In May 1991. 94% of Croatian voters at the independence referendum voted “Yes” for Croatia to secede from communist Yugoslavia and become a free, independent democracy. This, its people’s human right to self-determination, was brutally attacked by the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbs. Today, August 4, 1995, was the start of 84 hours of magnificent, brave and victorious Croatian military liberating operation “Storm”, recapturing thousands of square kilometres of Croatia’s territory occupied by Serb forces. So, this year, like every year, Croatians celebrate the anniversary of the great and successful Croatian military operation that was launched when all peaceful attempts to liberate the country from Serbian clutches failed. It is a celebration of the heroism of the Croatian defenders and the Croatian military victory over the Serbian occupation army. These days, the Croatian media announced the order of events marking Operation Storm Day, the Day of Victory, Homeland Gratitude and Croatian Veterans’ Day: wreath-laying, speeches by political and military officials, mass and an evening concert, which will be broadcast live on national television. But there will be multitudes of Homeland War veterans who will not attend these official events out of grave disappointment with Croatia’s government and the President and their undermining and undervaluing the crucial value of the Homeland War for today’s independent Croatia. The HDZ government’s coalition with those associated with rebel Serbs and Serb forces that terrorised Croatia in the 1990’s is a constant wound and a constant injustice. The ever-increasing presence of communist Yugoslavia manner and mindset is eating away at the ideals and reasons Croatia fought so hard for during the Homeland War.     

One would think that in 28 years that have passed since then Croatia would have made greater progress in becoming a fully functional democracy that cherishes above all else the people who in any way helped defend it from the brutal aggression and install it as independent state. But from year 2000 former communists and their descendants took power and instead of lustration, that should have occurred after the War wholly ended in 1998 when last occupied territory was reintegrated into Croatia, Croatia sank deeper and deeper into a state reminiscent of communist Yugoslavia. Corruption, nepotism, dysfunctional judiciary, celebration of former communist regime, humiliation of Homeland War veterans …    

And so, while many will celebrate during this weekend this great victory of Operation Storm it is wise to do so by having in mind the sad reality that prevails on the streets of Croatia and sharpening one’s axes, so to speak, to make changes and to rid Croatian corridors of power of former communist operatives and their descendants. To illustrate this sad reality, I have chosen to translate into English two Facebook posts written by retired general of the Croatian Army and the Croatian Defence Council, and former Member of Croatian Parliament – Zeljko Glasnovic:  

“From 1991 until today, more than 3,200 Croatian veterans have committed suicide. Almost an entire brigade of the Croatian Army. The number is certainly higher. There is still no accurate data on HVO (Croatian Defence Council) members who took their own lives. One Croatian veteran cut his own jugular veins, another doused himself with gasoline and burned himself alive, a third shot himself in the head with a pistol, a fourth hanged himself from a house, a fifth killed himself with a chainsaw, a sixth killed himself on the occasion ofMesic’s inauguration (Stjepan Mesic President)… and the most widely known, General Slobodan Praljak, innocent, drank a shot glass of poison, like a glass of bile in front of the world public. These are just some of the examples among hundreds of other comrades of theirs who suffered a similar fate because they suffered for years from the “cancer of the soul” better known as PTSD. They survived shells, bombs, bullets, camps, Great Serbian aggression, and war, but they could not survive this kind of peace. They were stronger than the horrors of war, but they could not deal with the horrors of peace, with robbery, with corruption, with extortion, with injustice and humiliation because they felt left behind and rejected after being used. Every third day, a Croatian veteran commits suicide. In the last 5 days, unfortunately, two more brave warriors left us, who did not last under the pressure of injustice, misunderstanding and condemnation.

