The month of November is coming up.
In 1942 it was the month that, I believe, sealed the brutal fate of Croatian independence for decades to come like no other in the history of Croatian people.
It was the month that saw the communists of Yugoslavia hold their first organised congresses or meetings at which the communists, opposing the fight for and the creation of an independent Croatia, declared themselves as legitimate representatives of the Yugoslav people, that is, peoples living within the territory of the failed Serb-led Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This was the time when Croatia had already declared independence from the dark Kingdom of Yugoslavia and was fighting for it amidst German occupation and communist aggression to save Yugoslavia. The criminal thugs against freedom, the communists put on the cloak of “antifascism” and convened the so-called Antifascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia/ ”AVNOJ” (Bihac 26 November 1942 and Jajce 29-30 November 1942).
The fact was and remains that the communists’ army, the Partisans, under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito, were nothing more than terrorists, torturers and mass murderers – for power and control over multiple nations and their territories (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia). The tragedy of this for the plight of Croatians for self-determination and independence was not only the fact that this plight was murderously silenced during WWII, it continued after WWII and it continues to this very day even though Croatia had won its war of independence in 1990’s and its formal breakaway from communist Yugoslavia in October 1991.
The tragedy against Croatian independence and democracy continues to this day perhaps because the wretched AVNOJ is embedded into the Croatian Constitution giving it wrongfully some credit in the historical achievements or milestones in the path to independent Croatia of today. This fact gives wings to former communists and their subscribers to continue running down Croatian independence and to continue giving Serbs and their declared anti-Croat Chetniks a power in decision-making at the high levels of Croatian politics and, therefore, awful macabre reality.
The reality is that the process of equating the Croat-victim with the Serb-aggressor of 1990’s Croatia remains on the appalling government’s agenda and this is done under a pretence of desired reconciliation just like the WWII Yugoslav communists killed off the Croatian independence fight under a pretence of antifascism! And hence, the history of Croatian independence plight was written by communists, filled with lies and half-truths against Croats and the same continues today where Serbs play a major part in this.
Between 1945 and 1948, the Yugoslav communist government punished wartime fighters for the independence of Croatia. British forces in Austria captured members of disarmed Croatian Ustashe and Home-Guard forces along with thousands innocent refugees. These were returned to Yugoslavia, where Partisans summarily executed thousands of innocent Croats. The Communists often used collaboration charges to stifle political and religious opposition, as well as economic and social initiatives that would see communist Yugoslavia bankrupt anyway. The Roman Catholic Church bitterly opposed the new communist order. After the war, the Yugoslav authorities executed over 200 priests and nuns charged with participating in alleged Ustashe atrocities. The Yugoslav communists had kept open the Jasenovac camp in Croatia until about 1951 (!), which was labelled as a concentration camp where the Holocaust came to life with the extermination of Jews and others. Any attempts to research the true nature and numbers of Jasenovac victims are being dealt harsh blows – they gets called historical revisionism, with negative connotations, of course.
The irrefutable fact remains that open and unequivocal communist denunciations of anti-Semitism and reported exterminations of the Jews was not of any importance to the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Indeed, the Communist Party made no efforts, urgent or otherwise, in any rescue of Jews. Whether that was because within it were many powerful Serbs who were evidently agreeable to Serbia being proclaimed Jew-free in 1942 after the extermination of some 94% of Jews in Serbia, is a point that deserves attention of historians, and political analysts. On the contrary, proclamations against anti-Semitism by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were few and painfully sporadic, and acts of rescue or aid even more rare and painfully sporadic. Most importantly, however, the question of anti-Semitism and the unfolding European-wide Nazi genocide simply did not figure prominently on the Yugoslav communists’ agenda – which itself is a revealing fact about their ‘Jewish policy’, insofar as there was a consistent policy, or even one at all. Rescue of the Jews from the hands of the Nazis or any of their collaborators was thus never formulated as a stated objective of the Yugoslav communists.
The rescue of Jews in WWII Croatia was a strong characteristic in Blessed Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac’s efforts, indeed. He was not a communist sympathiser and, hence, to this day his enormously good deeds are more or less ignored and shunned by the powers in Croatia that have among them a large number of former communists and a relatively large number of anti-Croatian independence Serbs.
The Yugoslav Communists with their Serb Chetnik partners go to enormous lengths in covering up the atrocities they committed against freedom-loving Croats. The discovery of some 1000 mass graves of victims of communist and Chetnik crimes on Croatian soil after Croatia set on its path of independence from Yugoslavia in 1990 is a disturbing witness to the Partisans’ terrorism and murder and torture. It’s almost every week that Croatia learns of new crimes committed against its people during WWII and after WWII.
