Vanguard News Network
VNN Media
VNN Digital Library
VNN Reader Mail
VNN Broadcasts

Old July 24th, 2014 #1
Fico
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 974
Default Texts

Tomislav Sunic and Nikola Stedul: MARSHAL TITO’S KILLING FIELDS (Croatian Victims of the Yugoslav Secret Police outside former Communist Yugoslavia: 1945-1990)

Quote:
The ongoing legal proceedings in the Hague against Serb and Croat war crimes suspects, including the Serbian ex-president Slobodan Milosevic, must be put into wider perspective. The unfortunate and often irrational hatred between Serbs and Croats had for decades been stirred up and kept alive by the communist Yugoslav secret police. The longevity of the artificial, multiethnic Yugoslavia was not just in the interest of Yugoslav communists but also of Western states. The long-time Western darling, the late Yugoslav communist leader, Marshall Josip Broz Tito, had a far bigger share of ethnic cleansings and mass killings. Yet, for decades, his crimes were hidden and went unreported in the West.

The first part of the following essay represents a brief excursion into the Croat victimology. The second part covers the poor legality of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

When talking or writing about state terror in former Communist Yugoslavia, one must inevitably mention those who were either assassinated or wounded outside the jurisdiction of that state. The assassination attempts were carried out by Yugoslav secret police (OZNA, UDBA) agents – although the decision “to make a kill” had to be first reached at the very top of the late Yugoslav Communist regime. During Communist ex-Yugoslavia, there was the whole spectrum of UDBA victims, particularly among former Croatian political emigres living under foreign Western jurisdictions. Of course, this sensitive theme can be addressed from a variety of different perspectives: historical, sociopolitical, psychological, ethical, and theological. Statistics or the “body count” of the UDBA terror is very important – but what appears to be even far more relevant are the persons who carried out those killings. Who gave the orders, and what were their motives? Such a wide-range analysis can, hopefully, be of some help, particularly in understanding today the poor legitimacy of the Tribunal in the Hague.

Moreover, such a broad-based approach is all the more important as the results of UDBA lawlessness went beyond its immediate victims. Each act of silencing a different, or dissident-minded opponent, or to physically eliminate somebody who refuses to pledge allegiance to a given state ideology, often exacerbates opposing views. Indeed, it can lead to a wider armed conflict, resulting in wars, mass killings, ethnic cleansings, etc. These end-results (which were recently confirmed by the violent break-up of ex-Yugoslavia and the subsequent Communist party -inspired aggression on Croatia, were also part and parcel of a larger socio-political package, leading to, but also deriving from, the spiral of mass psychosis, nationalist mythologies, general insecurity, the culture of resentment, and the resurgence of most primeval animal instincts amidst wide layers of population
.

The Sense of Victimhood and the Meaning of Forgiveness

Quote:
Regarding the scope of the Yugoslav secret police (UDBA) terror, one must not attribute them an excessive importance. In the last analysis, victims, following World War II in Yugoslavia, can be counted in hundreds of thousands, and victims in the recent war in the Balkans in several dozens of thousands. Therefore, attributing special significance to a relative small number, i.e. over a hundred victims of the UDBA terror in foreign countries, may sound biased – particularly when one compares this relatively low figure to the much higher figures mentioned above. Yet the difference in significance regarding the volume of the crime does not minimize the gravity of the crime; all victims are equally important. The only difference is how and in which historical circumstances these killings took place, and what is the causal relationship between the post- Word War II victims, UDBA victims, and Croat and Serb victims of the recent war. It is more or less taken for granted that mass killings occur in a war like scenario. Yet victims of the UDBA terror, which are discussed here, happened in peace time, in free and democratic Western countries, i.e., in societies in which everybody is entitled to his opinion and his pursuit of happiness. The criminal acts by the UDBA were committed abroad, and for them the Yugoslav Communist government (and their today’s recycled followers both in Croatia and Serbia) bear direct responsibility. Moreover, those post-World War II crimes went beyond the legal framework of Communist ex-Yugoslavia.

