Kroatien: Ungestraftheit hat Oberhand

In diesem Artikel, der von Transitions Online publiziert wurde, vergleicht Drago Held, führender  kroatischer investigativer Journalist, die Haltung des Landes zu Kriegsverbrechen heute und in den 90er Jahren.

To write in today’s Croatia about war crimes committed by Croats no longer earns one the label of a traitor as it did in the time of President Franjo Tudjman, who died in office in late 1999. Back then, the official doctrine held that the Croats could not have committed war crimes because they had only waged a defensive war. The framer of the theory was no one else than Milan Vukovic, the then-president of the Supreme Court. Everything that stood in opposition to this position, which was backed by the highest legal authority in the state, was considered a denigration of the Homeland War, as the Croats named the armed conflict triggered by the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991.

But while official Croatia no longer denies that in the 1991-1995 war the Croats committed war crimes as well, it is not easy to write about it even today. It’s a topic that makes no one popular. Journalists writing about it still find themselves in unpleasant situations, and many readers still tend to react by saying, Why don’t you write about war crimes committed by the Serbs, who committed aggression against Croatia?

In the early 1990s, when I wrote the first article on crimes against Serbian civilians in Pakracka Poljana committed by members of a special unit under the command of Tomislav Mercep, the weekly Feral Tribune, which published the article, ended up in court. Mercep, a powerful figure on Croatia’s political stage (he was an advisor to the interior minister and a member of parliament), accused the magazine of defamation. The case has not yet been closed. 

The so-called “nationally-constructive” media, the major newspapers and television that were, at the time, completely controlled by the Tudjman regime, kept referring to the newspaper I still work for and to myself as foreign mercenaries and traitors who would sell their very souls for “a handful of Judas’ coins.” This was an open reference to the fact that Feral Tribune, one of the rare independent media outlets at the time, was financially supported by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. 

A look from today’s perspective at the short history of Croatian media reporting on war crimes reveals that the shocking account of Miro Bajramovic, one of the members of Mercep’s unit that Feral Tribune published in the autumn of 1997 may have marked a turning point.

Under the headline “How we killed in Pakracka Poljana,” Bajramovic described in detail the atrocities Serbian civilians were subjected to before they were killed. His account, in which he gave full details of atrocious torture and monstrous murders in which he directly participated, came as a shock to the Croatian public. It was the first time the perpetrator of a war crime had spoken openly about it.

Bajramovic’s story laid to rest the notion that the Croats could not have committed war crimes. The atrocities committed were horrendous, and it was also a fact that Serbian civilians, mainly from Zagreb but from other places in Croatia as well, had been deported to an illegal makeshift prison at Pakracka Poljana, where they were tortured and murdered. Since this was a classic war crime, Tudjman’s regime could no longer turn a blind eye. Only a day after Bajramovic went public with his story, he was arrested together with several associates. 

The trial for war crimes committed in Pakracka Poljana is about to enter its final stage.

To read the full text of the article, visit the Transitions Online website.