Very few people know, for example, about the gruesome Chetnik massacre of Croats that took place on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in Dugopolje near the city of Split. The crime began on October 2, 1942 and lasted for several days. Don Mijo Marović from Mravinci (Split) reported the crime to the NDH authorities on October 19, 1942. In the Chetnik massacre in Dugopolje and Kotlenice, 32 Croats were killed in the most brutally possible ways: by throwing them into the fire, gouging out their eyes while they were alive, breaking their skulls, cutting off and pulling out their hearts, etc. See full article on Narod.hr portal.
In reporting these atrocities to the NDH authorities don Kajo Marovic wrote on 19 October 1942: “… According to the above-mentioned years, it can be seen that the people who died were all old and could not escape and were weak children. Four of these were thrown into the fire, where they ended up in the most severe torment. Seven were killed with revolvers, and the rest were all slaughtered and brutally tortured. Some had their skulls cut open, their brains removed, others had their eyes gouged out alive, they were tortured and slaughtered. Others had their hearts taken out again and thrown into the field. Once they cut off a man’s head, then put his head on a pig and placed it among the horses and pigs they slaughtered. They were disfigured, it was a horror to watch them. All were buried on October 5 in the church cemetery in Dugopolje, and some even later, when they were found.
All the people of Dugopolje, 3,200 inhabitants, fled before these horrors to Dicmo, Sinj, Klis, from where they have not yet returned home from fear. One part of the people returned and took refuge in the houses that were spared. A large number of people do not even think of returning, because they have nowhere to come or anything to live on…”
For a thorough presentation of details of communist’s and Chetnik’s victims in Digopolje area I would recommend the reading of the 2011 book by Blanka Matkovic and Josip Dukic: “The Victims of Dugopolje” (Dugopoljski žrtvoslov).
As in November 1942 so too in November 1991 the Croatian plight for independence was suffocated with atrocities committed against it. In November 1991 the Serb and Yugoslav forces massacred hundreds of Croatians in Vukovar and its nearby Ovcara and expelled more than 20,000 Croats from that Croatian town! In November 1991 Vukovar was ethnically cleansed of its non-Serb population amidst the rivers of Croatian blood spilled for Croatia’s independence.
As Croatia in November 2020 marks commemorations of Vukovar and sufferings of Croats during the 1990’s Homeland War for independence it should also remember November 1942! The same suffering and terror were put in place, installed, in 1942 as were in 1991.
AVNOJ or Yugoslav communists have no place in the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia and I would personally like to see that all commemorations of victims for Croatian independence also begin to include a strong pressure and resolve to remove the mention of AVNOJ from the Constitution as a contributor to the creation of the modern democratic and independent Croatia. AVNOJ stopped independence in WWII, AVNOJ tried to stop independence during 1990’s. The truth must begin to root out the communist lies, the Serb lies and what a good time for that is November 2020! AVNOJ was written into the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia in 1990 – at the time when president Franjo Tudjman and leading figure in the movement for the independence of Croatia hoped for reconciliation between all WWII sides but since then Croatia had endured a war and an ongoing onslaught against full independence from former communists/Partisans and of course anti-Croatia Serbs. Surely, evidence enough that former communists have not given up on carrying a torch for the criminal regime that communist Yugoslavia was and even carrying a torch for the Greater Serbia lies and destructive depravities. Ina Vukic
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Persecuting Journalist In Croatia For Exposing Serb Orthodox Priests Glorifying Chetnik Murderers
Marko Juric
Host: Z1TV “Mark’s Square” Program
Photo: Screenshot Z1 TV Croatia January 2016
No judge, no jury – Croatia’s e-media (electronic media regulatory body in Croatia) has decided last week to temporarily shut down the broadcasting of Z1 TV programs as its draconian and utterly communist Yugoslavia-style response to opinion or comment expressed by TV program “Markov Trg” (Mark’s Square) host Marko Juric and an utterly ugly and hateful lynch against Juric was thus unleashed in public without any regard to justice or justification and indeed the right to “fair comment”, which – by the way – is and has been a solid rock for journalists to hold onto in defense of their opinions or comments throughout developed democracies of the Western world. Regretfully, Croatian democracy or democratic thought and deed have a long way to go before it can safely be said that Croatian citizens are truly safe from terrorist communist whips.
Specifically, the episode of Mark’s Square TV program, “Gvozdansko Versus Floral Square”, hosted by Marko Juric, included video material in which the current leaders/priests of Sebrian Orthodox Church in Zagreb Croatia along with their Serbian Orthdox Church officials sing Chetnik songs and praise the war criminal Momcilo Djujic. For those who may not be aware the Serb rebels in Croatia and the Serbs who attacked Croatia in 1991 (and later Bosnia and Herzegovina), slaughtering Croats and other non-Serbs, ethnically cleansing of them a third of Croatian territory – called themselves “Chetniks” as meaning Serbian royalist WWII Chetnik fighters; Momcilo Djujic was a Serb Orthodox Church priest who appointed himself a Chetnik during WWII and led the slaughter of some 2,000 innocent Croats in the Dalmatian region, he was also instrumental in perpetuating the Chetnik ideals throughout the Serb-aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina in the early 1990’s despite his advanced age.