The question must be raised as to why the Communist regime, even after the establishment of Communist Yugoslavia in 1945, continued to assassinate its political opponents, including those who resided in Western countries. One might believe that political opponents of Communist Yugoslavia who lived in the West did not pose a tangible threat to the ruling Yugoslav Communist League. This is all the more important considering the fact that Western countries, in which Croatian political emigres lived, or still live, were by no means sympathetic to the vision of establishing an independent Croatian state. Quite to the contrary; Western countries often did their utmost to preserve the “unity and integrity” of Communist Yugoslavia. But a threat to Communist Yugoslavia from Croatian emigre Western-based circles did exist – for a simple reason that the state of Yugoslavia and its Communist elite could not rely on the good will of the Croatian people. This weakness of Communist Yugoslavia did represent a problem to the Yugoslav authorities, because any state and any regime without legitimacy (regardless of its claim to legality), unless founded on the will of its citizens, does not have long-term survivability. The regime in place could be upheld only by sheer force. In an uncompromising effort to secure its survival, the Yugoslav Communist regime decided, very early on, to “neutralize” all separatist Croats, including those living in Western countries. This method of “neutralization” often took place in a beastly manner. The new Republic of Croatia, today, does not need to be kept alive by using force against its dissidents, because its support is solidly anchored amidst the majority of its citizens. It does not have to fear a handful of individuals, or a handful of small extremist parties. Far more dangerous for the survival of Croatia are the individuals, who in the name of some “ultra-Croatiandom,” or some “mega-Croatian” statehood, continue to act in a radically opposite way to their much vaunted agendas. This danger is all the more great because it often operates under cover of fake Croat patriotism. Very early on, the ring leaders of the Communist machinery realized that their policy of “Yugoslavenisation” or “Titoisation” could not have positive effects among the Croatian people. Therefore, they viewed anybody who dared advocate the idea of the Croatian state independence, as a mortal enemy. On August 10, 1941, at the very beginning of the formation of Yugoslav Communist partisans units, late President Josip Broz Tito, stipulated that the “provocateurs, traitors must be immediately liquidated.” Those who fell into this category were often advocates of Croatian state independence. Following these official Titoistic stipulations, only a few months later, the leader of Slovenian Communist Partisan units, Mr. Evard Kardelj (under his conspiratioral name “Bevac”), in a written report sent to Tito regarding the liquidation of opponents, carried out by his partisan units, noted: “Our machinery of execution is made up of 50 well trained men, armed with pistols and hand grenades. In view of the much increased terror undertaken by the Italian (Fascist) occupying forces, and local Slovenian “Bela Garda” collaborators, we had to increase the number of our activities. These men are capable of everything. Almost every day collaborators and traitors are eliminated along with members of the occupying (Fascist) units, etc. There is no police protection for those whom our VOS takes for a target…” Classical UDBA Terror

Here is a typical example of Communist terror. On the one hand, Partisan and Communist executions, during WWII in the Balkans were carried out in order to scare the local population; on the other, to incite the occupying Fascist and pro-fascist forces to carry out retribution killings, and create additional mass psychosis, along with the sense of insecurity, further prompting local population to join the Partisan movement directed by the Yugoslav Communist Party – and the Red International.

The task of carrying out this mission was handed over to the OZNA, which later, after Word War II, changed its name to the civilian police security apparatus, under the name of UDBA and the KOS. In fact, as the Communist Partisan movement, as a result of the Allied help, grew stronger, on May 13, 1944 the Yugoslav Partisans formally founded the “Section for the People’s Protection” (i.e. OZNA). This organization, among the Croatian people, brings back bad memories, because it was through the OZNA that Communist leadership carried out mass or individual killings, which took place during Word War II and immediately after Word War II. Following the dissolution of the pro-fascist NDH (“Independent State of Croatia”) in 1945, the OZNA received the order, immediately after its first round of killings in post-World War II war months, to continue eliminating well-known Croats, who had managed after Word War II to escape and hide in foreign countries.

The early OZNA chose as its first victim Dr. Ivan Protulipac, who was assassinated in Trieste, Italy, on January 31, 1946. Dr. Protulipac was a founder of “The Eagle and Crusading Youth” in the former monarchic Yugoslavia. He was also a successor to Dr. Ivan Merz, the much praised leader of the “Croatian Catholic Youth.”

Two and a half years later, i.e., on August 22, 1948, the UDBA tried to kidnap in Salzburg, Austria, Dr. Mato Frkovic, who during Word War II, in a short lived NDH ( “Independent State of Croatia”) held a high ranking place in the government. The same year, the OZNA (from then on “UDBA”), assassinated in Austria, Mr. Ilija Abramovic. Only a few months later, on March 16, 1949, the UDBA kidnapped in Rome, Italy, Mr. Drago Jilek, who had worked as the interim Head of the Intelligence Service of the NDH, during Word War II. After the former Chief of the Security of the NDH, Mr. Dido Kvaternik had been deposed from office, Jilek assumed control of the pro-fascist World War II, Croatian UNS ( Ustasha Security Service).

The kidnapping of Drago Jilek by the Yugoslav Communist police agents coincided, strangely enough, with a tragic case of the most prominent Croatian Communist leader, Mr. Andrija Hebrang. It is widely considered that the UDBA wanted to find out what kind of contacts existed during and before World War II between high ranking Croat pro-fascist Ustasha officials and high ranking Croatian Communist and Croatian antifascist officials and intellectuals – whose common and apparent goal was, or may have been, the establishment of an independent Croatian state.

Victims of the Yugoslav Communist Security Service, i.e., the UDBA, included not just pro-fascist Ustashi or anti-communist Domobran (“Home Guard”) individuals, or members of former Croatian military units, but also prominent Croatian Communist and Partisan figures, such as the poet, Ivan Goran Kovacic, Dr. Andrija Hebrang, and a former Croatian Communist military officer – turned dissident – Mr. Zvonko Kucar. This further confirms that for the UDBA and the Yugoslav Communist regime, the main criteria for coming to terms with “hostile elements,” was not ideological affiliation of the target-victim (“left vs. right”), but primarily the removal of all those who showed any inclination towards any form of Croatian statehood or/and Croatian nationhood.
One-Hundred-Nine Cases of Assassinations and Kidnapping

Quote:
Obviously, not all details can be mentioned about every UDBA victim; neither can one separately cover all the facts leading to the death or kidnapping of the victims. One must, therefore, focus only on some of the most salient examples of UDBA state terrorist activity: From 1946 to 1949 two assassinations were carried out; one failed attempt of assassination; one kidnapping; one person was reported missing.

From 1950 until 1959 no assassination took place; two failed assassination attempts took place (against the former Ustashi exiled leader, Dr. Ante Pavelic, and Dr. Branimir Jelic); one kidnapping; one failed attempt at kidnapping.

