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War Crimes and Profiteering Take Centre Stage in Croatia

10 11 2006  Activists fear highlighting wartime corruption may undermine effort to open up crimes of murder.

By Davor Konjikusic in Zagreb (Balkan Insight, 10 Nov 06)

As high profile cases force Croatia to confront war crimes and corruption, an important poll has suggested society is becoming more ready to examine the dark side of the first years of the country's independence.

President Stjepan Mesic stoked the debate on October 30 when he labelled the profiteers and shady businessmen who had "robbed Croatia of its resources during the war" as "war criminals".

Mesic struck a chord with the public by condemning those who made fortunes from the 1991-5 conflict. At few days later, he announced a joint legal initiative with the opposition Social Democratic Party, SDP, to re-examine the most controversial privatisation cases and financial dealings of the era.

But human rights activists are concerned that this may take away from momentum to get to the bottom of real war crimes, relativising suffering instead of creating the attitudes and institutions needed to see the process through.

War crimes have recently returned to the centre of attention in Croatia, in connection with the case of Branimir Glavas.

A deeply controversial member of parliament and former army general, Glavas is being investigated over the murder of numerous Serbian civilians in the eastern city of Osijek in 1991.

The handling of the case was earlier plagued by accusations of political involvement, the intimidation of witnesses, and generally poor legal practice.

But a parliamentary committee’s decision last month to strip Glavas of his immunity from detention, the first ever such step against a serving MP, prompted some observers to hail this as proof that the authorities are taking an increasingly tough line on the sensitive issue of Croatian war crimes.

Glavas has many supporters among right-wing politicians and in the Catholic Church. After going on hunger strike following his detention, folk musicians from his home region of Slavonia last week serenaded him over the prison wall.

But his detention significantly failed to reignite the large-scale public protests that occurred in previous years when leading Croats were arrested and accused of war crimes.

A separate legal case has drawn attention to another unpleasant side of Croatia's recent past. This concerns Hrvoje Petrac, accused along with his son of abducting the son of a former general, Vladimir Zagorac, in 2004.

While this case is linked to corruption rather than war crimes, the testimonies in the trial have focused attention on the profiteering that became endemic in the wartime and immediate post-war years.

Petrac's defence lawyer, Ante Nobilo has used the case to focus on the misuse of the millions of dollars that the Croatian diaspora funnelled into the country in support of the independence war.

These contributions were not handled with any transparency, as only a few senior officials around former president Franjo Tudjman had access to the funds, which were held in secret bank accounts.

Many witnesses in the trial have said Tudjman was the only person with complete control over the entire process.

The revelations from the two trials have stimulated fresh public debate on Croatia's recent past, prompting unprecedented criticism of those associated with corruption and war crimes.

A recent poll by the agency Puls, conducted on behalf of Documenta, an organisation that collects evidence of wartime events, revealed continuing public ignorance of key events in this crucial period - and a thirst for greater clarification of the facts.

While 57 per cent of those polled did not know how many Croatian casualties there were in the war and 87 per cent had no idea of the number of Serb victims, 76 per cent said they thought the names of all the victims and the circumstances in which they died ought to be identified.

Moreover 61 per cent said that all culprits ought to face punishment for crimes, regardless of the circumstances in which they occurred.

"They have no way of knowing the facts because they have never been established," said Vesna Terselic, of Documenta.

"I was surprised by a high percentage of those acknowledging that suspects must be brought to trial."

Significantly, the poll showed only ten per cent of the public still clung to the idea that the Croatian side did not commit war crimes.

Justice and human rights activists see these trends as a sign that opportunities exist for ordinary Croats to be encouraged to confront the recent past.

They believe the arrest of Glavas sends a message that no one is above the law and that individuals can no longer expect protection on account of having held senior posts.

On the other hand, some voice disappointment with Mesic's rhetoric about financial crimes, seeing it a diversion from the issue of crimes against civilians and transgressions of the rules of war.

"Although large-scale theft of property could be a war crime, I am afraid that stressing that aspect diverts public attention from the murder of civilians," said Terselic.

She believes much more has to be done to create the institutions and public support necessary to deal with the past.

"There is [still] no room for the Serb view and experience [of the war]. There were victims on both the Croat and the Serb sides."

Zarko Puhovski, president of Croatia's Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, agreed. He complained that the interest in profiteers "dilutes the gravity of committing a war crime".

Puhovski also doubted any real change had taken place in the public mind on war crimes. Facing up to the past was a marginal process, he maintained, confined to non-government organisations and some of the media.

There is also not much sign of a process of self-examination taking place within the country's Serbian community, a state of affairs rarely mentioned by anyone but the Croatian far-right.

Kruno Kadrov, a sociologist at Zagreb University, explained that "it is not a priority for Serb political representatives in Croatia, [who equate] any activity in that direction .. to controversial convictions of Serbs in the 1990s.”

"Their communication channels with Serbia are too weak for the equivalent process in Serbia to have any effect on Serbs in Croatia."

In Kadrov’s view, what is needed in Croatia is not one-off cases and initiatives, but a firm commitment to overcome poor inter-ethnic relations and links, and acknowledge the victims of crime.

“We can come forward with abstract arguments related to law or morals, but all these become irrelevant when you face the victims, their testimonies or the surviving relatives,” Kardov concluded.

Davor Konjikusic is a contributor to Balkan Insight.
Balkan Insight is BIRN's online publication.