Just before the last minute of the said TV program Marko Juric ended it, commenting: “…and another message to dear people of Zagreb, to all of you who stroll across the Floral Square, be careful, as nearby there stands a church in which, to paraphrase a Serbian Minister – Chetnik Vicars keep court. Hence, my dear Zagrebians, when you stroll along the Floral Square, especially mothers with children, take care so that one of those Vicars doesn’t run out of the church and, in his best slaughtering manner, executes his bloody feast on our most beautiful square in Zagreb, which perhaps should be marked with a plaque: “Beware – Sharp Chetnik Nearby.”
Left Serbian Orthodox Church
Metropolitanate for Zagreb (and Ljubljana) Porfirije
singing songs praising Serb Chetnik murderers
January 2016, Photo: Screenshot Youtube 26 January 2016
When one considers the video material in which the Zagreb’s Serb Orthodox Church priests/leaders sing praises to murderers and war criminals, having in mind the fact that Croatia’s Homeland War, in which the Serbs were the aggressors, wounds have still not healed…one can only conclude that Marko Juric’s comment was more a fair comment and a fair opinion and not hate speech as Croatia’s communist league are branding it.
But regardless of what Marko Juric’s comment was, how it is branded, one would think that the measures of closing a television program/station for even a day would be a decision that only a court could make after all evidence is tested! After all, people’s livelihoods and freedoms are at stake. Criminal sanctions have been brought against Z1 TV by e-media regulatory body without even seeing a criminal court, let alone having the benefit of due process!
Protest in Zagreb Croatia 26 January 2016
in support of Marko Juric & Z1 TV
Calling for sacking of head of e-media
Photo: Facebook
I am utterly guttered with disappointment that the Croatian authorities have not stepped in with appropriate steps to stop such practices. It’s true that this unfortunate and utterly unjust measure to shut the TV station down occurred during the days when the old “communist” government was on its way out in Croatia and the new one coming in last week, but this move by the e-media demonstrates clearly that public institutions are very much saturated with politics and need swift stripping down… If Croatia’s relevant laws or regulations permit a government agency such as e-media to shut down a public media outlet overnight, on basis of opinions about opinions expressed by journalists, without testing those opinions in a court of justice, then Croatia had during the mandate of the former communist-prone government of Zoran Milanovic slipped further back into the dark ages when the same people were your accuser, your judge, your jury and your executioner! Very disturbing, indeed.
Protest for freedom of speech
for support of journalist
Marko Juric and Z1TV is
“bigger than Ben Hur” on
26 January 2016 Zagreb Croatia
Way to go!
Photo: Boris Kovacev/CroPix
It goes without saying: generally laws against inciting hatred should be universal and prohibit all incitements to hatred – not just some. And so, how come the doors of that Serb Orthodox church in Zagreb still remain open despite the fact that their priests and leaders incite hatred – incite or glorify murder of Croats through songs they sing at festive official receptions, soirées, etc.!
Singling out sides like the Croatian e-media has in this case creates resentment among people who are not protected by laws of hate speech or incitement to hatred – in this case it seems Croatians are not protected from Serb Orthodox priests singing praise to Chetniks who murdered many thousands innocent Croats through history but especially painful murders are the most recent ones from 1990’s, which is bad for community cohesion, to say the least. Everyone should be equal before the law, in which case all incitements of hatred should be an offense, however, fair comments must not be confused as hate speech and where politics drive agendas fair comments will often be presented as hate speech and the government instruments should be there to prevent this.
Under the condition of clearly marking hate speech there are sound arguments to justify a prohibition on inciting hatred as it is deemed to be a method of protecting people and creating a social atmosphere where subjects of hatred have redress against their tormentors. Another argument for protection against hate speech is that hatred is the gateway to discrimination, harassment and violence. It is without a doubt the psychological foundation for serious, harmful criminal acts. On these grounds, laws against inciting hatred are ethically justified and have practical benefits as long as they do not tolerate “trigger happy” individuals who take the law into their own hands such as the heads of e-media in Croatia have these past days.
Many thousands line the streets of Zagreb
calling for sacking of heads of e-medija Croatia
16 January 2016
Photo: Facebook
The downside of incitement to hatred prohibitions (laws), of course, is that they seriously risk infringing freedom of speech. Who decides what constitutes hatred? Where do you draw the line between legitimate robust criticism and satire, and illegitimate, criminal incitement of hatred? It isn’t simple and straightforward anywhere except, it seems, in Croatia (and other former communist Yugoslavia countries) where lustration has not been implemented and die-hard communists still hold important positions from which they can do as they please. The move to shut down Z1 TV for what Marko Juric said, out of his duty as a public journalist, in order to show the public the hatred still being spread through the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia is a terrible betrayal of Croatian people and justice. The heads of e-media in Croatia should be sacked forthwith! The head of Mirjana Rakic, head of e-medija, must roll! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)
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