tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829443849592329412024-03-14T02:49:58.924-04:00Institute for Croatian CultureCopyright © All Rigths Reserved - Todos los derechos reservados - Sva prava pridržana
El magister José María –Joza– Vrljičak es el director de la revista Studia Croatica desde 1994.
Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.comBlogger183125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-47466251901497225792014-03-05T21:32:00.005-05:002014-03-05T21:32:45.737-05:00Invest in CroatiaInvest in Croatia<br />
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In English<br />
<a href="http://www.studiacroatica.org/ured/AIK_INVESTINCROATIA_eng.pdf">http://www.studiacroatica.org/ured/AIK_INVESTINCROATIA_eng.pdf</a><br />
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In Croatian<br />
<a href="http://www.studiacroatica.org/ured/AIK_INVESTINCROATIA_hrv.pdf">http://www.studiacroatica.org/ured/AIK_INVESTINCROATIA_hrv.pdf</a><br />
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<br />Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-50506262370021573782012-11-06T11:20:00.001-05:002012-11-06T11:20:21.101-05:00Elections to the Advisory Council of the Republic of Croatia<br />
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Elections to the Advisory Council of the Republic of
Croatia<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">After
a wide and open election process involving more than 40 Croatian institutions,
associations and groups throughout Argentina, who participated via the Internet
and personally, the following two persons were elected to be presented to the
Government of Croatia:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><b>Magister
José María -Joza-Vrljica</b>k, Editor-in-Chief of the journal <i>Studia Croatica</i> and Vice President of the Croatian Union of Argentina
(19 votes)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><b>Mrs.
Vjera Bulat</b>, President of Croatian Caritas "Cardinal Stepinac" and
President of the Croatian Union of Argentina (15 votes)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">NB:
The Advisory Council is a body set up recently by the Government of Croatia, which
is in process of formation. It will be composed of 55 Croats living outside the
Republic of Croatia, in which Argentina has two allocated positions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-2695535450502824942011-10-06T16:15:00.000-04:002016-09-16T20:22:08.999-04:00Crime and PunishmentCRIME AND PUNISHMENT<br />
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Radovan Karadzic claims that the Serbian authorities in Kljuc investigated the mass murder of non-Serbs in the village of Velagici and punished the perpetrators. Former prisoner in the prison camps Manjaca and Batkovic Asim Egrlic replied to Karadzic that he heard that some men were arrested; they were in prison for only 18 days. ‘If they had killed so many hens, they would have gotten more than 18 days’, the witness said<br />
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Asim Egrlic, former prisoner in the Manjaca and Batkovic prison camps, is testifying at the trial of Radovan Karadzic about the Serb takeover of power in Kljuc. Egrlic also described the persecution, torture and murder of Muslims and Croats in Kljuc municipality in 1992. On the eve of the conflict, the witness served as the president of the Kljuc municipal assembly executive board. Kljuc is one of the eight BH municipalities where the persecution of non-Serbs reached the scale of genocide.<br />
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The summary of Egrlic’s previous testimony at the trial of Momcilo Krajisnik was admitted into evidence today. According to the summary, the Serb forces took over power in the municipality on 7 May 1992. Soon afterwards, the neighboring villages were attacked and the mass persecution of non-Serbs began. Non-Serbs were fired, their property was seized and mosques and other religious buildings were destroyed. The witness was arrested on 28 May 1992 and was first taken to the Stara Gradiska prison. From there, he was transferred to the Manjaca prison camp. The witness finally ended up in the Batkovic prison camp. In late January 1993, the witness was released in an exchange.<br />
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Prosecutor Alan Tieger brought up two incidents listed in the indictment against Karadzic: the execution of 77 civilians on 1 June 1992 in the village of Velagici and the execution of about 144 persons in July 1992 in the village of Biljani. The witness identified some victims from Velagici on the photos; their remains were recovered after the war in Babina Dolina, in Laniste near Kljuc. The victims were of all ages: the youngest victim was only five and the oldest was 93 years old. According to the witness, the bodies of the victims from Biljani were found in the cave called Bezdana, at a depth of about 25 meters.<br />
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In the first part of the cross-examination, Karadzic put it to the witness that the Serb authorities investigated the execution in Velagici and that some perpetrators were punished. ‘Yes, I heard about it, they were held in prison for 18 days and were then released’, Egrlic replied. ‘If they had killed as many hens, they would have gotten more than 18 days’, the witness added.<br />
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Karadzic tried to prove that the witness was not arrested without cause. As he claimed, the witness took part in the operation to distribute weapons to the ‘extremists’ in the Kljuc municipality. Karadzic corroborated his claims with the statements Serb investigators had taken from the prisoners in Manjaca. The witness dismissed Karadzic’s allegations, noting that the statements were taken under duress. The witness said that before the conflict the Serb Territorial Defense moved all the weapons to the Serb settlement of Ribnik and then distributed them to local Serbs.<br />
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Karadzic will continue cross-examining Asim Egrlic tomorrow.<br />
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<a href="http://www.sense-agency.com/icty/crime-and-punishment.29.html?news_id=13254&cat_id=1">http://www.sense-agency.com/icty/crime-and-punishment.29.html?news_id=13254&cat_id=1</a>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-91757155371850653092011-10-05T21:28:00.000-04:002011-10-05T21:28:08.759-04:00A farce from beginning to endDear friends and all to whom the TRUTH is still the principle of life and ideology that will prevail above injustice, lies and unfairness which still rules today in this world under different management and institutions like ICTY.<br />
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I appeal to all of You in all your capacities to spread this article and send to others; friends, Members of Parliaments and Institutions throughout the world. Spread the truth about Croatians, Bosniaks and other non-Serbian nations, who suffers Serbian aggression and now are suffering from injustice by ICTY. DO NOT IGNORE THIS LETTER.<br />
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Michael PACK <br />
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Marvellous article here. On the author: 'Mishka Góra is a Tasmanian-based writer who worked as a humanitarian aid worker under the auspices of the United Nations on both sides of the frontlines during the 1990s conflict. She has no ethnic affiliation to any of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia .'<br />
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The trial of Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac: a farce from beginning to end.<br />
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By Mishka Góra<br />
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Posted Wednesday, 28 September 2011<br />
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As the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) wraps up almost two decades of war crimes trials, it seems political correctness and moral equivalence has triumphed over any passion for true justice. The April 15 conviction of two Croatian generals of crimes against humanity, for their part in an operation that saved tens of thousands of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) from being massacred, has been followed by months of relative silence. This uncomfortable lull has belied the incredulous outrage of the Croatian people, because unlike previous convictions of men who were personally responsible for horrendous crimes such as mass murder, torture, and deportation to concentration camps, Generals Gotovina and Markac were convicted on the basis of a conspiracy theory that flew in the face of any rational appraisal of the evidence.<br />
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Currently on appeal, the trial of Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac for their role in Operation Storm (Croatia's recovery of Serb-occupied territory in 1995) was a farce from beginning to end. Concerned for the "reputation and integrity of the ICTY and international criminal justice", the International Bar Association questioned the appointment of Elizabeth Gwaunza as an ad litem judge, but to no avail. Apparently, the ICTY felt that her links to Robert Mugabe and her receipt of the gift of a farm, seized by the Zimbabwe regime from its white owners, would have no influence on her capacity to adjudicate a case dealing with crimes such as looting and ethnic cleansing. To add insult to injury, the presiding judge, Alphons Orie, began his career at the ICTY as defence counsel for Duško Tadic, a Bosnian Serb convicted of personally murdering at least seven people, deporting civilians to various camps, and torturing Bosnian Muslims at the Omarska concentration camp. In a radio interview in 2008, he called Tadic a "small" criminal who nowadays wouldn't even be tried at the Hague , unlike Generals Gotovina and Markac it seems, who (even going by the ICTY judgement) haven't personally committed any of the war crimes for which they have been found guilty.<br />
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Indeed, according to the ICTY judgement, it was not necessary to prove that Gotovina or Markac had personally committed any of the crimes with which they were charged, such as murder and deportation, as they were liable as part of a "joint criminal enterprise", a euphemism for what most people would call a conspiracy. Obviously, conspiracies do occur from time to time, but they weren't charged with conspiracy. Furthermore, when the supposed ringleader is the dead President of Croatia who can't defend himself, and an overwhelming amount of the evidence against the accused is pure speculation about his motives, we have a moral duty to be sceptical. We should be all the more so when we trawl through more than one thousand pages of verbiage masquerading as a judgement to find that the only relevant conclusion that the judges drew about a key meeting at which the alleged conspiracy was supposed to have crystallised, is that General Gotovina took a risk that his troops might not behave themselves. To quote the judges, General Gotovina was "aware" that war crimes were "possible consequences". He reconciled himself to "the possibility that these crimes could be committed" and "took the risk that these crimes would be committed".<br />
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Moreover, if the Croatian generals had beencharged with conspiracy, that would be one thing, but they haven't. They were charged with crimes against humanity (such as murder) "pursuant to the mode of liability of JCE". In other words, they were charged with specific crimes which they were alleged to have planned and instigated. However, the judgement not only failed to demonstrate the existence of a joint criminal enterprise. It also failed to recognise that an end result (absence of Serbs) did not prove the method of achieving that result (deportation) and that, likewise, the desire for an end result did not prove instigation of the means to achieve that result. Defying logic, the judgement pronounced that ethnic cleansing took place, that the permanent removal of Serb civilians from the Krajina was effected by force, despite evidence from Serbs and Croats alike that Serb civilians began leaving the Krajina before the onset of Operation Storm and that the remainder were ordered to evacuate by the Serb leadership on the first day of the Croatian military operation.<br />
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The judges furthermore seemed to be omniscient, concluding that this conspiracy existed even though testimony by eight witnesses (who actually knew and worked closely with the president) contradicted the ICTY theory, indicating that none of the accused planned to expel Serbs from Croatia , whether alone or in concert. The judges brushed aside a public announcement made by President Tudjman promising that civil rights would be maintained during and after Operation Storm and that elections for self-government would be held in the presence of international observers, making the hubristic declaration that the announcement "was not a true reflection of [his] will and intention". Never mind that Tudjman's political party was in an alliance with the Serb People's Party at the time; never mind that Tudjman was dead and unable to explain his words and actions or defend himself.<br />
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Even the US Ambassador to Croatia , Peter Galbraith, testified that he "did not believe that Tudjman was going to expel the Serbs" but thought the Serbs would leave regardless and that it would be a "side effect" of the military offensive. To counter this, the ICTY cited evidence that Tudjman and Gotovina discussed "how to provide the Serb civilians in Knin and elsewhere a way out during the military attack". Rather than giving them credit for their prescience, the judges decided this was not reconcilable with protecting civil rights. Apart from the obvious fact that it is reconcilable – the guarantee of civil rights does not obviate the desire of civilians to get out of the way of a military operation and avoid being victims of collateral damage – the ICTY glossed over crucial evidence that much of the Serb population might not have wanted to stay. Apparently, a report by the UN Secretary-General acknowledging that it was "difficult to determine the extent to which the mass exodus of the Krajina Serb population was brought about by fear of Croatian forces, as opposed to the desire not to live under Croatian authority", was deemed immaterial.<br />