From 1960 until 1969, twenty assassinations took place – all expect one during the period from 1966 to 1969; four failed assassination attempts; one kidnapping ( Dr. Krunoslav Draganovic, in Italy); two persons reported missing ( Mr. Zvonimir Kucar, 1960, and Mr. Geza Pesti, 1965).

From these figures it may be concluded that the number of assassination by the UDBA increased dramatically during that period. The reason for that was the fact that the Yugoslav President Tito, as a follow-up to the important Plenary Congress of the Yugoslav Communist League, which was held on the Island of Briuni in 1966, after having fired his chief of the Yugoslav Security, Mr. Aleksandar Rankovic, decided to loosen up somewhat the repressive tools within Communist Yugoslavia – but to sharpen up repression, i.e. UDBA killings of Croatian emigres outside Yugoslavia, i.e., in Western countries.

From 1970 until 1979 twenty-eight Croat emigres (including the well-known Croatian dissident writer, Mr. Bruno Busic) were assassinated by the UDBA; 13 failed UDBA assassination attempts; one kidnapping (of the Croatian poet Mr. Vjenceslav Cizek); four failed attempts of kidnapping (including the one of the former high ranking exiled Croatian Communist official Franjo Mikulic; one person missing.

Spurred by the crushing of the “Croatian Spring” in December 1971, the Yugoslav Communist regime became particularly intent on eliminating Croatian emigre dissidents – often without any scruples. Thus in 1972, in Italy, a whole Croatian family was killed, Mr. Stjepan Sevo, his spouse and his nine-year old daughter.

In 1975, in Klagenfurt, Austria, a 65 year old Mr. Nikola Martinovic was the target of the UDBA assassination. Mr. Martinovic was known in Croatian emigre circles, before his violent death, as a caretaker of the graves of Croat soldiers and civilians who were the victims of the Yugoslav Communist units in southern Austria, near the town of Bleiburg, in May and June 1945.

The same year, i.e., 1975, shortly before his death, Mr. Martinovic planned to organize large anti-Yugoslav demonstrations in the vicinity of Bleiburg. However, Yugoslav Communist government officials sent a note to the Austrian government, requesting the interdiction of the Croatian emigre mass gathering. Since it did not work, the UDBA had to take the matter into it own hands.

From 1980 to 1989, seventeen emigre Croats were assassinated (including Mr. Stjepan Durekovic, a former high ranking Croatian Communist and head of the state-owned “INA”, (largest oil refinery in ex-Yugoslavia); nine failed assassination attempts – including one against myself (Mr. Nikola Stedul, n.t.); and one kidnapping.

From these figures it can be seen that for the period stretching from 1946 to 1990, the OZNA, the UDBA, and the KOS carried out over one hundred assassinations and/or assassination attempts against Croat emigres. Regarding the rough break-down of this figure, it follows: in Western Europe eighty-nine UDBA assassination attempts; nine in North America; six in South America; two in Australia; two in Africa. As far as figures regarding individuals countries are concerned, the majority of assassination and assassination attempts took place in the Federal Republic of Germany – fifty-six; ten in France; nine in Italy.

The total number of UDBA victims is a follows: sixty-seven killed; twenty-nine failed assassination attempts; four successful kidnappings; five failed kidnapping attempts; four persons reported missing – who were in all likelihood also UDBA victims.

Beside UDBA targets of emigre Croats over that period of the same time, there were also twelve emigre Serbs killed; four ethnic Albanians. The above figures are based on various sources, and it is quite likely that all victims have not been counted and covered here, and that the fate of some still remains to be elucidated.
Three Objectives
Quote:
With each assassination Communist Yugoslavia aimed at achieving three goals: a) to eliminate a political “trouble-maker”; b) to scare other dissidents and emigres both at home and abroad; c) to leave general impression both in Yugoslavia and abroad that Croat emgires were fighting among themselves their own turf war. Each assassination was followed in Communist Yugoslavia’s state-controlled journals by words that “Ustashi-Fascist-Croatian nationalists fighting war among their own ranks.” The media mega-language of Yugoslav state-sponsored journals must be thoroughly examined. Indeed, many Croats in Communist Yugoslavia were persuaded, as the result of incessant Communist propaganda, that the deaths of emigre Croats was a direct result of underground infighting.

It should be pointed out that any effective organization among Croatian emigres, was virtually nonexistent and, legally speaking, impossible to achieve. All foreign security services kept Croatian emigre groups under strict observation, especially those Croats abroad who intended to overthrow the Yugoslav Communist state. In many cases, Western-based security and intelligence services even worked hand in hand with Yugoslav intelligence services, including the Yugoslav diplomatic corps. Croats abroad, and those in the former Yugoslavia have been well aware of these Western attempts to prevent the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and to make quite costly the establishment of the independent state of Croatia. It is also clear why many Western countries glowingly supported the decades-long Yugoslav and Titoistic experiment – if for no other reason than as a desire to keep status quo in the East-West cleavage, and as a country-pawn in the geopolitical gamble of the Cold War – during which Communist Yugoslavia, as a non-aligned buffer-state played an important role.

