Croatia 1995

[Madelyn Westfall]

Atthe beginning of the 1990s, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was one of the largest, most developed and diverse countries in the Balkans. It was a non-aligned federation comprised of six republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. In addition to the six republics, the two separate regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina held the status of autonomous provinces within the Republic of Serbia. Yugoslavia was a mix of ethnic groups and religions, with Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Islam being the main religions.

Coinciding with the collapse of communism and resurgent nationalism in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yugoslavia experienced a period of intense political and economic crisis. Central government weakened while militant nationalism grew apace. There was a proliferation of political parties who, on one side, advocated the outright independence of republics and, on the other, urged greater powers for certain republics within the federation.

Despite the UN-monitored ceasefire which came into force in early 1992, Croatian authorities were determined to assert authority over their territory, and used its resources to develop and equip its armed forces. In the summer of 1995, the Croatian military undertook two major offensives to regain all but a pocket of its territory known as Eastern Slavonia. In a major exodus, tens of thousands of Serbs fled the Croatian advance to Serb-held areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina and further to Serbia. The war in Croatia effectively ended in the fall of 1995. Croatia eventually re-asserted its authority over the entire territory, with Eastern Slavonia reverting to its rule in January 1998 following a peaceful transition under UN-administration.

The southernmost republic of the Yugoslav Federation, Macedonia, declared independence in the fall of 1991 and enjoyed a peaceful separation. It was later admitted to the UN under the temporary name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).

A majority of Croats supported Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia, while many ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, supported by Serbia,[28][29] opposed the secession and advocated Serb-claimed lands to be in a common state with Serbia. Most Serbs sought a new Serb state within a Yugoslav federation, including areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with ethnic Serb majorities or significant minorities,[30][31] and attempted to conquer as much of Croatia as possible.[32][33][34] Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991, but agreed to postpone it with the Brioni Agreement and cut all remaining ties with Yugoslavia on 8 October 1991.

The JNA initially tried to keep Croatia within Yugoslavia by occupying all of Croatia.[35][36] After this failed, Serb forces established the self-proclaimed proto-state Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) within Croatia which began with the Log Revolution. After the ceasefire of January 1992 and international recognition of the Republic of Croatia as a sovereign state,[37][38] the front lines were entrenched, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was deployed,[39] and combat became largely intermittent in the following three years. During that time, the RSK encompassed 13,913 square kilometers (5,372 sq mi), more than a quarter of Croatia.[40] In 1995, Croatia launched two major offensives known as Operation Flash and Operation Storm;[12][41] these offensives effectively ended the war in its favor. The remaining United Nations Transitional Authority for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) zone was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia by 1998.[13][17]

In 2007, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) returned a guilty verdict against Milan Martić, one of the Serb leaders in Croatia, for having colluded with Slobodan Milošević and others to create a "unified Serbian state".[46] Between 2008 and 2012, the ICTY had prosecuted Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markač and Ivan Čermak for alleged involvement in the crimes related to Operation Storm. Čermak was acquitted outright, and the convictions of Gotovina and Markač were later overturned by an ICTY Appeals Panel.[47][48] The International Court of Justice dismissed mutual claims of genocide by Croatia and Serbia in 2015. The Court reaffirmed that, to an extent, crimes against civilians had taken place, but it ruled that specific genocidal intent was not present.[49]

In the autumn of 1989, the Serbian government pressured the Croatian government to allow a series of Serb nationalist rallies in the country, and the Serbian media and various Serbian intellectuals had already begun to refer to the Croatian leadership as "Ustaše", and began to make reference to genocide and other crimes committed by the Ustaše between 1941 and 1945. The Serbian political leadership approved of the rhetoric and accused the Croatian leadership of being "blindly nationalistic" when it objected.[60]

Having completed the anti-bureaucratic revolution in Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro, Serbia secured four out of eight federal presidency votes in 1991,[58] which rendered the governing body ineffective as other republics objected and called for reform of the Federation.[61] In 1989, political parties were allowed and a number of them had been founded, including the Croatian Democratic Union (Croatian: Hrvatska demokratska zajednica) (HDZ), led by Franjo Tuđman, who later became the first president of Croatia.[62] Tuđman ran on a nationalist platform[63] with a program of "national reconciliation" between Croatian communists and former Ustašes (fascists) being a key component of his party's political program.[64] Accordingly, he also integrated former Ustaše members into the party and state's apparatus.[65]