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Instead, the ICTY created a catch-22 that denied the legitimacy of Croatia 's defensive war and vilified a country that had taken in half a million enemy refugees and harboured them in its best tourist resorts out of pure human decency. If the Croatian leadership hadn't considered evacuation routes, they'd have been guilty of failing to protect civilians; yet when they did consider evacuation routes, they were found guilty of ethnic cleansing. It was an attitude characteristic of UN involvement in the former Yugoslavia . Rather than risk being accused of facilitating ethnic cleansing by transporting Bosnian civilians to safety, the UN left them to fend for themselves, to walk hundreds of miles, across frontlines and minefields and forbidding mountains, to the safety of Croatia 's refugee camps on the Adriatic coast.<br />
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The court also chose not to acknowledge that Operation Storm was encouraged by the international community, regardless of the possible repercussions with regard to the displacement of civilians. Galbraith testified that he recommended "that we not take any action that would discourage Croatia from continuing with that campaign" and that many in the Clinton administration "welcomed Croatia 's actions". He further noted "I think that Operation Storm and the subsequent campaign in Bosnia was critical to arriving at the Dayton peace agreements" and that the war in Bosnia would not have ended when it did "if it were not for the Croatian army's military action." As for the details of the operation, the court held that Gotovina's attack on Knin was "unlawful", despite Galbraith's evidence that, according to his embassy staff, one of whom was an artillery officer, the shelling of Knin was "relatively brief" and "not very destructive". He also observed that it "took place in the context of an operation aimed at capturing the town" and "you have to make a distinction between, for example, what the United States might do, given the technical [capability] it has, and whether it can avoid major, you know, casualties, as opposed to a country that would be much less capable technologically." Crucially, the UN Military Observers' ninety-five reports for this period were found to be missing from the EU archives when Gotovina's defence team requested them.<br />
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Ultimately, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the ICTY convicted Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac on the grounds of a conspiracy theory. According to the ICTY, the President of Croatia, along with much of his leadership team, conducted Operation Storm with the express purpose of expelling Serb civilians from the Krajina. Despite no concrete proof of a plan and no proof of expulsion, the ICTY advanced a theory that disparaged the entire Croatian nation. It also demonstrated a complete lack of perspective, ironic for a court obsessed with the proportionality of the military operation and supposedly focussed on the victims of war crimes. To quote Galbraith's testimony, "the whole UNPROFOR peacekeeping mission was in danger of collapse…. NATO wasn't going to save Bihac". If Gotovina had not led Operation Storm and liberated Bihac, "the lucky ones would have been expelled, but it's likely that tens of thousands would have been murdered by Mladic". It would have been "strategically disastrous" and "the chances of achieving [peace] would have been very small".<br />
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Gotovina and Markac not only liberated Croatia , but also saved the Bosnian Muslims of Bihac from the same fate as their compatriots in Srebrenica, paving the way for peace in the Balkans. That any judge could deem this a crime against humanity is contemptible.<br />
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Mishka Góra is a Tasmanian-based writer who worked as a humanitarian aid worker under the auspices of the United Nations on both sides of the frontlines during the 1990s conflict. She has no ethnic affiliation to any of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia .<br />
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© The National Forum and contributors 1999-2011. All rights reserved.<br />
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<a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12671">http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12671</a>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-10584009724348762802011-10-05T20:39:00.000-04:002011-10-05T20:39:18.131-04:00DEFENSE REPLIES TO PRESECUTOR’S REPLYDEFENSE REPLIES TO PRESECUTOR’S REPLY <br />
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The defense claims that in its response to Gotovina’s appellate brief the prosecution didn’t offer any arguments that might convince the Appeals chamber not to invalidate the judgment sentencing the Croatian general to 24 years in prison<br />
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General Ante Gotovina’s defense believes their Appeal should be adopted. They claim the prosecution didn’t offer any arguments in its reply which could contest the claims in Defense Appeals Brief. General Gotovina was sentenced to 24 years in prison in April this year, as a participant in the joint criminal enterprise (JCE) aimed at expelling Serbs from Krajina during and after Operation „Storm“ in 1995. Defense urges the Appeals Chamber to invalidate the findings in the judgment and „acquit“ former commander of Split Military District „of all charges“.<br />
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Defense contends that the prosecution’s argument on the existence of a joint criminal enterprise „rests on the bootstrapping of four individually unproven arguments, each used to prove the existence of the other“. These are the Brioni meeting, indiscriminate shelling, crimes of Croatian Army and Police and measures implemented by the Croatian government to prevent the Serb refugees from returning to Krajina after Operation „Storm“.<br />
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In its reply, Gotovina’s defense states that the prosecution „never cites“ the transcript of Brioni meeting from 31 July 1995 in support of its claims. According to the prosecution, participants of that meeting „explicitly refer[ed] to forcing the flight of the Serb civilian population out of the Krajina through the unlawful attack”. The defense contends that the prosecution „concedes“ there was no “formal decision” taken at Brioni to expel Serbs, and no “single statement” at the Brioni meeting would indicate that there was intent to target Serb civilians with artillery.<br />
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The defense also contests the prosecution’s argument that the judgment properly concluded that Gotovina’s aim was „to treat entire towns as targets“. According to judgment, this was done through the order issued on 2 August 1995 in which Gotovina demands that ‘Knin, Benkovac, Obrovac and Gracac be put under artillery fire’. Defense states that the Tribunal’s Conference and Languages Services Section (CLSS ) erred when they translated word „udari“ as „fire“, instead of translating it as “strikes”. That mistake in the translation drastically changed the situation, because the word „udari“ indicates that artillery attacks were aimed at military targets.According to the defense, it is clear from the later orders issued by Gotovina and Commander of the HV artillery during Operation Storm Marko Rajcic. The defense claims that those orders clearly mark military targets which should be attacked in the above-mentioned towns. Finally, the defense believes there is “no finding or evidence of direct targeting of civilians and no basis to infer an indiscriminate attack“. As a result „the entire Judgment collapses“, the defense claims.<br />
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The Chamber, the defense notes, specifically found that the common objective of JCE „did not amount to, or involve, the commission of the natural and foreseeable crimes“. The prosecution at the same time claims that crimes were planned. If these crimes were intended they would have formed part of the common JCE objective. The Chamber „found they did not“, defense claims.<br />
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The prosecution claims that Serb refugees were prevented from returning to Krajina. “Prosecution does not dispute that if the Krajina Serbs were not deported from the four towns, then the demographic policy post-Storm was not unlawful”, defense claims.<br />
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Gotovina „was not a member of, and did not significantly contribute to, a JCE“, the defense states. That is, according to them, clearly confirmed in the parts of their Appeals Brief, allegedly unchallenged by the prosecution. The Appeals brief states:numerous times Gotovina exclusively „ordered to target military objectives“; “the Chamber made no finding of any civilian deaths or injuries from shelling“; „every subsequent investigation by impartial observers and human rights organizations failed to uncover any evidence of unlawful shelling“. Finally, the defense also stated that general Gotovina took „all steps“ before and after Operation Storm „to prevent/punish crime“ against civilians and their property. <br />
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<a href="http://www.sense-agency.com/icty/defense-replies-to-presecutor%E2%80%99s-reply.29.html?news_id=13246&cat_id=1">http://www.sense-agency.com/icty/defense-replies-to-presecutor%E2%80%99s-reply.29.html?news_id=13246&cat_id=1</a>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-78527366448062957802011-05-19T11:54:00.001-04:002011-05-19T12:08:39.099-04:00Far Away Tales of Freedom<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ePxhXl_amYU/TdU9N_rKFZI/AAAAAAAABdg/euYO0fNkFT0/s1600/split.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" j8="true" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ePxhXl_amYU/TdU9N_rKFZI/AAAAAAAABdg/euYO0fNkFT0/s1600/split.jpg" /></a>When I was a pre-teen, my world consisted of my house, my grandma’s house, my school, and the people who belong to those places. I almost never considered the outside world. I was young, all too ignorantly innocent. When I really started reading books, interesting books, I discovered a new dimension of adventure in the world. However, I thought adventures were only for mighty heroes and brave warriors like the ones in the books. That all changed through, when my dad showed me the tickets he had bought for our family trip to Croatia. Croatia is a small eastern European country opposite to Italy across the Adriatic Sea. Many consider Croatia’s coastline one of the most beautiful and majestic in all of Europe. Tourism is the foundation of the economy. Yet, to my mother’s parents and my father’s parents, it was home. </div><br />
Countless times I listened to my family describe the beauty of the land and their love for the country. Some of my relatives fought in the war that won Croatia’s freedom and democracy from the clutches of communist Yugoslavia. Even my father and mother did their part here in the United States by writing articles and doing interviews on the news exposing the communists. My grandfather has pictures from when he was behind enemy lines helping the resistance gather weapons and supplies. In their own small or great way, my whole family had fought for Croatia. They all cherished the country dearly. <br />
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Every summer, many of my relatives take a month off to go back home to Croatia. Surprisingly, my brother, sister, and I had never gone. My parents had always been so busy. But that year we would finally go! I was twelve that summer, about to become a teenager. When my dad first announced we were going, I got my camera and prepared to experience firsthand all the stories about the castles and the beautiful land. After the long flight over the Atlantic, we boarded a 30-passenger propeller plane to fly over the Alps. The engines were so noisy I could not hear my mom talk. That plane was hot and small. Nevertheless, one look outside the window at the ice tipped mountains of the Alps and that low altitude flight was well worth it. <br />
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We landed in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The journey from Zagreb to the coast is a four-hour drive, but a beautiful one. On our way, we stopped at a national park called Plitvice. Plitvice is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Judging only from pictures I would still believe it, but being there was an experience I will never forget. The waterfalls splash and twist around the walkways, rocks, and bridges. Plitvice is a ravine, about 500 feet wide about 150 feet deep, with a river running at its bottom. When we arrived and walked to the edge of the ravine, I saw the river turn into waterfalls as it passes over rocks and flows around the boardwalks. To get to the boardwalks we had to climb down steep steps made of wood and some steps chiseled into rock. Once we reached the bottom, we walked among the most beautiful waterfalls and radiant pools I ever saw. They looked so uncorrupted, as if the earth was just born. A steady pace without stopping for pictures will get you through to where the river broadens in about 20 minutes. I took much longer than that. <br />
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After we left Plitvice, we made a beeline to the coast. Almost there, we stopped at the village where my grandparents lived and where my father was born. I even saw the rock he said he was stuck in as a kid. I saw the fields where my relatives used to grow grain and grapes. I saw the village cat peering at us from a distance like it knew we were strangers. However, once our relatives and friends invited us in to one of the little yellow cottages for drinks and snacks it almost felt like home even though I never saw the place before. <br />
