Officials in Croatia celebrated the 27th anniversary of the country’s military victory over rebel Serbs in Operation Storm, while their counterparts in Serbia mourned the victims of what they described as ethnic cleansing.
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Celebration of Operation Storm in Knin, Croatia on Friday. Photo: Twitter/@VladaRH.
Croatian political leaders, wartime generals and war veterans gathered on Friday in the town of Knin to mark the anniversary of the country’s victorious military offensive, Operation Storm, which effectively ended the independence war in the country in 1995.
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said that the fact that large numbers of Serbs fled Croatia because of the operation was “a human tragedy, but that human tragedy was preceded by human greed and human stupidity of the rulers in Belgrade”.
During Operation Storm, Croatian forces regained almost all the territory seized in 1991 by rebel Croatian Serbs. But the operation caused around 200,000 Serbs to leave Croatia in a long convoy of tractors, buses and cars. A total of 677 civilians, mostly Serbs, were killed during and after the operation, according to the Croatian Helsinki Committee.
Mladen Markac, a Croatian wartime general who was acquitted by the Hague Tribunal of being part of a joint criminal enterprise to commit crimes against humanity against Croatian Serbs during Operation Storm, said in a speech at the commemoration that the operation was “in military and human terms, a clean victory”.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic complained in his speech that recently, “attempts are being made to denounce Croatia with false, futile accusations about the expulsion of the Serb population from Croatia in 1995”.
“The indictments announced by Belgrade of Croatian pilots [for bombing part a convoy of fleeing Serb refugees in 1995] and the expansion of [Serbia’s] jurisdiction to the territory of other countries are unacceptable,” Plenkovic said.
However, all the leading politicians dedicated most of their speeches to the current crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina over reforms that could favour Croat nationalists.
Serbia uses drama to highlight victims
President Aleksandar Vucic speaks at Serbia’s commemoration in Novi Sad on Thursday. Photo: Instagram/buducnostsrbijeav.
Serbia commemorated the Serb victims of Operation Storm at an event in the country’s second city of Novi Sad on Thursday evening.
A religious service and speeches by Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije and political leaders were interspersed with dramatised interludes in which actors portrayed refugees in the convoy fleeing Croatia.
Audio recordings were also played that referred to crimes that members of the Nazi-allied Ustasa movement committed against Serbs in Croatia during World War II.
Most of the speeches referred to Zagreb’s recent decision to bar Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic from visiting the Jasenovac World War II concentration camp in Croatia for not observing diplomatic protocol, and to the simmering tensions with Pristina over regulations that are to be imposed on Serbs in north Kosovo.
Vucic said in his speech that “many think this is the moment when they can once again have support for the destruction of the Serbian people”.
He also vowed that “we will never forget the suffering of the man from Krajina [region of Croatia], the Serb from Krajina who was expelled, who lost his land, his house, his children, his parents”.
The Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodik, told the commemoration that in 1995, “Serbs were exiled” from Croatia.
“That’s right, [Operation] Storm is a pogrom, it’s a crime, it’s a genocide, it’s ethnic cleansing, it’s a continuation of what we could see from the Second World War,” Dodik said.
Since 2015, the Serbian authorities have increased the size of the ceremonies marking the anniversary of Operation Storm, organising large events in different cities or municipalities, mostly where Croatian Serbs settled after they fled to Serbia.
Serbs in Croatia mourn ‘everyone’s suffering’
Milorad Pupovac lays flower in front of a demolished church in Deringaj, Croatia on Wednesday. Photo: SNV.
The Serbian National Council, which represents Serbs’ interests in Croatia, held a commemorative event in the village of Deringaj in Croatia’s Gracac municipality on Wednesday, along with the Zagreb-based NGO Documenta – Centre for Dealing with the Past and the Anti-Fascist League of Croatia.
The head of the Serbian National Council, Milorad Pupovac, said they had gathered to remember “the suffering of everyone, regardless of religion and nation”.
He said that the mourners felt empathy “for all those who suffered, for our Serb compatriots and for our Croat fellow citizens, for all those who did not commit crimes”.
The head of Documenta, Vesna Terselic, read out the names of civilian victims from the Deringaj and Kijan area who were killed during and after Operation Storm, saying that in 27 years the Croatian judiciary has only issued three indictments for war crimes against Krajina Serbs, against a total of seven members of Croatian military and police units.
“For the majority of war crimes, the Republic of Croatia, ie. its judiciary, has failed to determine who was responsible for the death of its own citizens and under what circumstances,” Terselic said.
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