In January 1990, the League of Communists broke up on ethnic lines, with the Croatian and Slovene factions demanding a looser federation at the 14th Extraordinary Congress. At the congress, Serbian delegates accused the Croatian and Slovene delegates of "supporting separatism, terrorism and genocide in Kosovo".[66] The Croatian and Slovene delegations, including most of their ethnic Serb members, eventually left in protest, after Serbian delegates rejected every proposed amendment.[58][67]

January 1990 also marked the beginning of court cases being brought to Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court on the matter of secession.[68] The first was the Slovenian Constitutional Amendments case after Slovenia claimed the right to unilateral secession pursuant to the right of self-determination.[69] The Constitutional Court ruled that secession from the federation was only permitted if there was the unanimous agreement of Yugoslavia's republics and autonomous provinces.[68] The Constitutional Court noted that 1974 Constitution's Section I of the Basic Principles of the Constitution identified that self-determination including secession "belonged to the peoples of Yugoslavia and their socialist republics".[68] The matter of Kosovo secession was addressed in May 1991 with the court claiming that "only the peoples of Yugoslavia" had the right to secession, Albanians were considered a minority and not a people of Yugoslavia.[68]

The 1990 survey conducted among Yugoslav citizens showed that ethnic animosity existed on a small scale.[70] Compared to the results from 25 years before, Croatia was the republic with the highest increase in ethnic distance. Furthermore, there was significant increase of ethnic distance among Serbs and Montenegrins toward Croats and Slovenes and vice versa.[70] Of all respondents, 48% of Croats said that their affiliation with Yugoslavia is very important to them.[70]

In February 1990, Jovan Rašković founded the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) in Knin, whose program aimed to change the regional division of Croatia to be aligned with ethnic Serb interests.[71] Prominent members of the RSK government, including Milan Babić and Milan Martić, later testified that Belgrade directed a propaganda campaign portraying the Serbs in Croatia as being threatened with genocide by the Croat majority.[72] On 4 March 1990, 50,000 Serbs rallied at Petrova Gora and shouted negative remarks aimed at Tuđman,[71] chanted "This is Serbia",[71] and expressed support for Milošević.[73][74]

The first free elections in Croatia and Slovenia were scheduled for a few months later.[75] The first round of elections in Croatia was held on 22 April, and the second round on 6 May.[76] The HDZ based its campaign on greater sovereignty (eventually outright independence) for Croatia, fueling a sentiment among Croats that "only the HDZ could protect Croatia from the aspirations of Milošević towards a Greater Serbia". It topped the poll in the elections (followed by Ivica Račan's reformed communists, Social Democratic Party of Croatia) and was set to form a new Croatian Government.[76]

A tense atmosphere prevailed on May 13, 1990, when a football game was held at Zagreb in Maksimir Stadium between Zagreb's Dinamo team and Belgrade's Red Star. The game erupted into violence between the Croatian and Serbian fans and with the police.[77]

On 30 May 1990, the new Croatian Parliament held its first session. President Tuđman announced his manifesto for a new Constitution (ratified at the end of the year) and a multitude of political, economic, and social changes, notably to what extent minority rights (mainly for Serbs) would be guaranteed. Local Serb politicians opposed the new constitution. In 1991, Croats represented 78.1% and Serbs 12.2% of the total population of Croatia,[78] but the latter held a disproportionate number of official posts: 17.7% of appointed officials in Croatia, including police, were Serbs. An even greater proportion of those posts had been held by Serbs in Croatia earlier, which created a perception that the Serbs were guardians of the communist regime.[79] Serbian politician and sociologist Vesna Pešić states that this caused discontent among the Croats but that it never actually undermined their own dominance in SR Croatia.[53] After the HDZ came to power, many Serbs employed in the public sector, especially the police, were fired and replaced by Croats.[80] This, combined with Tuđman's remarks, i.e. "Thank God my wife is not a Jew or a Serb",[81] were distorted by Milošević's media to spark fear that any form of an independent Croatia would be a new "Ustashe state". In one instance, TV Belgrade showed Tuđman shaking hands with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (who would be the first government leader in the world to recognise independent Croatia and Slovenia) accusing the two of plotting "a Fourth Reich".[82][83] Aside from the firing of many Serbs from public sector positions, another concern among Serbs living in Croatia was the HDZ's public display of the šahovnica (Croatian checkerboard) in the Croatian coat of arms, which was associated with the fascist Ustaše regime.[84] This was a misconception as the checkerboard had a history going back to the fifteenth century and was not identical to the one that was used in the WW2-era Independent State of Croatia.[85] However, Tuđman's xenophobic rhetoric and attitude towards Croatian Serbs as well as his support for former Ustaše leaders did little to ease Serb fears.[86][87][88]

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