrating 22 anniversary
of Croatian Operation Storm
in Knin 5th August 2017
Photo: Dusko Jeremez/Pixsell

As far as many are concerned, wearing a red dress (red being the colour symbol of communism that has mass murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Croats until 1990) scored no positive points but those of unease for the president of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, at the official state celebration 5 August in the town of Knin of Croatia’s victory over Serbian aggressor and communist Yugoslav forces in 1995. This non-point-scoring of the red dress becomes particularly pertinent and offensive when, on the same day, arrests were made in the same town, at the same celebration, of several Croatian men including veterans, who fought in the 1995 liberating Operation Storm under HOS (Croatian Defence Force) insignia “Za Dom Spremni”, for calling out in pride “For Home Ready” (Za Dom Spremni) – the salutation persistently and wrongfully being associated with WWII Croatian Ustashe regime, by the former communists especially, even though its roots reach far beyond WWII into Croatian proud history!

While generally a red dress may look good and glamorous, on occasions like this one, where pride in victory over communism and bloody Serb aggression is celebrated, those in power must display absolute and thorough political and moral sensitivity to their people’s plights, to the plights for which thousands lost their lives while hundreds of thousands of Croats and other non-Serbs were ethnically cleansed from their homes and Croatia devastated. Evidently this was not the case in Knin on Saturday 5 August 2017. And that is sad and distressing!

5th August 2017 – 22nd anniversary of Croatia Victory Day also celebrating Day of Homeland Gratitude and Croatian Defender’s Day. Croatia’s entire political leadership, war veterans and about 8,000 people officially celebrated in Knin its victory over Serb rebels and Serb forces in 1995’s military Operation Storm.

 

Operation Storm was the time when Croatian defence forces proved to the world that David could still defeat Goliath.

And that is what the sentiment of these celebrations should have emanated.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and parliament president Gordan Jandrokovic laid wreaths and paid their respects at the monument dedicated to the victory on Knin’s central square. Grabar Kitarovic said that Croatia hopes that one day even Serbs will celebrate Storm as the operation that “ended Greater Serbian aggression”. She said in her speech that she wishes to express her regret for the Serb victims of Operation Storm, continuing: “Croatian people did not want war and does not revel in anyone’s suffering. That’s why Croatian state makes an exemplary effort, with its own resources, to secure the return of all those who want to return. It does that despite the fact that the initiators of aggression against Croatia have not paid a single kuna or, more to the point, a single dinar for the restoration of everything that the Chetniks and the so-called Yugoslav People’s Army destroyed during the four years of artillery shelling, pillage and plunder. Hence, with full protection of national interests Croatia will give its full support for Serbia’s entry into the European Union.”

Croatia’s president Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic
in Knin on 5th August 2017
Photo: Net.hr

While reconciliation is a noble pursuit, in the case of celebrating Operation Storm, the end of Croatia’s horrific suffering at the hands of Serbs, talking of self-imposed victims on the side of the aggressor as if they were innocent victims is something that Croatian victims and defenders would find hard and painful to take. Particularly when it means that Grabar-Kitarovic’s talk of Serb victims in Oluja in effect gave a certain validity (undeserved) to Serbia’s commemoration for Serb victims of Operation Storm held in several towns and cities across Serbia on Friday 4th August, which commemoration denies Serb aggression, continues to promulgate lies about forced deportations of Serbs from Croatia and justifies Serb genocide and ethnic cleansing over the Croatian people when they set out to break away from communist Yugoslavia.

If one wants to achieve true and lasting reconciliation then it is essential to clearly delineate between the aggressor and the victim. The events around marking Croatia’s victory over Serb aggression, whether those in Croatia (where accent is given to the victim-hood of the aggressor) or those in Serbia (where Serb victim-hood is accentuated even though such was self-imposed), all give the sense of the undying political exercise of equating the aggressor with the victim. In every war there are victims on the side of the aggressor but it needs to be recognised and maintained that those victims would not be so if the aggression and the need to defend oneself did not occur in the first place. In that sense any Serb victims deserved no mention at Croatia’s victory celebration. The intention of Serb aggression in Croatia was to destroy Croatia and Croats and both the fighting forces and many Serb civilians participated in that destructive energy.

Croatia’s minister for veterans’ affairs
Tomo Medved (Second from R) in Slunj
Photo: Dnevnik 2017

Hence, when it comes to this year’s celebration of Operation Storm 1995 in Croatia I (and multitudes) place my preference on the one held in the town of Slunj where the Croatian minister for veterans’ affairs, Tomo Medved, said that the Croatian forces, in that magnificent military operation, succeeded in destroying the bloody feast of aggression and brought back the citizens from a four-year deportation.

We succeeded, we liberated all of the occupied regions, we made it possible for people to return to their homes, but we paid an enormous price for our freedom, 352 lives, in this area alone, of Croatian defenders and civilians,” Medved said before some 10,000 people.

Yes, Croatia has succeeded in winning the 1990’s military war imposed upon it by Serb and communist Yugoslavia aggressor, however, Croatia stands forced into decades long, largely unyielding, distressing battles against the remnants of communism that suffocate strong democratic progress and keep the distressing and utterly unfair push for equating the aggressor with the victim thriving. No more red dresses or shirts on occasions of official celebrations of Croatian victory over its aggressor, please! Ina Vukic

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