THE GUARDIAN, LETTER TO EDITOR, MARCH 11, 2005 (for publication)

By Jerry Blaskovich, M.D., M.A.

Dear editor:

Sarah Ludford’s March 11, 2005 letter in The Guardian applauding Foreign Office minister Denis MacShanes firm stand against Croatia’s membership bid into the EU because of its refusal to hand over General Gotovina to the Hague was a blessing in disguise.  MacShanes did Croatia a favor because joining the EU would be an economic disaster for Croatia. The EU would have had access to the Croatian market but it wouldn’t be a reciprocal arrangement.

The Croatia’s government has done its best to demonstrate that  Gotovina is not in its jurisdiction. Croatia even imposed a draconian method against the entire Gotovina clan, which even Ms Ledford would find abhorrent. They froze all the family’s assets until he is arrested and extradited. How the family will survive to look after their basic needs, such as buying food, is another question.

MacShanes, despite being Foreign Office minister, and Ms Ludford apparently are not aware that their government entered an agreement with Croatia in May 2004 that gave MI6 carte blanche to operate and access all of Croatia’s secret files--as well as a license to ‘reform’ Croatia’s secret service. If the highly venerable MI6 couldn’t find General Gotovina after they were allowed free reign in Croatia, then obviously he cannot be there.

Instead the EC and Mr MacShane would rather believe a Hague prosecutor who espouses unsubstantiated accusations over a President of a sovereign state and the stellar MI6.

ANALYSIS, FEBRUARY 2005.

Western Justice Held Hostage by the Hague

By Jean Lunt-Marinovic, Melbourne

The Hague Criminal Court indictment against former Croatian general Ante Gotovina, who has been wrongfully accused, is an indictment against the tradition of western justice.  The tone and language of the 2001 Del Ponte indictment makes a mockery of the legal tradition we live by today in the west, that which separates our modern world from totalitarianism or feudalism.  The perspective of this indictment, which was created out of the UN resolutions 713 to 762, etc. on the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, is available for public scrutiny on the internet. One of the consistent tenets of these resolutions was the continued UN arms embargo, which in effect punished unarmed Croatian civilians and not the belligerent Serbian-led Yugoslav Army, the third best equipped in Europe.   The political division of the Europeans and the international community behind the scenes, in the creation and application of this indictment, is less understood by the public. 

The EU is pressuring Zagreb for the extradition of the fugitive general, as a condition of entry into Europe. Recently, the EU’s current president, Jean-Claude Juncker, reiterated the accusation to former Croatian General Ante Gotovina that he should understand, “he is holding millions of Croats as hostages” by failing to surrender to the Hague’s prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte.   The un-constituted European Union appears to have forgotten that it was the Serbian/Yugoslav leadership which held hostage the citizens of the former Yugoslavia, and members of the UNPROFOR.  The EU has made it clear that without Gotovina, Croatia’s EU entry negotiations will not proceed.  But, for the rest of the western world, there are bigger issues at stake than Croatia’s EU membership.  It is not for nothing that the American government pressures for the ad hoc Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to close its chambers.   

Internationalist politics and old European rivalries are reflected in the text of the ad hoc indictment against the former Croatian general.  In addition Del Ponte herself must be keen for a victory, as she jealously watches her predecessors move up the ladder following their successful convictions at the Hague.  Former Canadian prosecutor at the Hague Louise Arbour is now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; and former prosecutor Richard Prosper is the newly created US Ambassador to the Office of War Crimes Issues.  Following the defeat of the Democrats, President Bush had been pressured into doing something about the Hague court, against his better judgment, so the above-mentioned new position was devised, and Ambassador Prosper subsequently issued rewards for Hague indictees.  But it is not America which pressures Croatia today for Gotovina’s extradition, it is the un-constituted European Union. 

The only conclusion that one can reach after examining the issues surrounding the Gotovina indictment is that it is Europe that is holding Croatia hostage.  Del Ponte is actually from Lugano, Switzerland.  But Lake Lugano is a  pocket of Italy inside Switzerland, and was once headquarters and place of refuge to Mazzini or Mussolini. It’s not difficult to imagine that an Italian lobby would be pressuring Del Ponte for an arrest.   Interestingly, in 2001 a few months after the Gotovina indictment was issued, the Italian president Ciampi announced that a WWII fascist award would be bestowed on Zadar for the Italian fascists who were bombed out of Zadar in WWII. (“the flag of the last Italian civil administration of Zadar”)  

Gotovina himself is from the Zadar region, and it is in Zadar-Knin County that the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army and Mladic began their campaign, until Croatia’s Operation Storm five years later, when at last the bombing stopped and Croatian civilians could sleep in peace again.  Then, began the yet unfinished process of clearing Serbian-planted landmines, one of which was on display in the Canadian War Museum.   The Serbian-led Yugoslav National Army had bombed Zadar in the early 1990s from the Sea, Air, and Land, and deliberately cut-off its unarmed civilians from water and electric supply and from the rest of Croatia.  Having lost this prize piece of real estate, now it would appear that pressure is on from Italy to gain through the EU, what Serbia could not gain through the Yugoslav Army. 