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After a while, we finished our journey to the coast. Split was the city where we would be staying. The view from my grandfather’s condominium was incredible: beaches with cafes right alongside, docks with multi-million dollar yachts attached, and the sun shining on Croatians and tourists alike. I do not remember which I liked better, looking at the church steeple lit up against the night sky, or walking beside the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s Palace. The palace dates back to 300 A.D., but the yachts not more than a 5-minute walk away are modern and distinctively sophisticated. From the windy balcony, I felt like a mixture of both native and tourist inside me. It felt like a home, but there was so much to discover and learn. My camera was always clicking and keeping the memories stored safe. <br />
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After a few days, my parents told us we were getting on the road again. However, we were not starting the long journey home just yet. We were on our way to Dubrovnik, Croatia’s iconic walled city perched right on the rocks, with waves washing up against the walls that protected the Croatian people hundreds of years ago. A cross shaped Christian church at its center, the city streets look as if a chase scene from a James Bond movie is about to take place. The houses are made of stone, same as the walls. The walls that stood for hundreds of years now hold a city alive with cafes, shops, and tourists. The sun is shining, and the cool breeze makes the temperature feel about 75. As I walked the walls perched 40-feet high over the ocean, I thought about my relatives who fought for the country, and I thought about my ancestors who fought off the Ottoman Turks while the rest of Europe was having its Renaissance. I thought about the bravery, I thought about the determination. I was proud to be Croatian. <br />
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Yet, even more importantly, I realized how big of a world this really is. I found that the stories my family told me were extremely real. Stories and tales far more exciting than any book I ever read. Stories and tales that encourage me to overcome problems just like my country did. I peaked within and I saw, as so many other Croats do, an independent soul that lusts for freedom. As I stood on the beautiful and ancient towering walls of Dubrovnik, still very young, I realized my blood belonged to a place where freedom from oppression, freedom from limitations, and freedom of mind are not just good things to strive for, they are virtues to fight for. <br />
<br />
Nik Susnjara<br />
Naples, Florida<br />
15 February 2011<br />
submitted to <a href="http://www.croatia.org/crown">www.croatia.org/crown</a>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-37206375926014424962011-05-07T11:43:00.000-04:002011-05-07T11:43:51.225-04:00Croatia and the ICTY: Politics or Justice? – A British Perspective - Robin Harris, PhDCROATIA AND THE ICTY: POLITICS OR JUSTICE? – A BRITISH PERSPECTIVE <br />
<br />
Robin Harris, PhD <br />
<br />
It is an honour to be asked to address this distinguished gathering of Croatian intellectuals. The subject of your conference might appear, on the face of it, to be rather narrow. But any such initial impression is misleading. The question of what constitutes a »joint criminal enterprise«, in the sense in which that expression is used by the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia (the ICTY), requires much more than a technically correct judicial answer – if such a thing could, by chance, be found. It goes, in fact, to the heart of the relationship between politics and justice and to the role of national and international courts. It bears directly on the interests and, indeed, the sovereignty of Croatia. It has, by extension, profound implications for the future conduct of Western foreign policy. And last, but by no means least, it involves the fate of General Ante Gotovina and his co-accused in the Hague – something which concerns me, and doubtless concerns you too, very much indeed. <br />
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We do not, and should not, try to escape the cultural background from which we approach such matters. Inevitably, I bring with me a British perspective. But let me say, at once, that it is what could be termed a traditional British perspective, one rooted in well established national values, rather than one which coincides in any fashion at all with that adopted by recent British governments. And even in democracies, nations rarely deserve to be judged by their political class. <br />
<br />
British political influence in the affairs of the former Yugoslavia over the last fifteen years has been wholly bad. British policy has been, successively – to try to keep an unviable Yugoslavia together; to deny the victims of aggression the means to defend themselves; to veto international action to help the helpless; to support by a range of means the perpetrators of genocide; to perpetuate the myth that all the parties involved in the conflict were equally guilty; to indulge in a pitiful campaign of self-justification, as the failure of past British policy became evident; and, most recently, to erect, from sheer spite, as a high a hurdle as possible against Croatia's re-joining Europe. I do not apologise for any of this, myself, because I and many others in Britain, most notably Lady Thatcher, opposed these policies at every turn. I merely note this litany of failure as a shameful fact. <br />
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The British perspective I adopt is, therefore, different and, I would argue, more authentic. Britain is historically home to a (properly defined) liberal tradition, one which places a high view on the rule of law, which respects dissent, which is inveterately hostile to the concentration and centralisation of power. This traditionally predisposes us to sympathy for the underdog and to dislike for arrogance and brutality. The tradition extends across the political spectrum. It was George Orwell a great British writer of the Left, who in his novel 1984 conjured up the memorable image of communism as »a boot stamping on a human face – for ever«. British governments should have seen who, in Greater Serbian Yugoslavia, was wearing the jackboots. <br />
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There is another side, however, perhaps a more conservative one, to British political values. The British are naturally sceptics – often unfortunately in religion, usually and healthily in politics. Unlike our American cousins, with whom we share much else, we traditionally distrust plans to create a perfect future at the expense of an acceptable present. We prefer the known to the unknown, let alone the unknowable. We are sometimes idealists. But, when we are true to ourselves, we are never utopians. <br />
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Utopianism, like totalitarianism, to which it is wrongly prescribed as an antidote but with which it in fact shares many features, is an eternal temptation. It is based upon hubris, of which there is no end. And like all such hubris, from the erection of the Tower of Babel described in the Book of Genesis to today's ideas of universal international jurisdiction embodied in the ICTY, it always ends in tears. <br />
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The ICTY, measured against these instincts and impulses, is a thoroughly unsatisfactory institution. It embodies the assumption that justice will be surer, more honest and more effective, if it is removed from nations and local communities and administered by an unaccountable class of quasi-legal professionals. That assumption is manifestly false. It defies any of the logic we use to create or to assess other kinds of institution. It amounts not so much to the rule of law but, at best, to the rule of lawyers – in this case lawyers who feel no compunction about making up law as they go along. Some results are immediately obvious. The ICTY is grossly over-manned. It has over 1100 staff, costing a quarter of a million dollars a year to run. Despite or because of these bloated resources, it is cumbersome, inefficient and slow. »Justice deferred is justice denied«, runs the ancient proverb. ICTY justice is always deferred, often distorted and frequently discarded as well. <br />
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Turn to its website and you will witness the Court's hubristic view of its own alleged significance. It claims to be a »pioneering institution«, one which has transformed the application of international law – for instance by broadening the (in fact, enormously dangerous) concept of »command responsibility«. Indeed, its public pronouncements read like those of political lobbyists, not officers of a court, and they are redolent of a vast, self-serving agenda. <br />
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The ICTY behaves in a more capricious and arrogant manner than any ordinary government would dare to do. It has, for example, taken to asserting its power and protecting its interests by outrageous interventions against Croatian journalists. If such abuses were perpetrated against press freedom in Britain or America, they would bring excoriation upon the authorities; they deserve to do so wherever and whenever they occur. <br />
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Yet here I must make a confession. When the ICTY was instituted by the UN Security Council in 1993 I was delighted. The reason was simple. The failure of will by the international community to uphold justice and order in this region was manifest and seemed immovable. The distant threat of global justice at least seemed better than no threat at all. Just to get the phrases »war crimes«, »crimes against humanity« and even »genocide« into public discussion made it more difficult for the cynical accomplices of violence in London, Paris, Washington or Moscow to pretend that Vukovar and Sarajevo just constituted »business as usual« in the Balkans. But I was wrong. <br />
<br />
The ICTY has become a monster, and given the ideology and interests of its proponents and practitioners, it was bound to do so. It has probably not saved a single life. It has certainly not prevented a single atrocity. Ratko Mladic and his confederates were not deterred from murdering thousands of Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica by knowledge of its existence. And Milosevic was not deterred from ethnically cleansing Kosovo of its Albanians either. <br />
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In fact, the ICTY only began to be effective at all, in the sense of laying its hands on indictees, when the military tables were turned against Belgrade. The figures show that almost all the 161 indictments issued, and the 94 cases processed, occurred after Operation Storm. Before then the Court was virtually powerless. In other words, it is thanks to President Tudjman and Generals Gotovina, Cermak and Markac, with help from the Bosnians and the Americans – thanks, then, to those named in the indictments for participation in a »criminal enterprise« – that the ICTY can function properly at all. But somehow I doubt whether the ICTY prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, is likely to say 'thank you' – any more than she is likely to say 'sorry' for accusing the Vatican of helping shelter General Gotovina in a Croatian monastery, which proved totally false and a gross slander. <br />
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The decision to set up the Court was made, we should recall, in lieu of a lack of consensus by outside powers on intervention. But the ICTY itself solved nothing. Only when the United States belatedly overrode European objections and gave support to the Croatian Government's action to re-take the so-called Krajina was some kind of solution possible. It cannot be said too often or too loudly in every international arena: No Operation Storm; no Dayton. No Dayton; no Bosnia. No Bosnia; no stable peace in the region. It's really as simple as that. <br />
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Unfortunately, the decision to set up the ICTY injected a new factor into the equation. It threatened to steal defeat from the jaws of victory, not least for Croatia. In order to justify its existence, the Court had to show results that neither the processes of war, nor politics nor nationally administered justice could provide. This gave it a perverse incentive to focus on alleged crimes that nobody else would seriously consider crimes at all. The Court sought to enhance its credibility by treating the guilty and the innocent nations alike. It was predictable. The Court has been doing what all such institutions always do. It was preserving and advancing its own interests. That is the background to the indictments of General Gotovina and his colleagues. <br />
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But why has it been allowed to behave in a way so different from that originally envisaged and expected? Why has it not been called to order? The answer is that it suited the great powers for the ICTY to function in this way. The US wanted to make it easier for the Serbs to hand over Mladic and Karadzic, which was at least a worthwhile goal – though the US will certainly regret its decision when the details of its involvement in Operation Storm come out, as they must and will. For their part, the British, French and Russians, who had no time for Croatia anyway, were simply pleased to have the Croatian operation in 1995 put on an equal footing with the earlier Serb ethnic cleansing and aggression, which they had tacitly supported and publicly minimised. Examining the behaviour of the ICTY in these matters, one can see how the utopian goal of total justice for all has merely opened the way to gross injustice for some. The judicial process, adapting Clausewitz's famous formula, is now merely the extension of politics by other means. <br />
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But let us look more closely at Operation Storm itself. And if these facts are still better known to this Croatian audience than to me, I still rehearse them, because it worth a foreigner re-stating the truth – not least for the benefit of other foreigners. <br />
