Vojislav Seselj – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatia: Repeat of Serbian Mind-numbing Political Violence

April 29, 2018 by inavukic 28 Comments

One doesn’t need to think too hard to clearly formulate an answer to the question: what does it say about Serbian society when a convicted war criminal, Vojislav Seselj (and others) is not made an outcast from the country’s political power corridors but is actually helped and promoted to pursue the evil and the hatred that had rather recently resulted in crimes against humanity! It’s a given that the boundaries of tolerance change through history – as do the methods – ostensibly for progress away from mind-numbing fear and violence. The political violence against sovereign Croatia (sovereignty won and defended amidst the 1990’s brutal Serb aggression) pursued relentlessly by Serbia must not remain unchallenged. Enough is enough.

The political violence is, after all, in the ontology and unbridled spreading of fear in Greater Serbia politics.

With this, there is simply no ground for mutually respectful conversation or reconciliation between Croatia (and Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Serbia. Serbian violent politics must be defeated before any lasting reconciliation could be achieved.

Firstly, at the beginning of April when a Croatian delegation lead by the Speaker of Croatian Parliament, Gordan Jandrokovic, entered Serbia’s Parliament they were met with a tirade of abuse and insults uttered by no other than the convicted war criminal Vojislav Seselj, who despite his war crimes conviction continues to enjoy parliamentary privilege in Serbia as well as continuing at the helm of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party. Seselj shouted insults, hatred against Croatian people and abuse at the Croatian official delegation and trampled on a Croatian flag. As any decent being the Croatian delegation turned around and left Serbia to return to Croatia forthwith. But, while Croatian politicians stood their ground in condemning the incident apart from a few criticisms from a few Serbian politicians and the EU of Seselj’s behaviour nothing of substance ensued that would give the world the justified hope that the politically violent maniac Seselj would be removed from the parliament, or his political party – and at least some semblance of neighbourly respect be achieved!

Then came last weekend when Serbia’s defence minister Aleksandar Vulin was all set and sharpened to visit Croatia near Jasenovac to attend a memorial service for victims of WWII. Given the insults and inflammatory anti-Croat bellicose rhetoric Vulin had uttered before at similar memorials and generally in Croatia, and given Seselj’s unsanctioned insults only days before, Croatia refused permission to Vulin to attend the memorial. Vulin response to that was that Serbia’s President and relevant Government Minister are the only ones, not Croatian, who could refuse his entry into Croatia! He blatantly disrespects and disregards Croatia’s sovereignty. Consequently Croatian authorities declared Vulin as persona non grata, not welcome in Croatia.

Instead of dealing with the problem both Seselj and Vulin had created in relations between Croatia and Serbia, on Thursday 26 April Serbia entered into a tit-for-tat response and banned Croatia’s defence minister Damir Krsticevic from Serbia! As part of Serb denial of crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1990’s Vulin and other Serbian leaders keep on falsely accusing Croatia of nationalism and neo-fascism; they keep on falsifying the numbers of Serb victims in WWII on Croatia’s territory. This strategically destructive tactic, filled with deception, also serves Serbia “well” in avoiding the acknowledgement of its own WWII history against the Jews and its “Jew-free” status (May 1942), created through extermination of its Jewish population aided and facilitated by the then Prime Minister Milan Nedic.

Many in Croatia see Vulin’s comments and rhetoric as a bid by Belgrade to distract from the behaviour of Serbian ultranationalist leader Vojislav Seselj who trampled on and tried to rip up the Croatian flag and hurled insults at officials visiting from Croatia. The fact that Seselj, among other insults, yelled at the Croatian delegation in Serbia’s parliament calling them Ustashas presents the world not only with the ugly face of irony (as the persons in Croatia’s delegation have no family or personal affiliation with WWII Ustasha movement that fought for Croatia’s independence [from Serb-led Kingdom of Yugoslavia]) but it drives home the ugly and unwanted truth that Serbia’s leadership is much about violent hatred for and vilification of the Croatian nation.