For two millennium Zadar has been the object of attack, occupation, ‘sale’ or barter, by Romans, Venetians, and Italians, Hungarians, and Serbs, but the continued  Croatian resistance has always been a thorn in the side of Europeans.  The Venetian Doge in the 9th century slandered the Croatian ruler Domagoj as the ‘worst duke’ after Domagoj beat the Franks and spoiled Venetian ambitions.  Gotovina is today’s Domagoj.  Little appears to have changed when we look at the bigger picture.    

European attacks on Croatia go back over two millennia.   It is in Croatia that eastern ambition meets western rivalry.  The twentieth century was one of the worst for Croatian people, evidenced by their long term demographic decline in comparison to the rest of continental European countries, to the east and west.  For example, in 1928, European diplomats had advised Croatian politicians to go to Belgrade to find a political solution to the economic exploitation of Croatia by the Serbian monarchy.    Even Pribitchevic, one of the original ‘Yugoslav/Serbian’ politicians subsequently regretted the creation of the state.  In 1928, the Croatian leader, Stjepan Radic and four other Croatian front benchers were assassinated inside a session of parliament by a Serbian MP.  This incident has left an indelible wound on the Croatian psyche until this day.  In 1945, after surrendering arms, the defeated Croatian army and up to half a million Croatian civilians were massacred under Belgrade’s orders.  Hundreds of thousands of Croats subsequently escaped Yugoslav borders.  This Bleiburg genocide is a matter of public record, published books, and television documentaries.  

In 1991, after the bombardment of Croatian cities, such as Dubrovnik, Osijek, Karlovac, etc. and Vukovar, the remaining wounded Croats were marched away from the satellite television cameras at Vukovar, and massacred and hidden in mass graves  at Ovcar.    Ovcar is Croatia’s ‘Srebenica’; as is ‘Jazovka’ after WWII, where the remains of 40,000 Croats were discovered, along with canes, and old bandages, etc. The total obliteration of Vukovar is the Dresden-like scene which prompted the UN into action.  Other Croatian cities, towns, villages, hospitals, ancient churches, cultural monuments, and their civilians were bombarded, tortured, murdered and otherwise ethnically-cleansed from one third of Croatia.  Subsequently two million people were cleansed from both Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, including Croats, half a million of whom never returned to their homes.  Yet, in spite of the above Serbian terrorism, all documented on public record, in the media headlines, and on television, and not just a matter of propaganda, Europe is asking that Gotovina surrender!  

Croatia’s defensive operations, led by Gotovina, between 1992 and 1995 expressed their legitimate and inherent right under the United Nations Charter of self-defence.  Croatian operations were authorized only after the publicly-acknowledged failure of a much scorned and humiliated UNPROFOR to demilitarize Sectors North or South or adjacent Pink Zones (eg, Resolution 762 ), thus failing to prevent over four years of bombardment and the death of thousands of Croats.  Lester B. Pearson, the former Canadian PM who received the Nobel Prize for his concept of UN peacekeeping must have turned in his grave.

Sectors South and North were areas where Serbs had terrorized and ethnically cleansed and murdered Croats from inside one-third of Croatia, during 1990 and 1991.  Many planned massacres occurred there under the command of Chief of Staff, Ratko Mladic of the Yugoslav Army’s 9th Corps.  Do the victims of Mladic in Bosnia deserve respect and closure, but not in Croatian towns such as Skabrnje, Brusko, or Nadin?  Apparently not, as the Gotovina indictment refers to the period in question as ‘inter-communal tensions’.  Is Gotovina acceptable to the international community as a soldier in the French Foreign Legion in a foreign country, but not acceptable in the defence of his own country? 

The unprovoked aggression ordered from Belgrade should be put into a proper political context also.  Whilst the rest of newly liberated Eastern Europe was enjoying multiparty elections after 1989, or a so-called ‘Velvet Revolution’, Croats were being bombed, ethnically-cleansed, interned in concentration camps, and massacred, following their own free elections.  The de jure international recognition of Croatia during this bombing had already been scrutinized by the Badinter Commission in a three-month moratorium.  This European commission issued a set of unworkable conditions which the EEC member nations themselves did not comply with, and recognition of Croatia and Slovenia went ahead.  The facts as outlined in the Gotovina indictment bear no resemblance to all these events, especially within a legal context. 