Just as the world passively witnessed, in 1991, the break up of Yugoslavia, so too did the world passively observe serial UDBA killings of Croatian political activists abroad. Even the Libyan leader Colonel Moamar Khadafi in an interview with the German Der Spiegel : once said. “Tito sends his agents to the Federal Republic of Germany in order to liquidate Croatian opponents. But Tito’s prestige doesn’t not suffer at all in Germany. Why should Tito be allowed those things and why am I not allowed to do the same. Moreover, I have never given a personal order to have somebody killed in foreign countries.”

The above quotes may be further confirmed by many more further killings of Croatian emigre dissidents – which was barely ever covered in full in the Western media. One example should suffice: When the Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union, in 1973, the entire Western media was deluged with protests aimed at the Kremlin handling of this case. By contrast, when the Croatian dissident Bruno Busic was assassinated by the Yugoslav secret police UDBA, in Paris 1977, the event was mentioned as a side story – with unavoidable speculation that Busic’s death may have been the result of the Croatian emigre infighting.

The travesty of the present legal International Criminal Court in the Hague is that its judges never wishes to examine the root cause of the recent crimes committed in ex-Yugoslavia. It never occurs to Hague prosecutors that there were large scale infra- and extra- judiciary historical precedents for the more recent crimes which they are supposed to impartially adjudicate.

Last edited by Fico; July 24th, 2014 at 07:04 PM.
 
Old August 18th, 2014 #2
Fico
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 974
Default

The Yugoslav Mythology: A Multicultural Pathology (August 1993 ~ Chronicles)

Quote:
One must agree with Georges Sorel that political myths have a long and durable life. For 74 years the Yugoslav state drew its legitimacy from the spirit of Versailles and Yalta, as well as from the Serb-inspired pan-Slavic mythology. By carefully manipulating the history of their constituent peoples while glorifying their own, Yugoslav leaders managed to convince the world that Yugoslavia was a “model multiethnic state.” Many global-minded pundits in the West followed suit and made a nice career preaching the virtues of the Yugoslav multi-ethnic pot. By tirelessly vaunting the Yugoslav model, scores of starry-eyed Western academics gave, both pedagogically and psychologically, additional legitimacy to artificial Yugoslavia. In 1991, faced with massive geopolitical tremors, stretching from Siberia to Spain, the Yugoslav mythology began cracking up, and with it, its multiethnic mystique. The sudden beginning of the democratization of Yugoslavia led, naturally, to the country’s demise, the bloody postscript to which is yet to unfold.

Nothing seemed easier for the European Community and the United Nations than to describe the 1991 Serbian aggression against Croatia as a Serbo-Croat tribal war. At the beginning of the conflict, France, America, and a gallery of faceless U.N. mediators shrugged off Serbian territorial appetites by calling them the result of an ancient Serbo-Croat balkanesque feud. After all, why would big powers have to intervene in an area of Europe that, according to their definition of international law, offered no precise definition of the aggressor vs. the victim? The paralysis of the United Nations and European Community was seen by the Serbs as a green light to salvage Yugoslavia by force – even if that meant destroying it by force. As self-declared victims of hard times and soft former allies, the Serbs are today angry at France and America. These two countries once offered them Yugoslavia – only to strip them of it today.
In retrospect, the good guys appear to be those who define the international system, which in 1993, unlike in 1919 and 1945, does not well suit the Serbs. By detour, we could refer to Edward Carr’s dictum that before we study history we must first study the historian – if we are to decide who to side with in the Balkans. Historically, the “Greater Serbia” mythology has functioned only by wallowing in victimology – even as Serbs victimized the Other. In the latest spasm of this endless victimology, Serbs are today heaping their anger for the collapse of Yugoslavia on everybody: The Vatican, Muslims, the CIA, the Fourth Reich, and, of course, always available nearby Croats.

All the rest seems to be distance history now. In 1990, on the eve of Yugoslavia’s breakup, the majority of Catholic Slovenes and Croats favored the transformation of centralized Serb-dominated Yugoslavia into a confederal state. Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milosevic flatly refused the idea of a confederal Yugoslavia for fear that Serbia would lose its historic Yugoslav mandate, which it had received at Versailles in 1919 and inherited at Potsdam in 1945. When in 1991 Slovenes and Croats voted in defiance for a complete divorce from Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav Army launched a large-scale invasion against Slovenian and Croat “fascist separatists.” As the war began to rage, so did the inflated word fascism become an expedient metaphor for the Western Media. It was hurled by everybody at everybody – and it therefore hit nobody. The Serbs see themselves as fighting the just war against resurgent fascist papal Croatia and Islamic fundamentalism. The Western media, by contrast, is portraying Serb president Slobodan Milosevic as the fascist butcher of the Balkans, bent on ethnic cleansing. Yet, old dogs cannot learn new tricks. Milosevic is still a communist apparatchik, and the party he presides over is still euphemistically called the Socialist Party of Serbia.
Unquestionably, the roots of the present conflict in what in the past tense used to be Yugoslavia are grounded in recent history, which by now has turned into self-serving mythology. During World War II Serbia suffered under fascism but like all European countries also experimented with fascism. Serbia experienced its own share of killing and suffering just like Croatia, or, for that matter, any other country in Europe. World War II and post-war sufferings of Muslims, Albanians, ethnic Germans, and Hungarians at the hands of the Yugoslav communists still appear to evade the contemporary media comparisons. Serbia’s less glorious World War II past was for year swept under the red carpet of oblivion, first by Yugoslav communist clerics and then by contemporary Serbian hagiographers.
The welfare of Bosnia and Herzegovina has now ceased to be a war of Serb-Croat Muslim memories; it had turned into a surreal war for respective numbers of casualties and endlessly increasing national trigonometries. Since 1945, Yugoslavia’s politicians, the Serb Christian Orthodox Church, and a number of Serb intellectuals have steadily inflated Serbian World War II casualties, which portray Serbs as victims of inborn Croatian and German fascism. The president of Croatia, former partisan general and historian Franjo Tudjman, is intensely hated in Serbia because his World War II body counts fly in the face of Serbian victimology. Before becoming president of Croatia, Tudjman tried to demolish Serbian and communist historiography by deflating the number of Serbian World War II dead from the official 700,000 to a very modest 70,000. Predictably, his excursion into historicism regarding Serbian mythical martyrdom unleashed Serbia’s wrath. Faced with a sudden Croatian attack on her mythology, Serbia launched, in 1991, a military counterattack against separatist Croatia. Political reality may change, but mythical surreality must remain untainted by any profanity.
Tudjman’s books and statements also led to an outcry among Western liberal opinion-makers, who were quick to dub him an anti-Semitic revisionist. The real problem with Tudjman is not so much his substance, but rather his awkward Centro-European schwerfällig style. Unlike the Serb Slobodan Milosevic, who is a slick Byzantine con man with an excellent knowledge of English and the ability to fool “prime-time” Westerners, the Croat Tudjman, just like all Central European politicians, stutters and mutters. Small wonder therefore that he could not quickly sell the Croat cause to the video-political world of Washington and Paris.

