The Washington Times
FORUM
COMMENTARY/OPINION
If we are ever to get to the truth…
by Stella L. Jatras
Mr. Kuhner of The Washington Times states in his “Bolton and the Balkan Tribunal” of 19 June, “The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was initially created to punish those who perpetrated war crimes in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
It was never intended to become a politicized, antidemocratic tribunal aimed at intimidating opposition journalists in the region. Yet this is exactly what has happened.” Truer words were never spoken.
However, these words seem to apply for Mr. Kuhner only when Croatian interests are threatened. Case in point, Slobodan Milosevic. Not one word from Mr. Kuhner when jounalists are silenced who are against the kangaroo court at The Hague which is trying Milosevic, a trial that should be big news.
This is not to excuse Slobo for the crimes committed under his watch, but his trial has lasted over three years with virtually no media coverage. This should strike anyone as odd since his is the most important trial since Nuremberg and the first trial of a head of state of a sovereign nation.
Despite his lofty words against politicization of the judicial process, Mr. Kuhner has often shown his own pro-Croation political bias and disregard of history. In his commentary of 2003 titled, “Facing Reality,” stated in defense of Croatian Gen. Gotovina who was accused of war crimes by the ICTY: “Gen. Gotovina is not a war criminal. Instead, he is a hero who finally accomplished what the United Nations and Western diplomacy had failed to do after nearly four years of bloodshed,”
Kuhner further wrote, “Gen. Gotovina was indicted in June 2001 by the prosecutor’s office at The Hague for ‘command responsibility over an August 1995 military operation – known as Operation Storm – in which Croatia regained the territories that had been annexed by rebel Serbs loyal to Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.’ ” He failed to explain how the Serbs “annexed” for Milosevic a region in which Serbs lived since the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Columnist Charles Krauthammer in TIME, April 5, 1999, wrote, “In August of 1995, Croatia launched a savage attack on Krajina, a region of Croatia that Serbs had inhabited for 500 years. Within four days, the Croatians drove out 150,000 Serbs [the final estimate is closer to 250,000], the largest ethnic cleansing of the entire Balkan war.”
Krauthammer continued: “Investigators with the war-crimes tribunal in the Hague have concluded that this campaign was carried out with brutality, wanton murder and indiscriminate shelling of civilians. The tribunal is bringing war-crimes indictments against high Croatians officials.” As the general in command, Gen. Gotovina is one of those high Croatian officials.
Where is the justice to those Krajina Serbs in refugee columns who were strafed by Croatian jets while trying to escape the Croatian carnage? Where is the justice for my Los Angeles Serbian friend whose last five elderly relatives in Croatia had their throats slashed, the others having been murdered by Croatian Ustashe (Crotian Nazi party) in World War II?
Hatred by Croatians of Serbs and Jews goes back to World War II. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Institute, over one million Serbs, Jews and Gypsies perished in Croatia’s death camps in World War II. It was so brutal that even the German SS were appalled. As a reward for being his loyal ally, Hitler recognized Croatia as the “Independent State of Croatia” in 1941. It was Andrija Artukovic, then Minister of the Interior, who said, “Kill all Serbs and Jews including children so that not even the seeds of the beasts are left.”
This hatred continues to this day. The Washington Times article titled, “Pro-Nazi extremism lingers in Croatia,” 15 June 1997 wrote, “A German tank rolls through a small village, and the peasants rush out, lining the road with their right arms raised in a Nazi salute as they chant “Heil Hitler.” Mobs chase minorities from their homes, kicking them and pelting them with eggs as they flee into the woods. Europe in the 1940s? No. Croatia in the 1990s.”
And The Washington Post of 2000 wrote, “It was not unusual to see such chilling graffiti as: “We Croats do not drink wine, we drink the blood of Serbs from Knin,” (Knin rhymes with “wine” in Serbo-Croatian). It refers to the capital of the Krajina region of Croatia where hundreds of thousands of Serbs were ethnically cleansed in 1995 by troops commanded by Gen. Gotovina.
The Washington Times reported on 5 Sep 1995, that Croatian soldiers were given heroin or cocaine twice daily in order to help them face up to the horrors of war in reference to the expulsion of Croatian Serbs from Krajina. A Croatian soldier, identified only as Davor, stated, “To attack villages, to cut throats and to kill in cold blood you need a strong anesthetic – a shot of heroin or cocaine was ideal.” This report was also substantiated in The Guardian of 1 Sep 1995.
“Gen. Gotovina is not a war criminal. Instead, he is a hero,” writes Mr. Kuhner. If this is the case, then send General Gotovina to The Hague to defend himself as Serbs must do. Who knows, the War Crimes Tribunal may take a soft position on him as they have the relatively few Croatian war criminals that have gone before them by either releasing them or reducing their sentences.
As for John Bolton, big kudos! In a Chris Mathews interview with Christopher Hitchens, Hitchens was asked why he was against the nomination of John Bolton to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Hitchens responded that Bolton was “pro-Serb, against intervention in the Balkans and against sending Milosevic to The Hague.”
A.M. Rosenthal, in an April 15, 1997 The New York Times commentary titled, “Back from the Grave”, wrote, “In World War II, Hitler had no executioners more willing, no ally more passionate, than the fascists of Croatia. They are returning, 50 years later, from what should have been their eternal grave, the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Western Allies who dug that grave with the bodies of their servicemen have the power to stop them, but do not.”
As Mr. Rosenthal stated, they are “Back from the Grave.” Ask the Serbs.