This is because the indictment has adopted the vague non-committal language of the UN resolutions about the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, which led to the so-called Vance Plan.  The language of the indictment reflects a new legal concept of equal guilt of ‘all parties’, as did the growing number of UN resolutions, which appeased the opposing sides in the EEC, or at the UN.   A dilemma about how to handle Serbian aggression and Serbian ceasefire violations threatened to de-rail European unity at Maastricht.  But old European rivalry and competition in the Balkans is not the only issue reflected in the indictment and UN resolutions. 

Clearly, an anti-American lobby is emerging through this court, a lobby which has obviously caused a gap in traditional western solidarity and NATO.  This anti-American foreign policy is nowhere more transparent than in Canada’s input into UNPROFOR, which ultimately caused international embarrassment and failure, and its main leaders’ pro-Serbian affiliations were later exposed.  Both the former Canadian PM Mulroney, whose wife is Serbian, and UNPROFOR’s first commander, General MacKenzie, have adopted a pro-Serbian posture after their retirements.

In trying to make amends through an ad hoc court, the original UNPROFOR mandates were adopted as its cornerstone, thereby adding insult to injury in the Croatian indictments.  An article in ‘Canadian Foreign Policy’ by Cohen and Moens acknowledged that sharp divisions over the Balkan issue in North America and Europe served “as an early opportunity for Ottawa to re-conceptualize the manner in which Canada and like-minded states should address governmental breakdown, wars and humanitarian crises in disintegrating countries”.  Thus, it has evolved that a series of UN resolutions and Hague indictments about Croatia have put the so-called Krajina, a self-declared Serbian terrorist state within Croatia; on an equal footing with the de jure recognized Croatian government.   How precarious now are the issues of safety, human rights, right of self-defence and the western system of justice, if this indictment is given any legitimacy. 

The accusations against Gotovina are unwarranted, unjust, and in contravention of international charters.  Rather, the key issue here is the bias and failure of UNPROFOR to provide peace and security to Croatian civilians over a five year period, and to deny Croatian people the right of self-defence, their human rights or their fundamental freedoms.  The Gotovina indictment represents an attempt to cover-up the UNPROFOR failure as the Croatian people’s exercise of self-defence is referred to as a ‘criminal enterprise’ or an attack on ‘Krajina’, a document which appears to respect more the rights of Serbian terrorists, many of whom have already been sentenced at the Hague, than the rights of Croatian victims.   If this international criminal court is allowed to set such a dangerous precedent, civilians in Europe will no longer trust the law, as totalitarianism justice rules.  

Jean Lunt-Marinovic,

February 2005.

See also: TITO'S TERRORISM by the same author:

http://www.croatianworld.net/CROWNframes.htm?http://www.croatianworld.net/Letters/3799.htm

News - Hina - Croatia - December 2 2004

ICTY ORDERS CROATIAN WEEKLY TO STOP PUBLICATION OF PROTECTED WITNESS STATEMENTS
 

 ZAGREB, Dec 2 (Hina) -  The Hague war crimes tribunal ordered the Croatian weekly Hrvatsko Slovo to stop publication of statements and testimonies of a protected witness who had appeared in the trial of Bosnian Croat general Tihomir Blaskic, and of any other protected witness.

Anyone violating this order may be subject to punishment of up to seven years' imprisonment or a fine of up to 100,000 euros, the tribunal said in a statement.

Judge Alphons Orie ordered "the relevant authorities of the Republic of Croatia to serve this order without delay on HKZ-Hrvatsko Slovo d.o.o., Stjepan Seselj and Domagoj Margetic and to provide a written report confirming such service or describing the efforts made to do so".

He further called upon "the authorities of the Republic of Croatia to provide the Tribunal with any information regarding the identity of those potentially responsible for the illegal disclosure of the transcripts and violations of the related orders and decisions of the Tribunal regarding the protection of witnesses".

The statement said that on November 26, 2004, Hrvatsko Slovo published excerpts of what it claimed was the testimony of a protected witness in the Blaskic case. It added that on December 1, 2004, the Prosecution at the ICTY filed an ex parte and confidential "Urgent Motion for an Order for the Immediate Cessation of Violations of Protective Measures".

Judge Orie took into account the fact that the witness had testified in closed session and had been granted protective measures. He concluded that those responsible for the publication of the transcripts in Hrvatsko Slovo were aware at the time of the publication that the transcripts were confidential documents that were not to be disclosed.

(Hina) vm