To grasp Serbian anger at Croatia and the West one should read the 19th-Century Serbian satirist Radoje Domanovic. Domanovic described the Royal house in Serbia as the sire of endless Byzantine persecution complexes coupled with pan-Slavic zeal to convert Catholicism and Muslim Slavs. Serbian Royal hallucinations, stretching from the House of Karadjordjevic all the way down to the House of Milosevic, are still visible in Belgrade today. Every Serb is made to believe tat a conspiratorial West, along with an Islamic East, is plotting to enslave the Serb people. Croats, by contrast, see Bosnia’s Muslims as stupid, neolith, stray-away Croats who need to be re-converted to Croatian national consciousness. In Croatian popular jokes, Bosnia’s Muslims are endlessly portrayed as species with bizarre lovemaking conduct and strange toilet habits.

The more secular European Community and United Nations also border on mythical melodrama. Their vicarious humanism manifests itself in occasional drops of culinary diplomacy, as well as in the presence of “peace-keeping-forces” in a country torn by violent war. U.N. Samaritans lecture against Serbian ethnic cleansing, forgetting that ethnic cleansing is only the post-modern spin-off of the cujus regio ejus religio of all countries in the making. Ethnic cleansing did not start with Milosevic and his likes; it began with communist Tito, who either killed or expelled a half-million ethnic Germans and Hungarians from early Yugoslavia. Tito only practiced in chorus the art of other East European communists, which resulted in the largest German Völkerwanderung in history: from the Balkans to the Baltics, from Königsberg to Karlovac. The Croatian exodus from Vukovar last year and the agony of Dubrovnik under Serbian bombs, followed today by death on the installment plan in Sarajevo, are only the continuation the funeral march that began at Bleiburg and Breslau in 1945…and that is finishing in Bosnia in 1993. Forty years after Tito’s ethnic cleansing, Milosevic miscalculated: he grotesquely followed in his predecessor’s suit, and he grotesquely failed.
During its brief communist interregnum, Tito’s Yugoslavia offered the foreign visitor bizarre features, which only the morbid satirical painter, the 17th-Cetury Jacques Callot, could have captured. In one of the Callot’s pictures, showing the Thirty Years War in Europe, one sees a scene of boundless popular revelry near a tree decorated with dozens of hanged men. Similarly, Titoist Yugoslavia could for years boast of the largest number of nudist beaches in Europe, but also of the largest prison population per capita in Eastern Europe. Just like in permissive Amsterdam, one could freely light up a joint in the centre of Belgrade or Zagreb, but one could also easily end up, for a minor “political incorrectness,” in a real communist joint. Yugoslav conviviality allowed everybody everything – provided one did not touch the infallibility of the mythical Tito. For 40 years, Yugoslav communist vocabulary dubbed every Croat a “fascist” if he ventured to evoke his national ancestry. In Yugoslavia, as everywhere else in Eastern Europe, one could display national sentiments and unfurl his flag only behind closed family doors or in the open soccer field. A number of Serbians ended up in Tito’s prisons too. Cut into three parts, Voivodina in the north, Kosovo in the south, and Serbia proper in the middle, Greater Serbia was a myth that Tito was well able to keep under his control. In turn, however, Tito rewarded the Serbs with leverage in the two most important nerves of the Yugoslav government: high diplomacy and the Yugoslav army. The targets of Serb rage are not just the proverbial Croat Nazis and Muslims fundamentalists. All other neighboring nations, ethnic groups, and minorities are being put in the category of fascist world conspirators. Ironically, Croats and Serbs probably hate each other most because they resemble each other. Is it not true that racism is always directed at the Other, who physiologically and morphologically, always represents the travesty of the Same? One does not discriminate against beasts; one discriminates against his likes. Following the logic of the cursed Other, a great number of Serbs, both in Serbia and Bosnia, are deeply convinced that ethnic cleansing is the rightful way to pursue a noble struggle against Croatian fascism and Muslim fundamentalism, for which all military means and tools are morally justifiable. The destruction of Croatian Catholic churches and Muslim mosques, the killing of thousands of non-Serbs, bears witness to the never-ending logic of the worse. Tomorrow, times may change and political constellations may alter. Who will prevent tomorrow’s Albanians or nearby Hungarians from similar mythical aggrandizements and ethnic cleansing of Serbs? Permanent peace has never meant much in Europe; peace has always been seen by the Other as punitive. Alas, European laws of the tragic are timeless, and their meaning lies only in the bowels of wild geese, or in the rhymes of the Greek chorus…