According to Croatian media, some members of the country’s government want its ambassador to be recalled from Belgrade and for it to block Serbia’s membership talks with the European Union. Likewise the opinion prevails in Croatia that talks between Croatia and Serbia should be frozen until Belgrade stops advancing a ‘Greater Serbia’ policy towards Croatia and ejects convicted war criminal Vojislav Seselj from its parliament. Hear hear! Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Aleksandar Vulin, Croatia, Damir Krsticevic, Greater Serbia politics, political violence, Serbia, Vojislav Seselj

Croatia: Hague Judgement Against Serb Vojislav Seselj Brings No Liberation From Fear Of Violence And Hatred

April 15, 2018 by inavukic 6 Comments

Vojislav Seselj
Photo: AFP/Getty

Paragraph 175 of the Appeals Chamber, The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT), judgment dated 11 April 2018 (PDF judgement) found the Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj guilty of crimes against humanity in relation to his public speeches actions targeting persecution and forcible deportation of Croatians living in Vojvodina province in Serbia. Seselj did not attend the hearing but remained in Serbia where he was in 2014 released to from The Hague on grounds of a terminal illness.

The judgement states:

“The Appeals Chamber has found that, on the basis of his 6 May 1992 speech in Hrtkovci, Vojvodina, Seselj is criminally responsible and therefore guilty, pursuant to Article 1 of the Mechanism’s Statute and Articles 5(d), 5(h), 5(i) and 7(1) of the ICTY Statute for instigating. deportation, persecution (forcible displacement), and other inhumane acts (forcible transfer) as crimes against humanity and for committing persecution (violation of the right to security) as a crime against humanity. Accordingly, the Appeals Chamber must consider an appropriate sentence.”

All other grounds of Prosecution’s Appeal against Seselj, which include indictments for alleged criminal acts on the territory of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were overturned. Seselj was accused of committing the crimes against non-Serbs in Croatia, Serbia’s Vojvodina region, and Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Balkan wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and killed some 130,000 people. The alleged crimes included persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds, deportation, murder, and torture.

Regardless of details in findings entailed in the said judgement and given the Serbian aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina – where Serb’s sought to claim territory via ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs and other crimes against humanity – the clearing of Seselj’s speeches of guilt for crimes in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina one needs to express disbelief and shock in the apparent MICT Appeals Chamber’s failure to assess the real, the general and cross-border impact of Seselj’s inciting and hateful speeches against non-Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Certainly, the MICT Appeal Chamber judgement leads to the conclusion that there is no doubt that Seselj’s speeches encouraged and led other Serbs to commit crimes against non-Serbs and the reality of the times was that wherever Serbs lived, Serbs considered that land to be Serbia and Serbs taking part in the brutal aggression across former Yugoslavia heard and heeded his speeches, acting violently accordingly! No doubt about that in my or any other reasonable mind.

MICT sentenced Seselj to 10 years in prison but ruling that he has already served that time because of the time he had spent in custody in The Hague. Seselj, who was extradited in 2003 and served nearly 12 years in pre-trial detention in The Hague but returned to Serbia in 2014 on medical grounds.

During the period of his detention in The Hague, Seselj was found guilty of contempt of court on three separate occasions and was sentenced to 15 months, 18 months, and 2 years of imprisonment, respectively, and the ICTY Appeals Chamber recognized this as time served. In paragraph 177 of the said judgement says “Nothing in ICTY/MICT provision or the jurisprudence suggests that the contempt sentences should be subtracted from the time that Seselj spent in pre-trial detention. The fact remains that, whether Seselj was convicted of contempt or not, he was still subject to detention by virtue of the charges against him in his main trial. There is nothing in the contempt judgements to suggest that the contempt sentences should not be served concurrently to any main sentence.”

