Serb concentration camps – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Happy Birthday Zeljko and Davor Glasnovic

February 24, 2022 by inavukic 4 Comments

Zeljko Glasnovic (L) Davor Glasnovic (R)

This year, 2022, marks yet another jubilee to celebrate in the realisation of freedom for Croatia – the May 1992 front door entry as member state of the United Nations. Between 1990 and 1995 thousands of Croatian freedom fighters descended upon the battlefields of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from all over the world, sacrificing their lives and millions of them struggled to drive away the utterly cruel Serb and communist Yugoslavia aggression. The victory against the cruel and genocidal aggressor was glorious for Croatians and it was to usher in democracy centred around all people in Croatia and beyond. How the Croatian nation has fared, without shedding communism and its mindset from all of its public administration, social and political milieus, as promised it would the very day of announcing secession from communist Yugoslavia in 1991, over the last 30 years is something we sadly and bitterly resent, knowing we cannot change that past, but the future is in our hands. Communist mindset, corrupt behaviour in public institutions and government still hold the reins that keep Croatia back from becoming a full democracy.

It is a nation’s duty to remember not only the heroism but also the suffering that fight for independence that were and are etched in the history of its existence and its hopes. And such memory is stronger when heroism and suffering are personified in people we live with, people we know and people we trust. And so, today, 24 February happens to be the birthday of twin brothers Zeljko Glasnovic and Davor Glasnovic, who had at time of raging war of aggression in Croatia come from Canada to lend a crucially helping hand in the creation of the independent state of Croatia on the battlefields and to take a heavy load of suffering through wounds and in Davor’s case – unspeakable torture as prisoner of Serb concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Today still, they serve as example of steadfast hope and determination that Croatia will one day be strong enough to decommunise; to rid itself of the insufferable canker that communism is.

I wish Zeljko and Davor Glasnovic a very happy birthday and know that many join me in these wishes.

Zeljko Glasnovic is a general of the Croatian Army (HV) and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and a politician.

Zeljko Glasnovic spent five years in the Canadian army, and a year and a half in the French Foreign Legion. In August 1991, he came to Croatia and joined the National Guard Corps. During the war he fought in Lika and on the Southern battlefield, and after the fall of Vukovar he moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina, to Tomislavgrad where he had to train new units.

In April 1992, he took part in the fighting in Kupres, where he was seriously wounded. He received a bullet near his heart, and it was said that he told his comrades-in-arms to leave him with a bomb he could use on himself should Serb enemy approach and start drawing. However, his comrades did not listen to him, so they dragged him across the snow-covered mountains to the Franciscan monastery on Šćit in Rama, from where he was transferred to Split Hospital. He spent two months in a hospital in Split, after which, still not recovered, he escaped and returned to the Kupres battlefield. In October 1992, he took over the King Tomislav Brigade. At that time, his twin brother Davor was captured in Kupres and tortured in Serbian camps.

He was first politically engaged in the November 2015 parliamentary elections. He is known for his firmly right-wing political views, especially in the area of the need to decommunise Croatia, and until July 2021 he was a member of the Croatian Parliament for the Croatian Diaspora.

Zeljko’s twin bother Davor Glasnovic also returned to Croatia from Canada to contribute to the defence of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the war of Serbian aggression. He was a member of the Special Unit of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia / SP GSHV Battalion Frankopan. On July 31, 1993, he was released after 13 months of torture in that Serb concentration camp, without one ear, in plaster, with a traumatised body that included having his knees drilled with electric drill, skin on his back torn away and an unbroken spirit for the freedom of Croatia.

Here is what Zeljko Glasnovic wrote about his brother Davor on July 31, 2021:

“On this day in 1993, after months of torture and Golgotha in a Serbian camp, my brother was released. The DORH (Public Attorney) never did anything against his torturers, nor were Croatian institutions interested in talking to him. They were not interested in where he was but instead, he was on the Serbian list of war crimes suspects in an area where he had never been during the period he was in their captivity.