The Serbian government does not deserve all the blame for the carnage in the Balkans. Western governments, particularly the Unites States and France, preached for decades the “Unity and integrity” of Yugoslavia, as if Yugoslavia could be held together by some French decree or State Department ukase. The U.S. State Department (and especially its year-long chief apparatchik Lawrence Eagleburger), with its decades-long support of “Yugoslavia’s integrity,” gave a decent alibi to Serbia’s war of aggression. Hybrid Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, two virulently anti-German countries, fit geopolitically into the NATO doctrine of “double containment”: on the one hand, they contained the Red Bear in the East; on the other, they contained the mythical and unpredictable German in the West. Small wonder, therefore, that nobody in Washington or at Quai d’Orsay was ecstatic with the sudden unification of; nobody was too ecstatic with the sudden disintegration of Yugoslavia, either. In the supreme irony of history, this time around it is not the proverbial “ugly German” who is destroying the Versailles architecture. This time, the Versailles architecture is falling apart due to its surreal Potemkin Hollywood-like façade. Woodrow Wilson and his progeny have suffered a serious defeat in Europe. The whole holy story of the Balkans has just begun to unravel. The Serbian leadership in Belgrade shows great concern for Serbs living in Croatia and Bosnia, but ignores the rights of the swelling tide of Albanians within its own house. Albanians in Serbia, like the Palestinians, have perfectly learned an ancient wisdom, which Christian Europe forgot long ago: demography is the continuation of politics by other, more enjoyable means. Any cohabitation in the Balkans, any brand of federalism or “power-sharing,” which Western pundits preach until their dying breath, is out of the question. Endless wars seem to be the only answer. At some point, some outsider from a distant galaxy may reassemble buts and pieces of scattered Berlin Wall and fence off different versions of the ethnic truth here. Multi-ethnic countries are like prisons, in which citizen-inmates communicate with the Other only after each is granted his own territorial imperative. Crammed into one promiscuous cell, all hell breaks loose. Short of a giant mine field separating Serbs and Croats today, or Poles and Russians tomorrow, Europe will be entering another chapter of the Hundred Years War. When different historical destinies clash, when different national mythologies collide, and when different geopolitical tectonic plates start rattling under Eurasia, then the myth of a united Europe will sound like a titanic joke.
Today is the turn of ex-Yugoslavians to live the violent beauty of their congested multiethnic laboratory. Tomorrow it may be the turn of multiracial Marseilles, Frankfurt, or Brussels. The West is moving full-speed ahead into its own Yugoslav pathology. Last year’s events in sunny Los Angeles have shown that no paradigm, no academic model, no formula, and no single truth can supply an answer for our multicultural future. The multicultural daydream functions nicely in soft, sunny, “cool” consumer society; with the first heavy clouds it spells chaos of unbelievable proportions. Emile Cioran was right when he wrote that if we knew what the future holds for us, we would immediately strangle our children.
 
Old August 18th, 2014 #3
Fico
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 974
Default

United Nations Security Council Resolution 712 (Implementing an Arms Embargo on Yugoslavia), S.C. res 712, U.N. Doc. S/RES/712 (1991).

Quote:
Adopted by the Security Council at its 3009th meeting, on 25 September 1991

The Security Council,

Conscious of the fact that Yugoslavia has welcomed the convening of a Security Council meeting through a letter conveyed by the Permanent Representative of Yugoslavia to the President of the Security Council (S/23069),

Having heard the statement by the Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia,

Deeply concerned by the fighting in Yugoslavia which is causing a heavy loss of human life and material damage, and by the consequences for the countries of the region, in particular in the border areas of neighbouring countries,

Concerned that the continuation of this situation constitutes a threat to international peace and security,

Recalling its primary responsibility under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance of international peace and security,

Recalling also the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Charter of the United Nations,

Commending the efforts undertaken by the European Community and its member States, with the support of the States participating in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to restore peace and dialogue in Yugoslavia, through, inter alia, the implementation of a cease-fire including the sending of observers, the convening of a Conference on Yugoslavia, including the mechanisms set forth within it, and the suspension of the delivery of all weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia,

Recalling the relevant principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and, in this context, noting the Declaration of 3 September 1991 of the States participating in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe that no territorial gains or changes within Yugoslavia brought about by violence are acceptable,

Noting also the agreement for a cease-fire concluded on 17 September 1991 in Igalo, and also that signed on 22 September 1991,

Alarmed by the violations of the cease-fire and the continuation of the fighting,

Taking note of the letter dated 19 September 1991 to the President of the Security Council from the Permanent Representative of Austria (S/23052),

Taking note also of the letters dated 19 September 1991 and 20 September 1991 to the President of the Security Council from respectively the Permanent Representative of Canada (S/23053) and the Permanent Representative of Hungary (S/23057),