<br />
In no sense can Storm be made the equivalent of, say, the cruel devastation inflicted by the Serbs in Eastern Slavonia. Knin never became a Vukovar, nor was ever likely to be. Storm was, after all, an operation to regain Croatian territory, internationally recognised as such. Moreover, it was a triumph – a rapid exercise based on overwhelming firepower, real time intelligence, efficient logistic support and the avoidance of civilian casualties, in short a text-book NATO-style operation. And not surprisingly, since so much American technical assistance, training and advice was involved. <br />
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Its consequences were overwhelmingly beneficial. The Bihac pocket, one of the very unsafe »safe areas« designated by the UN, was relieved. The occupied area of Western Croatia was re-taken. The siege of Sarajevo was lifted. The greatest regret is that Storm did not occur earlier, or Srebrenica too might have been saved. <br />
<br />
Civilian casualties in Storm were amazingly light. But the only way in which such an outcome can ever be assured is to allow civilians freedom to flee the fighting. As it is, some 80,000 or so Serbs left, not just the immediate area but Croatian territory altogether. The ICTY indictment claims, of course, that this was the intention, the root of the »joint criminal enterprise«. But it has produced no evidence to substantiate this. In particular, unlike the case of earlier Serb attacks and ethnic cleansing, it can point to no public statements, and as far as I know no private plans, to achieve an ethnically purged territory. Indeed, I cannot see any reason why Zagreb would have wanted a mass exodus of Serbs at this point, since it was bound to create enormous political problems. <br />
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Anyway, although evidence of mens rea in the alleged crime is entirely lacking, this does not seem to bother the ICTY prosecutor in the slightest. She proceeds instead to an extraordinary tactic which can best be summed up with another Latin tag, namely post hoc, propter hoc – that is the assumption that intentions can be derived from subsequent events. In this case – the Serbs left – so they must have been expelled – so their expulsion must have been the original intention. Such reasoning would not hold up, and would not, I believe, even be advanced, in any British or other Western court; but it is typical of the maverick way in which the ICTY proceeds. <br />
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In any case, the Serb population was not expelled. As Peter Galbraith, US ambassador to Croatia at the time has pointed out: »The fact is, the Serbs population left before the Croatian army got there. You can't deport people who have already left«. He is right. <br />
<br />
In fact, we can think of many probable reasons why the Serb population might decide of its own accord to leave Croatia. The scale of the persecution and pillaging suffered by the Croat population in the area during the previous four years was so great that many of these Serbs must have been involved. They may have feared either rough justice or real justice and they will have hoped to avoid it. The area they left was in a deplorable condition, partly because of economic blockade, but mainly because of the incompetence, disorder and criminality which flourished under the so-called SRK government. Why stay? <br />
<br />
In fact, though, we do not need to speculate. We know precisely what prompted the Serbs to leave – they were instructed to do so by their leaders. The evidence is clear and irrefutable. It comes from testimony given in the Milosevic trial and so was available to the ICTY prosecutor. And if she was not paying attention that day she could surely have consulted the ICTY official press spokesman, Florence Hartmann. Previously a journalist on Le Monde, she has given her own account of these events in her book Milosevic – La Diagonale du Fou. Mme Hartmann heartily disliked President Tudjman and so is the last person to give him and his colleagues the benefit of the doubt. Therefore, what she says of these events must bear particular weight when she exculpates Zagreb and inculpates Belgrade. She writes (I quote): <br />
<br />
»Each (Serb) refugee could bear witness that the population had fled at the summons of its own leaders. Each (Serb) soldier could testify to the deliberate withdrawal of the Serb army...In sum, the consciously planned abandonment of Krajina«. <br />
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Florence Hartmann places the blame for the exodus of Serbs on Milosevic, acting through his nominee General Mrksic, and so did many Serbs. She is probably right, and probably right too in thinking that these Serbs were seen by Belgrade as more useful to populate a Greater Serbian Bosnia than to fight a losing battle against Croatia. But the precise allocation of responsibility between Serb leaders is unimportant. The Belgrade journal Politika subsequently published a facsimile, which I have with me, of an order by Milan Martic, so-called President of the so-called SRK, dated 4 August 1995, which orders the (I quote) »planned evacuation of all the population not able to fight« from the area. The Serbs were told to leave by other Serbs not forced to leave by Croats. <br />
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The later real and inexcusable abuses against what remained of the Serb population committed by returning Croats do not change this judgement. The departure of the Serbs was not ethnic cleansing – it was (in Martic's expression) an »evacuation«. The indictments against Generals Gotovina, Cermak and Markac are, therefore, fundamentally flawed. Without the convenient device of the »joint criminal enterprise« the specific charges against them cannot stand. But this existence of this »enterprise« is unproven and, indeed, unprovable – for the simple reason that it did not exist. The case against the Croatian generals and, by extension, against the Croatian Government of the day is, therefore, baseless. <br />
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But this does not mean that responsibility by other parties for other crimes should be ignored, at least if the ICTY is to continue its activity. Let us here recall that the founding statute of the Court does not exclude crimes committed by those coming from outside Yugoslavia. It is surely questionable whether Western leaders and commanders should not have been indicted for allowing atrocities to continue which they could have prevented. The fact that UN commanders tasked with protecting the safe havens like Srebrenica have escaped such indictments, despite the apparently limitlessly flexible concept of »command responsibility«, merely confirms that the Court's decisions are always politically circumscribed and sometimes politically determined – though not, unfortunately, in any sensible or defensible manner. <br />
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The West in general and America in particular should be very concerned about the precedent which is being set by the ICTY cases relating to Storm. The Americans are, of course, right to be confident that the ICTY will not suggest that they were part of a criminal enterprise, despite the fact that they were participants in the planning of Storm and had real time knowledge of everything significant that occurred in the course of it. But the suggestion that a »joint criminal enterprise« can be inferred if, as a result of a military intervention which is otherwise properly conducted, some civilians are killed, civilian property is damaged and large numbers of civilians leave, should give Washington and London nightmares. <br />
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At a rough guess, some 150 civilians were killed and 80,000 more fled from the so-called Krajina, when the Croatian army liberated its territory in 1995. By contrast, about a thousand civilians probably died and 190,000 more fled Kosovo when NATO took military action in what was Serbian territory in 1999. I support the Kosovo action. But then I supported Storm. I also support the subsequent decisions to attack first Afghanistan and then Iraq. But the US and the UK do not have to bother with people who think like me, people who know right from wrong and who know that force is sometimes needed to ensure that right prevails. They have to worry about people like Carla del Ponte and her more than eleven hundred colleagues, and even more about the new International Criminal Court established by the Rome statute. They have reason to fear that out of the Pandora's box they opened when they set up the ICTY, a completely new kind of political justice will emerge – one which will render national courts and national governments increasingly irrelevant, which will paralyse peace making and peace keeping interventions, and which will play into the hands of tyrants and aggressors. <br />
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That great Anglo-Irish patriot and thinker, Edmund Burke, famously observed: »All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing«. Good men, and not just good Croats either, have a duty to act to have the Storm indictments thrown out – and then to bring down the shutters on the ICTY. <br />
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<br />
Robin Harris: CROATIA AND THE ICTY: POLITICS OR JUSTICE? – A BRITISH PERSPECTIVE<br />
<br />
CROATIAN GENERALS ARE NOT GUILTYStudia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-76880416772846606212011-04-30T16:00:00.000-04:002011-04-30T16:00:39.405-04:00ICTY – How the Prosecutor Tampered with the TruthICTY – HOW THE PROSECUTOR TAMPERED WITH THE TRUTH <br />
<br />
<br />
Visnja Staresina <br />
<br />
In his memoirs the former U.S. President Clinton wrote of about Storm: »In August (1995), there came a dramatic turnaround. The Croatian launched an offensive to take back Krajina, a part of Croatia that the local Serbs declared their territory. European and some U.S. military and intelligence officials were opposed to the operation, believing that Milosevic would intervene to save the Krajina Serbs, but I was rooting for the Croatians. Helmut Kohl did the same because he knew, just like I did, that diplomacy would not work until the Serbs have suffered serious losses in the field«. This Croatian operation to restore the constitutional order on 18% of its area that was four years under the occupation of the Serb insurgents and the UN protection, was congratulated on by numerous diplomats included in the post-Yugoslav peace process, powerless to stop the Serb war machine with their peace messages. With its professional execution, Storm commanded respect of military analysts and surprised laymen. In mere 36 hours, the Croatian Army liberated Knin, until then considered the unconquerable stronghold of the Serb insurgents from which they had spited all the international peace efforts for four years. »Until the very moment the Croatian Army heisted the Croatian flag over Knin after mere 36 hours on the offensive, the spokesman for the UN continued to rave on the alleged fantastic fighting qualities and skill of the Serb troops. Croatian victory showed that they talked rubbish. In addition to putting UNPROFOR and Western policy-makers to shame, Croatian victory created a fundamentally new situation, opening the door to serious peace negotiations«, commented the Wall Street Journal several days later (WSJ of 10.08.95). New York Times reported from Sarajevo: »Both the staff and the patients from the Sarajevo hospital thanked the offensive of the Croatian Army against the Serb insurgents in Croatia for the breath of normality they are now experiencing... Both the staff and the patients reckon that the Serb forces have been destabilised by the serious attacks on their collaborators in Croatia«. The official Washington was satisfied with the result. »It was the first defeat of the Serbs in four years, and it changed the power status on the ground and the psychology of all the parties«, wrote Clinton. He revealed that one day prior to the launch of Storm he had visited the famous ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson at the hospital, and the latter said from his hospital bed that a Croatian offensive could be beneficiary to settling the conflict. <br />
<br />
On the other hand, the official UK was initially reserved towards the operation and in agreement with other members of the peace contact group – the U.S.A., France, Germany and Russia – invited Croatia to call off the offensive. Already on the very first day of the Storm operation, the co-chairman of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, called for an indictment of Croatian President Tudjman, and for no other thing than for – excessive shelling of Knin, the stronghold and the »capital« of the Serb insurgents. From his base in Knin, the UN spokesman reported that civilian buildings were also targeted, including the hospital, and that there was shattered glass lying all around. Several days after the dramatic reports, the correspondent of the Washington Post found a different picture at the Knin hospital: »The town hospital, allegedly severely damaged, seems to have only sustained a single shell hit. A UN clerk who was at the hospital at the time believed that Croatian gunners were aiming at a firing Serb tank that was positioned close to the hospital«. <br />
<br />
In the meantime, Prosecutor Carla del Ponte explicitly made Storm into »joint criminal enterprise« and towards the end of February 2004 issued new indictments against the then administrator of Knin after the end of the military operation, General Ivan Cermak, and the Military Police Commander, Mladen Markac. The first row among the participants of the criminal enterprise was populated by the deceased: first Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, wartime Defence Minister Gojko Susak, the Commanders of the Generalstaff of the Croatian Army, Generals Janko Bobetko and Zvonimir Cervenko. Moreover, as aids of the »joint criminal enterprise« Carla del Ponte also mentioned »other members of the HDZ and local authorities«. At the initiative of UK diplomats, Security Council resolution listed General Gotovina among the most wanted fugitive war-crime indictees, alongside Greater-Serbian leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Based on the claims of Carla del Ponte that Ante Gotovina was in Croatia and the Government would not arrest him, Croatia was barred from opening the EU accession negotiations and the process of its joining NATO was stopped. Gotovina was arrested in December 2005 on the Canary Islands. <br />