While our defenders with fabricated indictments are sent to The Hague, executed, called war criminals, their dignity mocked, their victimhood belittled and forced to pay compensation to the families of killed aggressors who attacked our country, amnestied Chetniks and their families have special privileges, pensions, statuses, honour, reputation and even power. They are victims! This is a paradox that will last until lustration is implemented and final liberation of the Croatian home, which is still in the jaws of Yugozomboids, in which all defenders will be restored to their dignity and in which all victims will be able to tell their stories out loud, their abusers will be punished, and justice will at least partially be satisfied. For there will never be true justice for the fate of all victims, at least not in this world.”

God bless and Happy Birthday!
Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Croatia 30 years member of United Nations, Croatian Defence Council, Croatian Homeland War, Davor Glasnovic, genocide, HVO, Kupres, Serb aggression, Serb concentration camps, Tomislavhrad, torture, Vukovar, Zeljko Glasnovic

Croatia: Demands For Serbia’s Accountability For Crimes In Concentration Camps

July 15, 2015 by inavukic 27 Comments

Members of Croatian
Association Of The Inmates
Of Serb Concentration Camps
In The Split-Dalmatia County
File Motion For Damages
and Serbia’s Accountability
Photo: Sime Duvancic

Eighty-eight former inmates of Serb-run concentration camps from Split-Dalmatia County, during the 1990’s Serb-aggression against Croatia, on Tuesday 14 July 2015 filed a motion at the prosecutor’s office in Split for a peaceful settlement of their claims for damages in which they ask that Croatia request on their behalf that Serbia compensate them as a requirement for its accession to the European Union.

“Through this motion of peaceful settlement, through the institutions of the Croatian state, we wish to achieve a result that either our own country takes care of us or that it, at least, in a future move towards Serbia implements a condition that Serbia must satisfy our compensation claims before it can become a member of the European Union,” said Ivan Turudic, the Croatian Association Of The Inmates Of Serb Concentration Camps In The Split-Dalmatia County.

The 88 former inmates spent a total of 8,668 days in Serb-run camps, each losing about 99 days of their lives to torture and deprivation in these camps.
In 2006, over 30,000 former inmates, including 500 children and over 2,500 women, filed a class action in Serbia claiming damages from Serbia, but the action involving Croatian veterans’ claims was not even considered and the one involving children, the elderly and women was rejected by the court in Serbia.

Ivan Turudic, President of
Croatian Association Of The Inmates
Of Serb Concentration Camps
In The Split-Dalmatia County
Photo: Marko Saric

Turudic said there were few final rulings in the towns of Knin and Sibenik. “Recently, the problem has arisen that when a final ruling is passed, we cannot be compensated because those who were tried for war crimes have no property in Croatia.”

Dragan Vasiljkovic

Furthermore, Turudic says that it looks like the victims of the Serb-run concentration camps will not be able to extract any money as compensation from Dragan Vasiljkovic (a.k.a. Captain Dragan and Daniel Snedden) who had been extradited to Croatia from Australia last week to face war crimes charges (including torture in the Serb-run concentration camps) as he has been reported to be bankrupt after having to pay out damages for defamation in Australian courts.

Serbia must be held accountable and responsible for any damages suffered under its brutal aggression.

Members of the Croatian Association Of The Inmates Of Serb Concentration Camps In The Split-Dalmatia County say that while believing in the Croatian institutions they have been forced into an insufferable situation of hopelessness and left at the margins even though they comprise one of the groups that suffered most during the 1990’s Homeland War under Serb aggression.

Due to the suffering, many of them, because they were so brutally and violently tortured, will not live to see a final court ruling, let alone compensation – there is a high death rate among them, said Ivan Turudic.

He said damages were paid to “those who destroyed Croatia’s constitutional and legal order, while the victims are still waiting for the right to compensation.”