This would suggest that while omitting to state it explicitly (as is usually the case with sentencing) in the sentencing part of the judgement, the MICT Appeal Chamber has decided to lumber Seselj’s sentences amounting to 12 years 9 months into one lot of 10 years i.e. granting Seselj concurrent serving of all four sentences (three for contempt of court and one for crimes against humanity). It would seem that a consideration of consecutive serving of sentences was not a leading element in the courts deliberations; hence Seselj was not required to return to The Hague. It stares one in the eye that MICT has left a loose end in this and that clarification for public interest and for justice to be seen to have been done regarding the concurrent versus consecutive serving of sentences is needed.

Croatia’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs has issued a statement regarding the MICT Appeal Chamber judgement against Seselj, which includes:

“The Ministry also welcomes the important finding of the Mechanism regarding the existence of a systematic and widespread attack against the non-Serbian civilian population, in which Vojislav Šešelj also participated, as a confirmation of planned criminal activity aimed at creating ‘Greater Serbia’. At the same time, the Ministry considers the pronounced sentence to be far too mild with respect to the acts committed and their consequences.

The Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, however, expresses its regret that the Appeals Chamber failed to find Vojislav Šešelj responsible for committing and being involved in committing the gravest crimes against humanity and war crimes during the aggression against the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina through his criminal activity in their territory (especially Vukovar). The Ministry also expresses its regrets that the Appeals Chamber failed to find Vojislav Šešelj responsible for participating in the joint criminal enterprise aimed at permanently removing the non-Serbian population, primarily Croats and Bosniaks, from the areas that the then Serbian political and military leadership considered to be Serbian.

As one of the main advocates of the idea of ‘Greater Serbia’, with the western border Virovitica-Karlovac-Karlobag, Vojislav Šešelj, through his inflammatory and barbaric rhetoric, motivated and instigated his volunteers, as well as other Serbian troops to the persecution and killing of Croats and Bosniaks.”

The reasoning and sentiments flowing from this statement appear widespread across the globe particularly in those who lived and suffered the ugly truth of the fatal and brutal effects Seselj’s (and other Serb leaders’ at the time) had on inciting vicious crimes against Croats and other non-Serbs in Croatia and Croats and Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina – throwing those victims into the absolute need for defence and self-preservation.

The unrepentant Serbian Radical Party leader, Seselj, has stuck to his Serb nationalist line, telling news agency AFP last week he will never give up the idea of a “Greater Serbia”, uniting all parts of Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia where Serbs live.

In comments made to the AP news agency after the ruling, Seselj said he was “proud of all the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were attributed to me, and I am ready to repeat them in the future.”

Seselj’s disturbing statements do clearly demonstrate the abhorrent determination in the Serb aggression to destroy the Croatian and non-Serb population domiciled in the areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia over which Serbs pursued forceful control. As can be concluded from Seselj’s reactions to the MICT judgement the frightening fact persists in today’s times, and that in itself has implications that leave Croats at constant guard for their safety and independence on their own territory. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bosnia and Herzegovina, crimes against humanity, Croatia, ethnic cleansing, Greater Serbia politics of violence, Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, Serb aggression, Serbia, Vojislav Seselj, Vojvodina

Vojislav Seselj Case: UN Criminal Tribunal Delivers Great Victory For Violent Lunatics Everywhere

April 3, 2016 by inavukic 65 Comments

ICTY Trial Chamber
31 March 2016
Delivering Judgment in Vojislav Seselj Case
PHOTO: Screenhot ICTY.org

Travesty of justice and biased blindness to facts

Despite the fact that the Serbian ultra-nationalist pusher of a land-grabbing-by-any-means Greater Serbia, Vojislav Seselj, sowed and incited hatred against Croats and Muslims (Bosniaks) in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during early 1990’s, recruited Serb Chetnik, utterly cruel and barbaric, bloodthirsty militia in Croatia, that culminated in a long, brutal war of genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, rape, concentration camps, pillage… the Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague pronounced him Thursday 31 March 2016 innocent of all charges. The majority of judges, Judge Lattanzi dissenting, concluded “that the objective of the creation of Greater Serbia was more of a political venture than a criminal project… that crimes had been committed by Serbian forces in the process, but that they were not inherently linked to the fulfilment of the purpose of Greater Serbia…”