Taking note also of the letters dated 5 July 1991 (S/22775), 12 July 1991 (S/22785), 22 July 1991 (S/22834), 6 August 1991 (S/22898), 7 August 1991 (S/22902), 7 August 1991 (S/22903), 21 August 1991 (S/22975), 29 August 1991 (S/22991), 4 September 1991 (S/23010), 19 September 1991 (S/23047), 20 September 1991 (S/23059) and 20 September 1991 (S/23060), from respectively the Permanent Representative of the Netherlands, the Permanent Representative of Czechoslovakia, the Permanent Representatives of Belgium, France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Charge d'Affaires a.i. of Austria, and the Permanent Representative of Australia,

1. Expresses its full support for the collective efforts for peace and dialogue in Yugoslavia undertaken under the auspices of the member States of the European Community with the support of the States participating in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe consistent with the principles of that Conference;

2. Supports fully all arrangements and measures resulting from such collective efforts as those described above, in particular of assistance and support to the cease-fire observers, to consolidate an effective end to hostilities in Yugoslavia and the smooth functioning of the process instituted within the framework of the Conference on Yugoslavia;

3. Invites to this end the Secretary-General to offer his assistance without delay, in consultation with the Government of Yugoslavia and all those promoting the efforts referred to above, and to report as soon as possible to the Security Council;

4. Strongly urges all parties to abide strictly by the cease-fire agreements of 17 September 1991 and 22 September 1991;

5. Appeals urgently to and encourages all parties to settle their disputes peacefully and through negotiation at the Conference on Yugoslavia, including through the mechanisms set forth within it;

6. Decides, under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, that all States shall, for the purposes of establishing peace and stability in Yugoslavia, immediately implement a general and complete embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia until the Security Council decides otherwise following consultation between the Secretary-General and the Government of Yugoslavia;

7. Calls on all States to refrain from any action which might contribute to increasing tension and to impeding or delaying a peaceful and negotiated outcome to the conflict in Yugoslavia, which would permit all Yugoslavs to decide upon and to construct their future in peace;

8. Decides to remain seized of the matter until a peaceful solution is achieved.
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/peace/docs/scres713.html
 
Old August 26th, 2014 #4
Fico
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 974
Default

Yugoslavia: The End of Communism, The Return of Nationalism (20 April 1991 ~ America National Catholic weekly)


Quote:
The end of communism in Yugoslavia has brought the return of nationalism and a host of new problems steeped in ethnic roots, said Tomislav Sunic, a Croatian who now teaches in Juniata College.

As a result, he believes, “representative democracy…as attractive and functional a model as it may be in the relatively homogeneous societies of the West, has, in the fractured Yugoslavian state, little chance of success.” The issues of uneven territorial, linguistic, and demographic distribution will continue to hinder the chances of implementing such a democracy.
“The only democracy that can possibly function in Yugoslavia is one that first takes root within the ethnic confines of each of its constituent peoples,” Sunic stated.
He also believes that “liberalism and a free market system in Yugoslavia will intensify ethnic resentments and lead to more instability. “The independent-minded Slovenes, Croats, and Albanians reminds us that political theologies come and go, but ethnic identities have an extraordinary long life,” he observed. Moreover, he feels Yugoslavia’s multi-ethnic turmoil, pitting Catholic Slovenes and Croats against Christian Orthodox Serbs, could once again sweep Europe into another cycle of dangerous uncertainty.
“If there is something that binds the Yugoslav people together, it is the bonding of mutual hate,” he said.
He recalled that the first cracks in the Yugoslav structure appeared last year when, in free elections Croats and Slovenes ousted the local communist governments from power and replaced them with central-rightist parties. In contrast, Serbia voted overwhelmingly last December for communism and a hard-line leader, Slobodan Milosevic.
The result, he said, was that “Yugoslavia effectively ceased to exist and in its place, ‘Serboslavia’ was born. As to the future, Sunic stated that Serbian actions, meant initially as an attempt to preserve Yugoslavia at all, are ironically speeding up the disintegration of the country. He said: “The survival of Yugoslavia no longer depends on how to bring Slovenia and Croatia back to the Yugoslavian fold but on how to change Serbia’s own mindless policy of ethnic exclusion that may soon result in war of all against all.”
Already, he believes, the simmering anti-trust between the Serbs and Croats reached its culminating point.
The tensions may foretell of civil war.
Sunic said Yugoslavia is no longer just ethnically fragmented beyond repair, but is also ideologically and religiously polarized to the breaking point.

Will Yugoslavia collapse? Will it survive? No one is sure, but some feel it is possible that a confederate state with only a semblance of central government may emerge.
Sunic’s assessment is that “a break-up is already looming on the horizon.” He adds, “This may, after all, be not such a bad idea, for unlike in previous epochs, the Balkans have ceased to be an athletic field for foreign powers bent on pitting one ethnic group against another.”
Western illusion that peace and stability will come to a hybrid state such as Yugoslavia “have floundered again on the reality of irreconcilable ethnic aspirations,” he observed.
In short, while communism has receded, ethnic issues have surfaced in its place. Before democracy can arrive, the ethnic issues need to be resolved.

Tomislav Sunic, Croatia, is an assistant professor of government who teaches European politics, the politics of the Soviet Union, and theories of international politics at Juniata College. He is a graduate of the School of Humanities at the University of Zagreb, Yugoslavia. His book, Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right, was published in 1990.