Victims of Serb Concentration Camps
In Croatia Seeking To
Make Serbia Responsible
For The Suffering Caused
Photo: M. Turudic

“We are justified in asking whether we, the veterans who were also incarcerated in concentration camps, have been forgotten in our own country, do we belong to a second order and have no right to justice, while the other side gets any of its cases or claims attended to promptly and we then ask by what right does that minority, which had committed the crimes in the name of Greater Serbia politics, continues to terrorise and impose its will upon the majority,” said Turudic.

Indeed, there is no way that the current government will even try helping the Croatian veterans along the way to justice and dignity through some deserved compensation. The communists and former communists within this government seem to be intentionally walking on egg-shells so as not to “offend” the Serb minority, from whose circles the 1990’s war criminals against Croatia and Croats arise, despite the blatant need for true justice.

No wonder, war veterans have been protesting non-stop in Zagreb for the past 270 days or so! New cases of veteran neglect and disregard arise all the time and this case of those who suffered terribly in the Serb-run concentration camps in Split-Dalmatia country is just another example of hopelessness and sadness that has gripped Croatia. Serbs will always deny guilt for any crimes – we are witnesses to that infuriating fact. Such being the case I would have thought that the Croatian government and its institutions would have put in extra effort to assist its veterans receive justice. The current foreign affairs minister Vesna Pusic would have surely been the one from Croatia who did not lift a finger in trying to keep these Croatian claims in Serbian courts afloat. While she cannot as minister interfere in court cases these though were rejected on political reasons, hence room to give firm diplomacy a go. But no. She has had a strong role in helping Serbia maintain its war crimes denial and injustice towards victims. So, the positive side is that Croatia has war veterans and victims of Serb aggression, ethnic cleansing, genocide, torture, rape… who will not permit they are forgotten! Any politician who picks up on that fighting for justice energy from the war veterans will, according to many indications of political psyche, be the winner of tomorrow as far as true leadership goes for Croatia. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Captain Dragan, compensation for war suffering, Croatia, Croatian Association Of The Inmates Of Serb Concentration Camps In The Split-Dalmatia County, Croatian War Veterans, Daniel Snedden, Dragan Vasiljkovic, Ivan Turudic, Serb concentration camps, war crimes

Croatia: Goodbye Violeta-Vicky, The Heroine Of Freedom

August 2, 2014 by inavukic 81 Comments

Tribute to Violeta Antolic – Vicky
Original photo collation by Goran D.

She was barely 21 years old when she left her three-year-old son in the care of others at the bomb shelter in Vukovar, took a rifle into her hands and went shoulder to shoulder to the front-line with her male veterans, the heroes of Croatia’s Homeland War, to defend the city from Serb aggression, beastly destruction of anyone non-Serb, of their homes, infrastructure, community and religious buildings…Violeta Antolic – Vicky defended Vukovar’s Sajmiste to the last minute, until ethnically cleansed and devastated Vukovar fell into Serb occupation (November 1991), only to end up in a Serb concentration camp – as a courageous defender she was the only woman in HOS (1991 Croatian Defence Forces arm of Croatian Party of Rights made up of volunteers from Croatia and abroad) fighting the enemy on equally strong and determined love for freedom as her male veterans. She endured all the imaginable and unimaginable horrors of war; she was a heroine the kind of which one rarely sees in battlefields only to die in a fatal car crash in Zagreb, in her free Croatia, on Tuesday 29 July 2014.
“The first line of defence was at Sajmiste, the place where I grew up and where I lived. When I arrived (to HOS local headquarters) I said that I did not want to be someone who is entrusted for First Aid, that I did not want to be nurse or a cook,” said Violeta in an interview two months ago for Oluja (Storm) magazine.
Here is some more of Violeta’s story of courage, suffering and determination for freedom:
“When they started shooting at our home from the barracks, we had to run into our neighbour’s cellar. The army started to come out of the barracks and we were not aware of this. They also started to shoot at my son, whom I was carrying in my arms. As we broke through to Olajnica my three-year-old son screamed and cried: mama, mama. The shelter was full of men and women.

I felt safer but everything in me burned with rage.