<br />
Just as announced back in 1996 by UK policeman Simon Leach, the head of the ICTY investigation team in the Lasva Valley case, the first Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Defence Minister Gojko Susak were included in the »joint criminal enterprise« of ethnic cleansing of the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The indictment itself would require a careful legal analysis because of its vagueness and its collectivisation of criminal responsibility. The way it stands written it practically criminalizes all the Croatians in Bosnia and Herzegovina. »Croatian joint criminal enterprise in Bosnia and Herzegovina« began, according to Carla del Ponte, »on 18 November 1991 or earlier«, and it lasted until »about April 1994 and afterwards«. Its goal was to »subject, in political and military terms, and to permanently eliminate and cleanse the Bosnian Muslims and other non-Croatians«, in order to create Greater Croatia within the borders of historical Banovina Hrvatska. The first rows of the members of the »joint criminal enterprise« were populated – in addition to Tudjman and Susak – by Joint Chief of Staff of the Croatian Army Janko Bobetko and President of the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia Mate Boban. They were followed by Jadranko Prlic, Prime Minister of Herzeg-Bosnia, Bruno Stojic, Defence Minister of Herzeg-Bosnia, Slobodan Praljak and Milivoj Petkovic, HVO Commanders, Valentin Coric, Minister of the Interior, and Berislav Pusic, in charge of the exchange of camp prisoners. Their trial began in The Hague in 2006. This indictment, too, includes the category of »others«. <br />
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Who are these »others« in the joint criminal enterprise? According to Prosecutor del Ponte they are: »various other officials and members of the Government and political structures of Herzeg-Bosnia/HVO, on all levels, including municipal authorities and local organisations, various leaders and members of the HDZ and HDZ BiH on all levels, various members of the armed forces of Herzeg-Bosnia: HVO, special units, military and civilian police, security and intelligence services, paramilitary formations, local defence forces and other persons acting under the control of or in cooperation with such armed forces, police and other elements; various members of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia and other known and unknown persons«. Criminal liability of the accused, according to Carla del Ponte, did not even require that they all, »known and unknown«, be members of an all-Croatian criminal enterprise. »Additionally or alternatively«, they may be criminally liable for aiding and abetting a joint criminal enterprise. If the formula »additionally or alternatively« were applied to the letter, criminal liability for participation in Croatian joint criminal enterprise in Bosnia and Herzegovina could also extend to include the entire Muslim political and military leadership, including Alija Izetbegovic and all his military leaders because in many instances, even during the severest Muslim- Croatian conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they signed agreements in which HVO and the BH Army were the legal armies of Bosnia and Herzegovina. <br />
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To the ICTY Prosecutor, the JNA »undertook a military operation« against Vukovar in Croatia, whereas the Croatian Army in liberating 18% of its own territory around Knin in the Storm operation conducted a »joint criminal enterprise with the goal of ethnic cleansing«. In her interview to the Croatian Television Prosecutor del Ponte noted that General Gotovina »seemingly, conducted the operation in accordance with the rules of warfare«, but she also added: »had there been no crimes, the Serbs would not have left«. Just one day prior to the Storm operation, at the negotiating table in Geneva, Serb leaders were given the ultimating Croatian offer – to accept autonomy in accordance with the Croatian Constitutional Law passed in early 1992 in accordance with the recommendations of the Badinter Commission and as a prerequisite to the international recognition of Croatia. On top of that, the Prosecutor also has the documents that show that the evacuation of the Serbs from Krajina was organised in advance by Milosevic i.e. Serb authorities. To paraphrase Carla del Ponte, had the Croatians not wanted to bring back their occupied territories and had they left it to Greater Serbians – there would have been no indictment for a »joint criminal enterprise«. <br />
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The Prosecutor's approach to the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina is similar. Any military operation of the HVO is part of a criminal enterprise. Even in the cases when Croatian villages were defended, the HVO is treated as an occupation force. Paradoxically, the very same Prosecutor treats foreign Islamist mujahedeen fighters as part of the forces of the BH Army, as fighters for integral, democratic and multiethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina. Not in a single indictment mentioning their atrocities are such atrocities qualified as persecution on religious, ethnic or national basis or crimes against civilian population, but merely as a violation of the rules of warfare. <br />
<br />
ICTY – HOW THE PROSECUTOR TAMPERED WITH THE TRUTH <br />
<br />
Visnja Staresina <br />
<br />
CROATIAN GENERALS ARE NOT GUILTYStudia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-40439851461417836702011-04-30T15:37:00.000-04:002011-04-30T15:37:18.556-04:00Historical and Political Aspects of the Activity of The Hague TribunalHISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE ACTIVITY OF THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL <br />
<br />
<br />
Josip Jurcevic, PhD <br />
<br />
In all armed conflicts in the territory of former Yugoslavia Serbia was involved in the role of aggressor while all others defended themselves on their territories. In addition Serbia was the only one systematically preparing itself for an armed solution of »the Yugoslav crisis«, and the only one controlling an armed force, so that all other inner Yugoslav actors where predetermined to play the role of victims. <br />
<br />
The only factor, »complicating and obfuscating« an objective understanding and a determined, civilized proceeding with respect to a simple and clear situation in the region of former Yugoslavia, can be found in exterior circumstances and actors. These range from the circumstances of Communism breaking down in Europe, followed by activation of a new European interest dynamics, to the traditional strategic importance of Southeastern Europe from the standpoint of different international circles of interest and powerful governments. <br />
<br />
All of the above can, among the rest, be appreciated as well in the establishment and subsequent proceedings of the Hague tribunal, which are far below the level of international legal standards adopted a long time ago, as well as below the worst experiences in international relations so far. <br />
<br />
The Hague tribunal was formally granted an exceptionally limited jurisdiction. It was created as an ad hoc court for the region of former Yugoslavia with the right to try individuals exclusively, with neither power over organizations, nor a right to try for aggression itself. In this manner the Tribunal theoretically and practically does not distinguish, equivocating instead, between aggressor and victim, in opposition to basic humane values, as well as moral and legal principles thousands of years old. Furthermore, the Tribunal never announced a trial against any individual outside the region of former Yugoslavia, although there are numerous and various grounds for that, the responsibility for the horrible war crimes committed in the internationally »protected zone« of Srebrenica being the most prominent. <br />
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The Prosecution of the Hague tribunal (which is one of the parties in trial proceedings) presents itself as The Court by media techniques and, which is especially worrisome, appears in international affairs as a political institution. In this way the Hague prosecutors have de facto become a political arbiter whose opinion is critical at the UN for imposing sanctions on individual countries. <br />
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By political and media pressure on governments and media, the Hague tribunal pro- motes the principle that all suspects are proven criminals, who have to prove their innocence before the Tribunal, a presumption in complete contravention with the common legal standard that guilt has to be proven in court and no one can be considered guilty without a binding court verdict. <br />
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The Hague tribunal grossly exceeded its allocated jurisdiction by introducing in practice indictments and trial of individuals for the so-called joint criminal enterprise (JCE), so that in proceedings against individuals it in effect puts on trial »criminal organizations«, meaning states. In addition the term itself is so broadly defined it introduced complete legal insecurity, a situation in which any individual, neglecting customary standards of guilt determination, can be indicted and convicted as a member of a criminal organization. The defendants are put in a position in which they cannot even appreciate of what they are accused, rendering them incapable of exercising their equal right to rebut the points of the indictment. The responsibility, or guilt, of an individual is immersed into a vague collective guilt, which is also in opposition to common legal principles. <br />
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Following the proceedings before the Hague tribunal, one is especially struck by the problem of establishing points of fact, either simple or complex. This does not refer to establishing the legal relevance of a fact for the court proceedings, but to the unsound methodology by which the Hague tribunal acquires facts in the first place. <br />
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Concerning the Republic of Croatia, the systematic repeating of Hague theses by the Tribunal already achieved psychological and social effects involving first disbelief and apathy, and eventually desperation. If the Hague truths were incorporated into textbooks, a complete breakdown of identity and social disintegration of the Croatian society would result, followed by its thorough remodeling in the service of interests already deeply embedded as financiers and owners. <br />
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Opposition to the Hague theses was left to self-appointed individuals, until recently, when general S. Praljak, himself one of the 6 Croats indicted for a JCE in Bosnia, began to resist them systematically, backed by the enormous resource of an archive containing more than 60,000 documents. <br />
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It should be pointed out that this database, containing documents of all the parties in conflict, as well as the international community, objectively renders absurd the Hague indictment against six Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) in which they and Croatia are accused of a JCE against B&H. Namely, a large number of documents attests without any doubt that no Croat institution (President, Government, Parliament) did at any time pass an act or a hint thereof in line with destroying B&H and/or annexing any part of it. Furthermore, documents of both states, B&H and Croatia, demonstrate that the institutions of the Croatian state, during the period of conflict between Croatian and Muslim units in B&H, continuously participated in and contributed to the arming of the Army of B&H, as well as established and trained its units on the territory of Croatia. In Croatian hospitals several thousands of wounded soldiers of the B&H Army were treated, many of which wrote grateful letters to Croatian authorities after becoming well, and humanitarian aid also reached the Muslim population over Croatian territory without obstruction. <br />
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In the same period of time a large number of Muslim refugees were cared for without any discrimination, and Croatian authorities established and financed a system of schools for Bosnians, featuring a Bosnian teaching program, on Croatian territory. Likewise, numerous national sports representations of B&H where trained in Croatia and supported financially by the Croatian state, etc. Nevertheless, these aggregate facts and thousands of original documents supporting them never were made a centerpiece of public attention even in Croatia, while the Hague indictment for the alleged JCE against B&H remains a most severe threat to the Republic of Croatia. <br />
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A similar situation pertains with three generals of the Croatian army (HV) being accused, together with Croatian institutions, for an alleged JCE against Serbs in Croatia, during and after the liberation action »Storm.« Even though the media and several books published a number of original documents from the Croatian occupied territories, clearly demonstrating that the Serbian occupation forces planned and prepared the exodus of Serbian civilians from Croatia for several years, carrying it out before »Storm« – the supporters of the Hague theses both in The Hague and in Croatia insist on these points of the indictment. <br />