Vojislav Seselj
Photo: N1

Two out of three judges (Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti, Judge Mandiaye Niang) – Judge Flavia Lattanzi dissenting -dared to conclude the above knowing the facts that Seselj acted in times of Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia that called upon ethnic cleansing and creation of ethnically pure regions of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina; knowing that it was Seselj who shouted in 1991 to Serbs picking up weapons to attack Croatia that “no Ustasha can leave Vukovar alive…” (calling all Croats Ustasha – a WWII political independence movement in Croatia); knowing that only one week before the same Tribunal (ICTY) convicted Serb Radovan Karadzic, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, to 40 years imprisonment on charges of murder, extermination and genocide (based on same Greater Serbia “political venture”)!
Furthermore, the majority judgment argues that Seselj’s men might have been present in contested regions (regions of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina), not to force Bosniak Muslims and Croats out of areas claimed for a Greater Serbia, but on “humanitarian grounds”. So, his calls for murder, extermination and ethnic cleansing (acted upon by his men) were simply a means of “galvanising Serb forces”.

Can you believe this travesty of justice and blindness to facts!?

His men followed his calls – murdered, raped, forcefully deported, imprisoned, humiliated, plundered…and that was “OK” according to the two judges because it was a political venture! It was “galvanizing” the political venture!

The “political venture” ICTY Trial Chamber shamefully endorses

As a reminder, the indictment against Seselj included “the participation in a joint criminal enterprise (JCE). The aim of the JCE was for the permanent forcible removal of a majority of the Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb civilian populations from parts of Croatia, BiH and from the province of Vojvodina in the Republic of Serbia. Acting alone and in concert with other members of the JCE, Šešelj is alleged to have participated in the recruitment, formation, financing, supply, support and direction of Serbian volunteers connected to the SRS and/or Serbian Chetnik Movement. He is also accused of having participated in the planning and preparation of the take-over of towns and villages in Croatia and in a number of municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and the subsequent forcible removal of the majority of the non-Serb population from those areas. In addition, he stands accused of having recruited Serbian volunteers connected to the SRS and indoctrinated them with his extreme ethnic rhetoric so that they engaged in the forcible removal of the non-Serb population in the targeted territories through the commission of crimes as specified in the indictment, with particular violence and brutality.

Finally, the indictment states that, in his inflammatory speeches, he instigated Serb forces to commit crimes, encouraged the creation of a homogeneous “Greater Serbia” by violence, and thereby participated in war propaganda and incitement of hatred towards non-Serb people…”

Vojislav Seselj
early 1990’s inciting to
murder and ethnic cleansing
in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

The crimes he was indicted for, he incited and called for, did actually occur and include:
• the deportation or forcible transfer of tens of thousands of Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb civilians from large areas in BiH, Croatia and Serbia (Croats living in Serbia/Vojvodina region in particular and Muslims in Kosovo region;
• the murder of many Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb civilians, including women and elderly persons, as well as the deliberate destruction of homes, other public and private property, cultural institutions, historic monuments and sacred sites of the Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb civilian populations in the municipality of Vukovar in Croatia, and in the municipalities of Zvornik, “Greater Sarajevo”, Mostar and Nevesinje in BiH;
• the torture, beating, robbery, sexual assaults, and perpetuation of inhumane living conditions against Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb civilians by Serb soldiers during capture and in the detention facilities;
• the direct and public denigration through “hate speech” of the Croat, Muslim aand other non-Serb populations in Vukovar Zvornik and Hrtkovci on the basis of their ethnicities

Would Adolf Hitler be acquitted?