I thought: they shot at my son – I’ll strike back.

In a coincidence, the boys from HOS formation were passing by. I asked if they had a gun for me, because I had no money to buy one. They gave me a Kalashnikov. Street battles ensued that night. They captured one of ours. Sajmiste echoed from his screams. I froze then, but I decided to remain at Sajmiste. We found clean clothes in houses and brought water from the well. That’s how we kept ourselves clean. A sniper fatally hit our first commander Vladimir Derek-Sokol at that spot. We did not go out for water any more. Things were getting worse and worse. When Vukovar “fell” we withdrew from the front lines.

The stench of death was in the air; the city had collapsed under the final defence.

The Serb paramilitary and local Serbs took the few people that remained to Velepromet. After that I dressed in civilian clothes and went to get my son, and with my child was taken to Velepromet. They separated us into male and female columns. They pulled out my stepfather and beat him.

They separated me from my son; I thought I would go mad. I pleaded with them to return him to me.

They laughed and giggled at me saying that they would take him to Belgrade and place him in an orphanage. Luckily a friend of mine took my son. Soon after four men came and took me away and beat me with batons, rifles, sticks and feet. My first neighbour who drove his fist into my face first hit me. He was younger than me. Predrag Marusin-Pedja hit me after the main gendarme Nenad Zigic gave him approval for that. Pedja was a dear young man before the war. I think he was an artist. If the situation were reversed I would never let a hair fall from his scalp. Miki Ikac and another enemy man were there too.

The four of them took turns in beating me. They beat me with batons, rifles, sticks and feet. I collapsed, lost consciousness and then they dragged me into the ‘room of death’ in which they had murdered four people on the same evening. They weren’t sure if I was at the front line as I lived in Sajmiste. A Serb woman had previously seen me in uniform near the hospital and it was probably she who revealed my identity.

A man returned with his face slashed, another was forced to eat bullets, and the hands of many were tied with barbed wire.

I remember how they ridiculed and giggled when they took a young man. He said: let me just get my tennis shoes. They replied: you won’t need them where you’re going.

Ljubce Atanasov saved me from certain death. He said I should be as silent as possible. When they started to beat me again, he yelled at them. He set up guard and did not allow anyone near again. One day a real Chetnik arrived, as from a movie, ripped from a mountain, bearded … I stood before him with my face all beaten up and swollen. He took out a knife and said to me – oh, you’re so swollen, I bet your tooth aches. Come on, open your mouth so I can pull it out and it won’t hurt any more. I put my hand to my mouth and kept saying my tooth did not hurt.

After that they transferred us to a military base in Mitrovica (Serbia, concentration camp) where we waited for a prisoner of war exchange. Luckily I was in the first exchange group and came out at the same time as dr. Vesna Bosanac. My recovery time did not last long. In May, together with the 204th Vukovar Veterans Bridage I went to Suica in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When the air attack occurred I shot at the plane with anti-aircraft weapons, saying to myself that I could finally confront the plane that had shot at me when I was in Vukovar…”

Violeta Antolic – Vicky earned the rank of Sergeant Major during the war.

An amazing photo-video tribute: “Violeta Antolic –Vicky: goodbye my friend”

Violeta’s tragic death in a car accident barely attracted a few lines on back pages of mainstream print media in Croatia. No doubt, the culprits for such a shameful display are those who still sit in high positions of power, pining for communist Yugoslavia, making sure Croatia’s heroes and heroines are kept away from widespread national show of pride. Never mind – God is great! For Violeta’s funeral will come in the days of celebrating 19 years since Operation Storm (5 August 1995), which freed much of Croatian territory from Serb aggression and set the path to freedom and democracy.

I will end this post with the words of 1LT Anne (Sosh) Brehm, US Army Nurse Corps/WWII:
“Let the generations know that women in uniform also guaranteed their freedom. That our resolve was just as great as the brave men who stood among us. And with victory our hearts were just as full and beat just as fast – that the tears fell just as hard for those we left behind”.