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Concerning the public perception and interpretation of »Storm« and other Croatian liberation operations, basic facts in their historical, political, and legal context are being ostentatiously neglected. First of all, beginning with the second half of 1991, Croatia acquired international legal status in a stepwise fashion, being eventually diplomatically recognized by key governments in January 1992, and becoming member of the UN in May of the same year. Based on its international status the Republic of Croatia had, according to all international laws and customs, full legality and legitimacy in establishing its jurisdiction over the occupied parts of its internationally recognized territory, the matter being its internal affair. <br />
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On all these grounds Croatia was fully within its rights to undertake liberation operations, »Storm« in particular, which, beside reintegrating a large portion of occupied Croatian territory, prevented a repetition of the Srebrenica humanitarian catastrophe in the Bihac region, and made it possible for the war in B&H to end, and the Dayton peace accords to be signed. <br />
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Josip Jurcevic: HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE ACTIVITY OF THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL<br />
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CROATIAN GENERALS ARE NOT GUILTYStudia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-81992142589093027552011-04-29T19:49:00.000-04:002011-04-29T19:49:51.044-04:00Paradoxes and absurdities of the Hague indictmentPARADOXES AND ABSURDITIES OF THE HAGUE INDICTMENT <br />
<br />
Nedjeljko Mihanovic, PhD <br />
<br />
General Ante Gotovina is being accused of the war crime, »that he knew, or had reason to know, that forces under his effective control were preparing to commit murder of Krajina Serbs« (150 of them). A war crime, as defined under the Hague convention of 1907, stipulates and includes: »killing, maltreatment, or deportation to forced labor of civilians; killing or maltreatment of prisoners of war; execution of hostages, destruction of towns and villages, or such devastation as cannot be justified by military necessity«. <br />
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None of that could have been committed in the military-police operation »Storm«: <br />
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a) because there was no way to kill a population which had already fled, because the Serbian population has evacuated itself to the Republic Srpska in B&H, and further towards Serbia proper, of its own volition, according to the plans of its leadership from the top of the Knin authorities; <br />
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b) because no one could organize any forced labor of civilians who have willfully fled, nor was this planned in any which way; and <br />
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c) because all prisoners of war have been unconditionally released by the Croatian authorities after the capitulation had been signed, and the »Storm« operation, which had lasted for four days, was over; finally <br />
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d) »destruction of towns and villages« was logically not part of the military-police operation, because all the towns and villages in question, which had been occupied by Serbian terrorists for four years, were Croatian state territory, so rather than stumbling into self-destruction, the purpose was to liberate the country. <br />
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Crimes against humanity include »organized murder, extermination, delivery into bondage, deportation of civilian population, their disappearance, torture, or inhuman procedures.« In point I, article 23, general Ante Gotovina is being summarily accused of all these crimes. <br />
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First of all, the quoted number of »150 murdered Krajina Serbs« is not broken down in the indictment. It is known that Serbian terrorist squads, as they carried out the orders of their superiors for the evacuation of the Serbian population, punished those Serbs who refused orders to evacuate by shooting them. <br />
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The indictment accuses General Ante Gotovina (along with Cermak and Markac) for »extermination of the civilian population«. It is a generally known fact that the Serbian population started to withdraw and evacuate according to its own strategic plans, respectively the orders of its paralegal government (Milan Martic and Milan Babic), several days before the military-police operation »Storm« was due to begin. Most of the Serbian population accepted this strategic inspiration of their leaders, and such a contrarian plan, to return in an organized fashion, after a new campaign of war, as victors. There was no »forcing to flee« (point I, article 23), nor could it have, physically, taken place. <br />
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In order to acquire a complete picture of the events surrounding the military-police operation »Storm« one should know that the Serbs from the so-called Krajina did not only flee. They also put up armed resistance, especially in ambushes, in which 200 Croatian civilians and more than 100 Croatian soldiers, defenders, lost their lives. <br />
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On August 6, 1995, I was in Knin and on the Knin citadel as President of the Croatian Parliament, in the company of President Dr Franjo Tudjman. I had unofficial exchanges with Croatian operational officers, who were involved in »Storm«. They recounted how they followed the evacuation of the Serbian population through binoculars, two days before »Storm« began. They thought the evacuation was in preparation for vigorous military activity by the Serbian paramilitary units. However, they were puzzled by the Serbian refugees burning their own homes and property, immediately after abandoning them on tractors and trucks in the direction of the Bosnian border. Similar Serbian burning of own houses was observed in the conflict of Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, when individual Serbs were abandoning the region. It was motivated by an irrational contrarian attitude: let there be nothing left to the enemy! <br />
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Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for the Hague tribunal, commented on this self-induced and strategically malign planned evacuation of the Serbian population in her book Milosevic – La Diagonale du Fou: »Every Serbian refugee could testify that the Serbian population was fleeing under instructions from their own leaders. Every (Serbian) soldier could testify to the intentional withdrawal of the Serbian army, a consciously planned abandonment of the Krajina«. <br />
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We ask, what is this »deportation« (point I, article 23) all about? Within the scope of such a qualification, one should be aware of the testimony of US Ambassador Mr. Peter W. Galbraith, who was peaceably driven on a refugee tractor during the withdrawal of Serbs from Croatia. One should also consider the reports of UNPROFOR observers, which testify to the willful, premeditated and planned evacuation of the Serbian population from the territory which they kept under terror and occupation for four years. Thus no organized and premeditated war crime against the rebel Serb population was committed on Croatian territory, because that population was withdrawing several days before the military-police operation »Storm«, according to its own contrarian strategic plan, aiming to return to Croatia in organized fashion following a new campaign of war. <br />
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In point 7, article 46, of the Indictment it is stated that the »Croatian army already applied itself to planning to return by force the RSK, i.e. Krajina region«. In objective reality, Croatian diplomacy had undertaken everything, up to and including the Geneva talks of August 3, 1995, in numerous exhausting and patient negotiations with the intransigent structures of the Knin authorities, to peacefully resolve and terminate a state of occupation, violence, persecution and liquidation of the Croatian population, and put an end to the nightmarish despotism of a terrorist para-state set up on Croatian historical state territory, such as it was continuously from the 6th century to this day. Logically the malicious and insulting formulation »to return by force« should read, by all standards of international law and moral/intellectual awareness, »to liberate« the territory usurped by the RSK. With the Serb occupation of Middle-Dalmatian Croatian territory, Croatia was geographically de facto cut in half, the southern maritime Croatia separated from the northern Pannonia one. One could only reach Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik through the Gorski Kotar and by Rijeka. Which nation, and which state, would have tolerated such an endangered and paralyzed national existence. In the Falklands war, England had protected its islands, 12,000 km away from Great Britain. Why should permission to protect the territorial integrity of the state only be granted to great imperial powers, and denied to little nations. O tempora, o mores! <br />
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In my several conversations with President Tudjman, which I led at the time as President of Parliament, he expressed a markedly humanistic approach. His main political goal was: a peaceful ending to the state of war, into which we had been thrown by the Greater Serbian conquering megalomania, territorial expansion and greedy economic voracity. His war options and victorious impulses were both humane and peacemaking. In carrying out his decisions he acted according to the highest standards of humanitarian law. Immediately after »Storm,« he amnestied and released all prisoners of war, members of Serbian paramilitary units, among which there were Seselj's and Arkan's volunteer Chetnik hordes, soaked in blood to their whiskers. He let them go as if they were innocent tourists, who had strayed into Croatia by accident. There was not a case of segregation or exclusion when turning over Serbian paramilitary prisoners. There is no occasion of such a generous and humane turning over of prisoners of war in the whole history of warfare. According to his own statement, for Tudjman »Storm« was: »The end of Croatia's historic cross«. (Vlak slobode (Freedom train), Zagreb 1996). Similar peaceable motives can be established from Tudjman's public speeches and missives to the nation and the world. <br />
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We must be truthful and objective enough to admit that, immediately after the »Storm« operation moved towards the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there took place random destruction of property of the fleeing Serbian population, in the villages and hamlets of the recently occupied territory (burning of houses, barns, and stables). This was done by Croatian refugees who had started returning to their houses after four years of displacement, and found them completely destroyed, burned to the ground. These were displaced Croatian returnees, who carried by themselves the enormous burden of memories, displacement, and bitterness, who had encountered in their villages their own houses in a sorry state, with schools, churches, cultural buildings, and all their property destroyed. It should similarly not be forgotten, that Serbian terrorist squads also acted as a kind of punitive expedition for those Serbs which turned a deaf ear to the evacuation orders, and themselves burned the greater part of Serbian homes, especially all public property (factories, commercial buildings and industrial halls), with the mindless intention: let it not be left to the enemy! After four years of adversity, suffering and displacement, the Croatian population was greatly embittered. The anger people felt, on whom such a misfortune was inflicted, was difficult to overcome. Nevertheless, this was not a »systematic attack against the civilian population,« as claimed in the Indictment, but a desperate, random, unpremeditated outburst of irrational revenge. <br />
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It is known from World War II that military and civilian units of the French Resistance movement persecuted the German national minority in Alsace and Lorraine, including destruction of their private property. The American front-line general George Smith Patton was on the Franco-German border at the time and led military operations. He too did not know, nor could he have known, what was to happen behind the front lines. Neither General Ante Gotovina knew, nor could he have known, what was to happen, and had begun to happen, behind the front lines. No one from the current Prosecution would dare indict General Patton for a »joint criminal enterprise« with the French Resistance, involving a »planned« destruction of the German minority's property. Why is a double and duplicitous moral position applied in the judgment of equivalent acts, in the case of Gotovina? <br />
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On August 13, 1995, President Tudjman spoke on the phone with US Vice-President Al Gore about the basic, essential question of the strategic effects of the military-police operation »Storm«. Vice-president Gore expressed in most unequivocal fashion his praise and appreciation, what »Storm« meant for the international community and the unsuccessful, impotent UNPROFOR: »liberation from the efforts to protect Bihac and its 'pink zones', thus greatly contributing to the realization of the American peace initiative on the territory of former Yugoslavia«. President Tudjman received a similar admission from the aide to the US Secretary of State for European affairs Peter Holbrooke on August 16, 1995. The American ambassador Peter W. Galbraith, who had followed the Serbian evacuation from the occupied territories of Croatia physically in person, also expressed his agreement and appreciation. Between October 21 and 25, 1995, President Tudjman took part in the celebration of 50 years of the UN in the US, and met with a number of statesmen, among them the American President Bill Clinton, who praised him for the quick and successful operation »Storm,« and for establishing the peace in the region of western Bosnia. We cannot imagine that President Clinton was not well informed by his observers in the »Storm« operation. Now all of a sudden, ten years later, this liberating and peace-bringing undertaking is being called in the Indictment »criminal«, and in addition »joint«, »combined«, a collective, general national crime. Even the German people at Nuremberg were not stigmatized with such attributes. It is glaringly clear and conspicuous to any objective and impartial judgment, that such a construction to perceive the Croatian liberation war, with its fatal ignorance and neglect of actual facts, is itself monstrous, unscrupulous, absurd, scandalous, and more personal than professionally objective. <br />