The Terminal Illness of Yugoslavia ( June 9, 1990 ~ Chicago Tribune)
by T on JANUARY 29, 2012
Quote:
Amidst breathtaking changes in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia appears as a cadaver that simply refuses to rot away. Not long ago the Yugoslav communists could claim to be the first initiators of their self-styled perestroika, and their maverick self-managing communism engendered considerable awe in many Western well-wishers. Today, however, Yugoslav institutions are turning into anachronisms, and Yugoslavia’s ill-conceived federalism has pushed its six constituent republics to the brink of civil war.
With the recent electoral success of conservatives in Slovenia and Croatia, Yugoslavia is the only country in Eastern Europe where non-communist governments in the north cohabit with communist governments in the south. Constant ethnic provocations and chauvinist slurs from all six republics have made Yugoslavia an ungovernable and unlivable state whose break-up is threatening to turn the Balkans into European Lebanon. Bracing for the coming deluge, Slovenia and Croatia are already bidding farewell to the remainder of Yugoslavia and are eagerly courting the favors of their West European neighbors.
Without Slovenia, or possibly without the southern province of Kosovo, where the Serbs still exercise their iron muscle, Yugoslavia could continue to hobble on, but its life would not last a minute with Croatia’s walkout. The second largest and richest republic and arch-rival of Serbia, Croatia is experiencing a nationalist revival whose aftershocks are putting the last nails in the coffin of fractured Yugoslavia. The secessionist drive among Croatian and Slovenian nationalists has been met with hostility and outright fear among influential Serbs and their power base in the army and diplomacy. Left to itself, and cut loose from affluent Slovenia and Croatia, the lone Serbia knows all too well that it is doomed to shrink fast into an obscure landlocked Balkan state.
The terminal illness of Yugoslavia probably would never have occurred without the emergence several years ago of the wildly popular Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milosevic – a man who rose from a provincial apparatchik to a chief torchbearer of Serbian nationalism. Milosevic’s fiery speeches galvanized Serbs, triggering in turn similar nationalist appetites among other scared republics. Today all four major ethnic groups are displaying an impressive litany of past injustices, angrily blaming each other for their real or perceived ethnic plights.
No less ominous is the conduct of the Serbian intelligentsia. Once it could proudly claim to be the most progressive and reform-minded in Eastern Europe; today it has entered an alliance with the mob rule. However, its support of Milosevic’s heavy-handed policy in the southern province of Kosovo has yielded results different from those it originally anticipated. The continuing exodus of ethnic Serbs from this little enclave, which by now is 80 percent populated by the Moslem ethnic Albanians, will further legitimize neighboring Albanians’ claims to an ethnically pure and aggrandized Albania. The skyrocketing baby boom among Albanians is already changing the demographic picture of the entire Balkans.
Among Yugoslav nationalisms there has never been a net loser or a net winner; the rendering of ethnic justice to one ethnic group is invariably perceived as injustice by another group. More than any other European state, the patchwork of Yugoslav nations, which were glued together by force rather than by consent, has earned Yugoslavia a sorry name of a levitating “seasonal state.” One wonders what will happen with superpowers’ security arrangements when Yugoslavia disappears from the map.
Ironically, Yugoslavia’s survival so far is due to its shifting ethnic balance of power as well as to the lack of any organized pan-Yugoslav opposition. The very inter-ethnic anarchy of Yugoslavia accounts also for its morbid longevity. Undoubtedly, if the events of 1914 or 1941 were to be repeated today, Yugoslavia would immediately disintegrate, with Slovenia and Croatia flocking to the West, and Serbia shrinking farther under the watchful eyes of its inimical Hungarian and Bulgarian neighbors.
Today, the remainder of the Yugoslav Communist League, with its power base in Serbia, has been caught unprepared. Ethnically fractured and ideologically discredited, the communists can no longer resort to the cliché of external “Soviet threat,” or point to internal “reactionary fascists” in order to keep themselves in power. Even hard-line communists must admit that there are simply no more scapegoats.
Can Yugoslavia survive? Yes, but only as an authoritarian or a totalitarian state led by its largest ethnic group. A democratic Yugoslavia is a contradiction in terms. A democratic Yugoslavia can exist only if it breaks up first.

Tomislav Sunic teaches European politics at California State University, Fullerton. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right” (Peter Lang Publishing)
In fact,after communism,coming neoliberalism and many people look on West world,but this didn't change nothing in terms of secure race and nation because liberalism is worse than communism in global.
All perivous text without text in perivous post is from website: www.tomsunic.com

Last edited by Fico; August 26th, 2014 at 09:56 AM.
 
Old January 7th, 2015 #5
Fico
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 974
Default

In Croatia Is Blowing a Wind of Change



Quote:
If Sincic succeeds to repeat his success in the end of the year, this will be a very bad news for the Croatian economy because it will mean that the country will enter a period of political instability. This, however, could be a good news for Putin who might get influence in another Balkan state (after Serbia). The big difference is that Croatia is a producer of oil and natural gas and is desperately trying to avoid Gazprom's appetites to put a hand over the searches for gas and oil in the Adriatic sea.
Full text on: http://www.euinside.eu/en/analyses/i...wind-of-change
 
Reply

Share


Thread
Display Modes


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 05:11 PM.
Page generated in 0.31231 seconds.