Who is to blame for this situation among veterans? Who closes their eyes? Who failed? Where did we go wrong? The state failed them, which abandoned many of them to mercy or disfavour of fate, left them without work and status and declared many of them unfit for work. The policy that skilfully manipulates them, diminishes their contribution and disenfranchises them has failed. A society that stigmatises and systematically puts them on the pole of shame because of the alleged ‘privileges’ they have achieved has failed. Those veterans’ associations that, instead of taking care of the veterans’ psyche, were concerned about their political goals, also failed. The media have also failed, as they are instructed not to talk or write about it, and if they do, they do so in an extremely underestimating and sensationalist manner. Our families, who sometimes did not understand what we go through after the war, also failed, why we feel like a burden to others, why we cannot come to terms with injustice and why we persistently return to that most difficult period of our lives. In the end, we defenders (war veterans) also failed because we allowed ourselves to be mocked, belittled and deceived by those whose backsides we defended while they hid in their cabinets during the war so that in peace they would once again create a state that we never dreamed of, for which we never fought, the state we never wanted.

We never needed decorations, ranks or awards, we needed above all the true freedom we cried so much for, the respect we never got and the preservation of what we fought for.

After the end of the Homeland War, we probably expected too much when we thought that the Croatian people would never again allow the re-occupation of the land that was soaked in the blood of the veterans and raised from the ashes on their bones. However, moral criminals from the former Yugoslav Communist regime legally revived in peace and returned the failed creation that we had defeated in the war and thought we had destroyed forever. They took over the government, the cultural space, the media, all state institutions, and above all, they took over the mind and mentality of the people. Let’s not fool ourselves, WE handed it all over to them ourselves without firing a shot.

On a decorated tray.

No paper and pen.

No voice.

Without force.

Without resisting.

In peace.

Voluntarily.

Indifferent.

The average age of a Croatian veteran who fought and died in the Homeland War in the nineties was only 23 years. When I say average age, it means that there were also 17-year-olds. They were still only children who picked up a rifle overnight instead of a book. When a veteran who went to a psychiatric examination in Vukovar was asked if he was thinking about suicide, he answered: ‘Yes, but about mass suicide.’

When my brother left Manjaca (concentration camp) after 15 months, I didn’t recognise him. He experienced a clinical death. But he said: ‘Croats should build a monument to Milosevic (Slobodan Milosevic) on Ban Jelacic Square (in Zagreb), because if he hadn’t attacked them, most of them wouldn’t even know who they are.’ They erased the people’s collective memory and any feeling for the national state. My mother, who was raped twice, ended up in the communist prison in Petrinjska when I was only six months old because someone accused her of trying to sabotage the party elections. All that, and even more, so that today former SKOJ (League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia) members would sit in government, whose offices are headed by former secretaries of national defence, and their chief advisers are Udbas (Yugoslav Secret Services). Is that the Croatian state?! After 30 years, we can freely stop wondering why veterans take their lives en masse and start questioning ourselves, how much have WE as a society contributed to the fact that after everything they have done for this country, they raise a hand against themselves?I end with words from a sermon by Bishop Vlado Kosic:

‘Mary is sad when she looks at our Croatian veterans who created, defended and liberated Croatia with their blood, and then they were categorised as unnecessary, as a surplus against which the media and domestic traitors throw mud, and these do not even deserve to wash their feet. They, in their disappointment, no longer know what kind of country they fought for, so almost 3,000 of them have already raised their hands on themselves. I am calling out all previous politicians and people of influence and position, who hid this situation – you killed them, you are to blame that so many veterans committed suicide, you killed them, you are to blame for their disappointments, and the whole society is responsible, and above all the politicians and traitors of their own homeland who worked and are working against the interests of Croatia, for which they were ready to give their lives.’” (Zeljko Glasnovic, 11 July 2023)  

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“The falsification of history continues in Croatia. Non-existent events are celebrated, non-existent anniversaries are celebrated. The term ‘anti-fascism’ came out of Stalin’s kitchen. The ideological successors of Bolshevik satanism use it even today as a smokescreen to cover up communist crimes. Croatia is pure proof that history repeats itself as farce and tragedy.