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Nedjeljko Mihanovic: PARADOXES AND ABSURDITIES OF THE HAGUE INDICTMENT <br />
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CROATIAN GENERALS ARE NOT GUILTYStudia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-44055761927437207292011-04-29T19:19:00.000-04:002011-04-29T19:19:18.086-04:00»Joint Criminal Enterprise« – What is that?»Joint Criminal Enterprise« – What is that? <br />
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»JOINT CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE« – What is that? <br />
<br />
Milan Vukovic, PhD <br />
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If we define international criminal law as a set of norms with the objective of suppressing crimes that cross the borders of individual countries, that is, crimes that violate certain basic values of humanity and of the international legal order, it is obvious that neither The Hague Tribunal nor its Statute can be grouped in the traditional concept of international criminal tribunal with legal competence. <br />
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This specific characteristic of The Hague Tribunal is obvious from the decision of its founding, because it was established by the UN Security Council, under the authority of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, while its competence was defined in Security Council Resolution 827 from May 27, 1993, paragraph 2, as well as the Statute, which is an integral part of the decision on the establishment of the tribunal. The judges themselves are authorized, under Article 15 of the Statute, to pass rules on the procedure and on evidence for prosecution prior to the start of trial and of the appeal procedure on the evidence procedure, on the protection of victims and witnesses, and on other related matters. <br />
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Although resolution 827, paragraph 2 emphasizes and defines the competence of the ad hoc established International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, the same provision is formulated in the same manner in Article 1 of the Statute. It is necessary to emphasize the power to prosecute »persons«, meaning natural persons. <br />
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I believe that it is necessary to emphasize that, in Article 2 of the Statute, stated in detail are acts considered grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, as well as those »ordering grave breaches to be committed«, because the Croatian state leadership had constantly insisted that their defense efforts be supervised by international forces on the front lines, and had insisted that the international forces undertake certain efforts so that this would not be the obligation of the Croatian Army. <br />
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The Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague introduces the criminal offence of GENOCIDE in Article 4, whereby it is first provided in a descriptive manner, stating that the International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute persons committing genocide as defined in paragraph 2 of this article, or committing any of the acts enumerated in paragraph 3 of this article. The definition of genocide is provided in paragraph 2 of this article, defining it as: »Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: <br />
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a) killing members of the group, <br />
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b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, <br />
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c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, <br />
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d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, <br />
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e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group«. <br />
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Paragraph 3 of Article 4 defines the acts that shall be punishable: <br />
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a) genocide, <br />
b) conspiracy to commit genocide, <br />
c) direct or public incitement to commit genocide, <br />
d) attempt to commit genocide, <br />
e) complicity to genocide. <br />
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In Article 5 of the Statute, all acts against humanity are specified: a) murder, b) extermination, c) enslavement, d) deportation, e) imprisonment, f) torture, g) rape, h) persecution on political, racial or religious grounds, i) other inhumane acts. <br />
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From all of the above, it follows that the elements of the incrimination, that is, the characteristics of the criminal act, must be indisputably defined by the norm that describes the act, because judges are not permitted to resort to analogy. If it is shown that there is a need, in addition to the Statute of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, to call on an additional source of international law, then the general principles of law in question must be recognized by the civilized world, as in Article 31 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which defines the grounds for excluding criminal responsibility in general. <br />
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With the belief that the provisions of the Statute on the competence of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia are insufficient, it is obvious that the prosecution and the judges themselves at times, interpret these voids at will in the manner that it is like there are no general rules on the International Criminal proceedings, as a consequence, they take on a quasi-legislative role when adopting and supplementing rules of procedure and evidence. <br />
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No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the criminal offence was committed <br />
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This article shall not prejudice the trial and punishment of any person for any act or omission which, at the time when it was committed, was criminal according the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations <br />
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The criminal offence must be committed after the adopted regulation, and the punishment must be prescribed prior to commitment itself (Article 31 of the Croatian Constitution, Article 7 of the European Convention). <br />
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It is indisputable that contemporary criminal law excludes collective responsibility of one side in an armed conflict, war, so the International Tribunal, also known as The Hague Tribunal, was founded on the principles of individual criminal responsibility, rejecting collective responsibility of individual nations or states for possible crimes committed in its name, because criminal law, in principle, excludes strict liability. <br />
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At the beginning of 2004, in the month of March, partially changing the Indictment against general Gotovina, Cermak and Markac, the prosecution in The Hague used the qualification of guilty under the all-encompassing expression »joint criminal enterprise«. With this qualification, the prosecution, and the Tribunal as well, because the Tribunal provides approval of the Indictment – which is, otherwise, nonsense – attempts to qualify the Homeland Defense War, which took place on Croatian territory to defend against Serbian-Montenegrin aggression, the uprising of a part of the Serbian population in Croatia and the full military attack by the former Yugoslav Army, as a crime because Croatians managed to defend and liberate their territory. <br />
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The »criminal enterprise« qualification is not only an insult to the legal facts in relation to the »right to peace«, but rather this qualification attempts to annul, in relation to Croatia's defense and victorious military operation, the very meaning of freedom and constitutional independence of Croatia, using the term 'crime' to depict its fight for freedom! <br />
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Inadequate knowledge of the facts that emerged with the breakup of the European division into blocs in those nations which, at that time, were structured as states, and the Croatian nation, which did not have its state independence, resulted in the mixing of the terms aggression and defense to the degree that the battle in defense of freedom and independence has been labeled a »criminal enterprise«! <br />
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When the Hague Tribunal's practice to accuse Croatia's victory and the persons who won these victories through battles appeared, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia responded with its REPORT no.: U-X-2271/2002, dated November 12, 2002 (Official Gazette, no. 133/02, November 15, 2002). <br />
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»The activities of the armed forces of the Republic of Croatia, conducted with the objective of liberating parts of the occupied territories of the Republic of Croatia, including removing direct threats to the lives of inhabitants and preventing the destruction of real estate caused by armed (military and paramilitary, para-police and/or terrorist) attacks by occupying forces undertaken from occupied territories, were in accordance with the constitutional obligation of the armed forces of the Republic of Croatia to protect the sovereignty and independence of the Republic of Croatia and the defense of its territorial integrity. <br />
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When liberating the occupied territories of the Republic of Croatia, the armed forces of the Republic of Croatia acted in the name of and according to the authority of a contemporary, sovereign, internationally recognized state. <br />
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By liberating areas of the Republic of Croatia in which an unconstitutional entity without democratic legitimacy and international recognition was formed, the armed forces of the Republic of Croatia suppressed the armed uprising and removed the results of external armed aggression. In these territories, the armed forces simultaneously introduced the national (constitutional-legal) and, in doing so, the international-legal order as its part, with all rights, obligations and responsibilities that arise from the Constitution and the legislation of the Republic of Croatia and from international legal acts that the Republic of Croatia has accepted and ratified. <br />
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The Constitutional Court regards such a constitutional position and role of the armed forces of the Republic of Croatia during the Homeland Defense War indisputable and irrefutable«. <br />
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CROATIAN GENERALS ARE NOT GUILTY <br />
Milan Vukovic: »JOINT CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE« – What is that?Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-53455136500285768612011-04-29T18:34:00.000-04:002011-04-29T18:34:41.496-04:00Croatian generals are not guilty - Introduction<strong>Croatian generals are not guilty - Introduction </strong><br />
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In August, 1995, the Croatian Army liberated large sections of its territory, which had been occupied by the Serbs for many years. This operation is known as Operation Storm (Oluja). In Dalmatia, the most critical part of the operation was headed by Croatian general Ante Gotovina. <br />
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At the beginning of the 21st century, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia accused general Gotovina of crimes against humanity and violations of laws and customs of war. Also accused are Croatian generals Mladen Markac and Ivan Cermak. They are suspected, together with the late Croatian President, Franjo Tudjman, of participating in a joint criminal enterprise, whose goal was to remove the Serbian population from that part of Croatia. <br />
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The trial was completed in 2010. The prosecution of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague had not succeeded in proving a single count of the indictment. The verdict is awaited. <br />
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In the meantime many world-renown experts on international law wrote critically about the work and character of the tribunal in The Hague, deeming that it had distanced itself from the values on which international law is founded, and that it acted under the influence of politics. <br />
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They asked themselves and are still asking how is it possible to put on trial the commanders of an army that liberated its own territory in a brilliant military operation with a minimum number of killed and wounded. How was it possible to put Croatia and Croatians on trial, the victims, in 1991, of internal (terrorist uprising by a part of the Serbs) and outside aggression (Serbian and Montenegro) with thousands and thousands of dead and wounded, as well as devastated villages and cities (Vukovar). The objective of this genocide, including culturocide (devastation of Dubrovnik and Zadar), was the creation of a »Greater Serbia«, with many Croatian areas in its composition. Krajina, the Serbian terrorist para-state with Knin as its center, was formed on a part of the territory of the internationally recognized Republic of Croatia, from where the attacks on the Croatian cities on the Adriatic Sea were initiated. Aggression on the entire area of Croatia was planned in Belgrade under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic. <br />
