Standort: fm4.ORF.at / Meldung: "Clinging to a Version of the Past"

Chris Cummins

Letters from a shrinking globe: around the day in 80 worlds.

15. 4. 2011 - 17:51

Clinging to a Version of the Past

Croatians react with anger as former general Ante Gotovina is convicted of war crimes.

It was a few months ago, on a grey-day dominated by the freezing Bora wind that I saw Croatia with its holiday make-up removed. The bus route down the Dalmatian coast never deviates far from the shoreline that is so loved by yachties, but it already felt like a different world.

Bushy scrubland stretching out for endless acres towards the slopes of the barren Dinaric mountain range, interspersed only by piles of rubble and the odd plastic bag, caught like unfortunate flies in the intricate webs of the thorn bushes. By the side of the road, black-clad women shielding their faces from the fierce gusts with plump forearms, the local bus stops filled with frowning youths.

I was most struck by the ubiquitous round face of former Croat General Ante Gotovina, peering down at regular intervals from billboards. He looked haughty in his military garb and the caption under the billboard read “HEROJ”. It left no room for ambiguity, even to a foreigner. But this was a poster of a man who was then a suspected war criminal and as of today is a convicted one.

Gotovina was found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague for ordering the ethnic cleansing of the Krajina Serbs in south-west Croatia during the war of the 1990s. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison. His fellow general Mladen Markac was also convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, while a third, Ivan Cermak, who was the Knin garrison commander at the time, was acquitted and released. Yet for many people in Croatia, all three are still considered to be “liberators”. Gotovina, who planned and led the successful Operation Storm to retake land in record time, is considered the biggest hero of all.

zadar cafe

chris cummins

Zadar

At the end of the bus ride, in the coastal town of Zadar I found black T-shirts depicting the Gotovina’s face in the town’s outdoor market, which nestles in the traffic-free streets behind the Roman remains and red-roofed churches. Again Gotovina was shown in military uniform, his lips proudly pursed together and military visor pulled down over his eyes, rendering them impenetrable. The shirts in the market are said to make brisk sales. Zadar was besieged by Serbian rockets for three months in 1991, and the embittering experience means many Croats haven’t forgotten their gratitude towards the Croatian military leaders they thank for fighting their enemies back.

RC on Gotovina verdict

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Operation Storm, which lasted just 80 hours and has been documented as the largest European land offensive since World War II, is seen by many Croatians as a legitimate action of self-defence. Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor has called it a vital battle in "a just and liberating war". The operation’s climax is still celebrated in Croatia on the 5th of August as Victory Day, but now two of the masterminds behind that victory are in jail.

 A large crowd gathers in Zagreb's Ban Jelacic square to watch and hear the verdicts by judges in The Hague  against the Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac 15 April 2011

EPA Fotograf : ANTONIO BAT

Why? Because the operation involved the torching of Serbian homes, the murder of hundreds of Serbs, many of them elderly and many of them killed in their homes. Thousands of ethnic Serbs were expelled while tens of thousands more civilians fled from the shelling. The Croats see them as invaders who had arrived with Serb advances, but many were families who had been there for generations.

Gotovina was indicted for war crimes in 2001 but, although several EU members had made his arrest a precondition for accession talks with Croatia, he was only arrested 4 years later in Tenerife. It is thought he was able to remain at large so long because of his contacts within the Croatian government.
Sympathy for the former General remains strong. On a central square in Zagreb today around a thousand people gathered to watch the verdict being read out live on specially mounted big screens. Many waved the blue, white and red Croatian flag and others carried pictures of Gotovina as well as his fellow accused. There were similar scenes reported in towns down the Adriatic coast.

EPA/ANTONIO BAT

When the verdict was read out, the crowds reacted with anger and disappointment. “People here say this was a verdict against the Croat nation,” said our Zagreb correspondent Mark Lowen, who watched the reaction. “They say the 1995 war of independence was a just liberation struggle.” Three days ago the Prime Minister Kosor said she was confident the court would acquit all three former soldiers.

But the Dutch judge at The Hague, Alphons Orie, ruled that "the Croatian military committed acts of murder, cruel treatment, inhumane acts, plunder, persecution and deportation." His verdict will not only anger the Croatian nationalists but also the Catholic Church in Croatia. Several bishops recently slammed the ICTY as a political court that couldn’t tell the difference between victims and aggressors.

little boy

chris cummins

Critics inside and outside of the country say it is time for the country to move on. They say Croatia should join other countries in the region in admitting that atrocities and war crimes were committed on all sides and that Croats should be looking forward to a future of European cooperation not backwards to nationalist bickering.