While the Croatian Parliament is debating the recognition of the Holodomor as genocide committed against the Ukrainian people from 1932-1933, at the same time, under the guise of anti-fascism, Croatia is celebrating the crime against its own people. Mass graves of victims of communist crimes are being dug out day by day. Until 2011 MUP ( Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs) recorded more than 700 mass graves in which victims of thepartisan communist regime crimes committed during and immediately after World War II were buried. It is estimated that around 90,000 victims were buried in them. A greater number of mass graves are located in Slovenia. The battlegrounds from eastern Herzegovina to the Macedonian border have not yet been explored. In Serbia, the state commission made an individual list of about 70,000 victims of partisan-communist terror after the entry of the Red Army into Belgrade in 1944. In May 1945, aiming to cover up mass graves the Yugoslav regime issued order known as Order No. 1253. Until 1990. relatives and friends were forbidden to visit the sites of those mass graves. Even today, the successors of the (Partisan) Sixth Lika Division, in conjunction with the mainstream media, stand guard over those places of execution. The mentality sedimented in the party single-mindedness is trans genetically transferred into the present. Yugoslav nationalists know that a lie has more emotional appeal than the harsh truth. Communist regimes have crippled the future generations and left behind a moral and spiritual wasteland. The implementation of the so-called menticide (crime against spirit and mind) continues today. Along with the destruction of the ability to think critically, along with lies and manipulations, they keep us in shackles even today.

At the Yalta conference, Stalin may have stated the truth for the first time in his life when he told Churchill: ‘Satan is a communist and he is on my side.’ Tens of millions of people were killed, tortured, and deported in the Soviet Union alone. Tito’s regime is a microcosm of what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule. A few years ago, a non-government organisation named “Memorial” in Russia was abolished after they found a record of 2 million Stalin’s victims. The Red Army raped 355,000 women in Romania alone, 800,000 in Hungary, or a total of 10-15% of the female population. In Germany, 2 million women aged 8-80 were victims of rape. In Berlin alone, 20,000 women committed suicide after the mass rape of typhoidal men from the Red Army.

Today’s heads think identically to their predecessors and if they had the chance to exercise such power, all of us would end up with a bullet in the back of the head like the Dominican Father Dominik Barac who was killed in 1945 only because he wrote the book ‘Philosophy of Communism’ in which he exposed Bolshevik satanism. 1923 Bolshevik satanists formed the Ministry of Disinformation and continue to implement this regime to this day. In China, if you want to work in the public sector, you must first write a declaration that you are not a member of any religious community. This ideological lobotomy is written into their DNA, it is at the core of their being. It has merged so much with their spirit and mentality that even if they took the red chip out of their heads, they would continue to lobby for that regime. It is a pathological, incurable disease in which there is no remorse even on the deathbed, but instead we have statements like ‘I am sorry I did not do more…’ (ordered, killed, raped…). Communism is the biggest fraud in the history of mankind. Today in our country THEY celebrate it. They celebrate rape, killing, terror, abuse, expulsion, brutality, mistreatment, deprivation of human rights – in one word, they celebrate DEATH. And they don’t celebrate it just anywhere. They are holding their freak manifestations in the Brezovica forest in the vicinity of the mass graves where the remains of 6,000 victims of the partisan-communist terror who were brutally murdered are buried.

Over their bones, the regime and the monsters that led the innocent to their deaths celebrate. They even declared a non-working day (a public holiday) to celebrate the murderers of their people. We are still waiting for them to declare a non-working day in honour of the Chetniks to celebrate those who killed Croats in the Homeland War in the middle of Vukovar! While communist symbols are abolished from Lithuania to Hungary, communist guerrillas – the scourge of humanity – are celebrated in the Republic of Croatia. The best example of national masochism.”(Zeljko Glasnovic, 22 June 2023)

Ina Vukic, translation into English