This acquittal of Seselj of all charges, not even mentioning complicity and accessory to crimes, does cause one to conclude (as a colleague blogger Vladimir Lusic did) that (using this ICTY judgment as a precedent) Adolf Hitler would be found innocent of all charges also. Hitler also delivered loud and strong political speeches, talked about the greatness of the Third Reich, decided which ethnic group should live and which should die in the name of the Third Reich, held a gun at his waist from time to time…just like Seselj! Only Seselj didn’t have the Third Reich – for him it was Greater Serbia.
Evidence has it that Seselj did much more than engage in politics. His militia was widely feared as murderers, rapists and looters. In the Croatian war in 1991, Seselj said his men had used a rusty spoon to scoop out the eyes of their enemies, though he later claimed this was black humour.
When they marched into Vukovar in 1991, intent on murdering as many Croats as they could Seselj’s militia sang: “Slobo, Slobo, send us some salad, there will be meat we will slaughter the Croats” (Slobo meaning Slobodan Milosevic). And sure enough by 18 November 1991 Vukovar was ethnically cleansed of Croats and other non-Serbs and hundreds perished in genocidal mass murders – other places in Croatia and BiH soon suffered the same destinies.

And remember: all Croatia wanted to do was to secede from communist Yugoslavia!

1991 – Vojislav Seselj and
Dragan Vasiljkovic
lead the way to mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Croatia

Wide and serious worldwide ramifications for international justice

It’s not far fetched to say that the ICTY judges’ (who delivered such a judgment) reasoning will have wide and serious ramifications for the international justice. Such a judgment endorses all political “ventures” even those that incite hatred and mass murder and genocide… Will the coalition of allies dare to fight against IS in the Middle East from now on, for example?
The verdict already encourages nationalist Serbs to argue that their side did nothing wrong in the war. Jubilation in the streets of Belgrade and elsewhere has been ecstatic – the Serbs sentenced at The Hague so far for crimes against humanity, war crimes … do not seem to matter now! Serbian Republic political entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, created on genocide for which Karadzic received 40 years imprisonment last week is now just about pronounced acceptable part of Greater Serbia! The arguments brought down by the majority judges at the ICTY in Seselj’s case will, without doubt, be matched by all political ventures throughout the world, no matter what gruesome destinies and sufferings they bring to innocent people.

The arguments have dumped the right to self-determination of every nation into the garbage bin.

Even if the ICTY Prosecutor, under Serge Brammertz, may have done a very sloppy job in Seselj’s case during and before the trial, as the judges might suggest, and this sloppiness may have been purposeful, the judgment is still outrageous and shocking. Let’s hope Brammertz’s team do some serious work on identifying grounds for an appeal against this judgment and if it doesn’t then Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina governments need to find those grounds, quick smart.

As Luka Misetic, US based attorney who represented Croatian General Ante Gotovina at the ICTY, reminds us: “There is little doubt about Seselj’s role in Joint Criminal Enterprise to create Greater Serbia by means of displacement of the non-Serb civilian population. This was already confirmed by the Trial Chamber in the Martic Judgment (Milan Maric, 2007, PDF), which at paragraph 446 found: ‘The Trial Chamber therefore finds that at least Blagoje Adzic, Milan Babic, Radmilo Bogdanovic,Veljko Kadijevic, Radovan Karadzic, Slobodan Milosevic, Ratko Mladic, Vojislav Seselj, Franko ‘Frenki’ Simatovic, Jovica Stanisic, and Captain Dragan Vasiljkovic participated in the furtherance of the above-mentioned common criminal purpose.’”
One finds it difficult to accept that the two out of three judges who delivered an exonerating verdict for Seselj seemingly decided to ignore the previous findings of its own Tribunal on the matter and is getting away with it.

In the Twitter words of Eric Gordy, a London based sociologist and reportedly very knowledgeable about war crimes in the Balkans, the Seselj verdict is “a great victory for bloated, violent lunatics everywhere.” Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A. Ps. (Syd)