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The International Tribunal in The Hague neglects this entire context and highlights only the Croatian military operation in 1995, accusing Croatian generals of »persecuting Serbs from Croatia«. The facts indicate otherwise: the supreme defense council of the »Republic of Serbian Krajina« made a decision on the planned evacuation of civilians; it was to take place in front of representatives of the international community; and Serbs from this part of Croatia did not wish to remain despite the proclamation by the President of the Republic of Croatia, which called on them to stay. <br />
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The Tribunal in The Hague also neglects the fact that the army of the Republic of Croatia, after the fall of Knin (which was practically undamaged) continued with its operation on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in accordance with the agreement signed by Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and Croatian President Dr. Franjo Tudjman. This operation too was led by general Ante Gotovina. Civilians in the city of Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was surrounded by the Serbian army, were saved. Bihac was a safe haven, as was Srebrenica, the site of a terrible genocide of Muslims not long before. Thanks to the Croatian Army and general Gotovina, a massacre in Bihac was averted. What is more, the Serbs were retreating in panic towards northern Bosnia, and from that point on no longer represented a real military threat. They accepted the Dayton Agreement, which, actually, ended the war in Southeast Europe. <br />
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It was this kind of general Gotovina and others in the indictment who were put on trial in The Hague for a non-existent »joint criminal enterprise«, which is absurd, even more so because the prosecution raised indictments on the basis of information provided by the enemy in the conflict. <br />
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The lawyers of the Croatian generals were not the only ones participating in their defense. Given that the tribunal in The Hague did not allow the Republic of Croatia to appear as »amicus curiae«, legal experts gathered in an attempt to replace this role, as has the non-governmental organization of intellectuals under the name »Hrvatsko kulturno vijece – Croatian Cultural Council«. The book that you have in your hands is a summary of the eight collections of symposium papers (a total of 1200 pages) that originated on the basis of presentations by Croatian intellectuals at eight symposiums of the Croatian Cultural Council held from the middle of 2006 to 2010. <br />
<br />
Hrvoje Hitrec President of the Croatian Cultural CouncilStudia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-82257188269683255032011-03-21T19:59:00.000-04:002011-03-21T19:59:20.087-04:00Publication of book Otto Piene by Ante Glibota<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-EMJXLHWQF7w/TYfkbpjM4HI/AAAAAAAABdE/ikyef_EDHE8/s1600/glibota_piene.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="117" r6="true" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-EMJXLHWQF7w/TYfkbpjM4HI/AAAAAAAABdE/ikyef_EDHE8/s320/glibota_piene.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>PUBLICATION OF BOOK OTTO PIENE BY ANTE GLIBOTA<br />
<br />
Delight Edition announces the world premier presentation of a major, comprehensive monograph dedicated to one of the most important contemporary artists, Otto Piene, by the art and architecture historian and curator Ante Glibota at the Rathaus der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf City Hall), Marktplatz 2, 40213 Düsseldorf (Tel. 0211 89-9), in the presence of the Lord Mayor of the City of Düsseldorf, Mr. Dirk Elbers, on March 29, 2011 at 15:00 h. The artist and the author will both be present. <br />
<br />
THE BOOK<br />
<br />
The publication of the monograph follows twenty-three years of intensive research on the work and creative adventures of Otto Piene, one of the worldʼs leading avant-garde multimedia artists, who together with Heinz Mack founded Group ZERO in Düsseldorf in 1957. <br />
<br />
For twenty-five years he directed the prestigious Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA, USA.<br />
<br />
Writing, editing and producing this volume has been an enormous challenge because of the complexity of Otto Pieneʼs work and career, and because of the global importance and radiance of his unique artistic approach, ideas and vision that have shaped the international art world over the past fifty years. He has, as few others of his contemporaries have, played a vital and critical role in the development and dissemination of an architecture of the essential themes engendered by new forms of visual arts, multi-media arts and experimental art. His enlightening ideas were promulgated on both sides of the Atlantic, making Otto Piene an indispensable member of the creative and artistic avant-garde of our time.<br />
<br />
The work that preceded the bookʼs publication has left a powerful imprint on the two main protagonists and their shared sense of ʻadventureʼ, even as they remained vigilant as to the facts and to the importance of the motives that guided them. In addition to the texts of Ante Glibota and Otto Piene, the volume contains thirty-seven essays specifically written for this publication by internationally renowned art historians, art theorists and artists, which makes this volume a unique entity in the realm of art books. <br />
<br />
1 The book is bound in a hard cover with a pellicular dust jacket. <br />
<br />
2 It contains 756 pages, approximately 3000 illustrations. The text is bilingual in English and German. <br />
<br />
3 It is printed on the finest Fedrigoni Kunstdruck matt paper of 150 gr weight.<br />
<br />
4 The size of the book is 30x30cm; it has a thickness of 6 cm and weighs 5.7 kg.5 It is published by Delight Edition Ltd., Paris, and was printed by Grafiche Tintoretto in Treviso, Italy.<br />
<br />
6 The price of the book is € 200 plus shipping. <br />
<br />
THE ARTIST OTTO PIENE<br />
<br />
A multi-faceted artist with numerous creative interests, Otto Piene is not only an essential creator of our times, and one of its most inventive, but he is, without a doubt, one of the most sensitive and attentive observers of the changes occurring between mankind and nature. He carries within himself a structured thought process that in its broad dimension and its philosophical, as well as aesthetical depth enables us to penetrate deep inside the mysteries of art, poetry and life itself.<br />
<br />
Otto Piene was born in Bad Laasphe, Westphalia, on April 18th, 1928 and grew up in Lübbecke. He comes from a family of several generations of Protestant ministers. His grandfather had a wide range of interests, including philosophy and ancient mathematics, and authored numerous books. <br />
<br />
After returning from military and POW service, Otto Piene in 1948 enrolled in the private Munich art school Blocherer Schule and later in the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Munich in 1949. In 1950 he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf (Staatliche Kunstakademie) and Cologne University (Albertus Magnus Universität), where he completed his state examination in philosophy with distinction in 1957. In 1955 he established his first studio at Gladbacherstrasse 69 and founded, together with Heinz Mack, the Group ZERO. In 1964 he moved to the United States and in 1968 became the first international Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA, at the invitation of György Kepes. He succeeded Kepes as Professor and Director of CAVS in 1974 and became MIT Professor Emeritus and CAVS Director Emeritus in 1994.<br />
<br />
He has presented more then 130 solo exhibitions and participated in hundreds of group exhibitions. He has staged well over 100 Light Ballet performances and some 100 Sky Events. His work is included in more than 140 of the worldʼs finest museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.<br />
<br />
Otto Piene and his wife Elizabeth Goldring Piene, live and work at their farm in Groton, Massachusetts. They also have studios in Boston, at MIT, Berlin and Düsseldorf.<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR ANTE GLIBOTA<br />
<br />
The art and architectural historian, author and curator, was born in Slivno, Croatia.<br />
<br />
He studied at the University of Zagreb and Sorbonne University in Paris and has lived in Paris since 1973, where he has maintained close bonds with artistic and intellectual circles all over the world. In1978 he started to work for the Paris Art Center, active in the fields of experimental film, theatre, modern dance and the fine arts. In 1979 he was appointed artistic director and later, in 1982, director general of the Paris Art Center, a position he held until 1994. He was the commissioner and editor for the event “Olympiad of Arts” that took place in Seoul (South Korea) on the occasion of the 1988 Olympic Games and led to the creation of the largest open air sculpture park in the world. More recently, he was appointed curator and editor of “Art and Sport”, an exhibition organized by Adidas and the IOC for the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing. As author and publisher of over 200 books and catalogues, and curator of more than 400 exhibitions devoted to contemporary art, architecture and literature, Ante Glibota is a Titular Member of the European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Humanities and an Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects. In 2004, the China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC) in Beijing appointed him to a five-year term <br />
as Foreign Counselor for International Cultural Exchanges. Since 2010 he serves as VicePresident and Curator-in-Chief of the Museum of Art and Urbanity in Shanghai. Ante Glibota lives in Paris, France and Shanghai, ChinaStudia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-21384113178998589962011-01-26T22:08:00.000-05:002011-01-26T22:08:51.010-05:00Croatian Language Introductory Course - Contents of the 30 lessons<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>ES-AR</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TUDgvA_Mh3I/AAAAAAAABcE/SAkgM0KLvjQ/s1600/gla09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TUDgvA_Mh3I/AAAAAAAABcE/SAkgM0KLvjQ/s200/gla09.jpg" width="193" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">HRVATSKI JEZIK - </span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">CROATIAN LANGUAGE</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Croatian Language Introductory Course - Contents of the 30 lessons</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">All lessons are accompanied by sound files in the Croatian language. This summary includes only the main themes of each lesson. They are accompanied by texts and information on history, geography and culture of Croatia.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 1</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> - Letters and Numbers. Their writing and pronunciation - Vocabulary.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 2</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> – Present of the verb <i>biti</i>. Preposition <i>iz</i>; use of the genitive. Question words: <i>tko?, što?, odakle?.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 3 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Countries and capital cities. Nominative, genitive. Nouns (masculine, feminine and neuter). Singular and plural nouns. Verb <i>biti</i>, emphatic forms: interrogative, positive and negative.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 4 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Presentation. Different situations. Adjectives: masculine, feminine and neuter. Present of verbs <i>živjeti </i>and<i> govoriti</i>. Countries, nationalities and their languages.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 5 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Verbs. The four groups of verbs with their conjugations. The preposition <i>"u"</i>, and its use with the locative case. Possessive pronouns.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 6 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The nominative case for nouns and adjectives.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 7 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The genitive case. The genitive case to answer the questions: Koga? - <i>čega</i>?. The locative case. Declination of the words with the prepositions <i>na</i> and <i>u</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 8 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Plurals of genitive and locative cases. Possessive pronouns in the nominative singular.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 9 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Possessive pronouns in the nominative plural. Parts of the body. Verbs <i>raditi, crtati, sanjati, hodati</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">and<i> </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">spavati</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 10 –</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Verbs <i>voljeti</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> and </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">imati</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">. The accusative case.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 11 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Review of the locative case: The locative singular of masculine, feminine and neuter nouns.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 12 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Present the verb <i>ići</i>. Adverbs of time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 13 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Time expressions: <i>Koliko je sati?</i>; <i>ujutro</i>; <i>navečer</i>; <i>poslije podne / popodne</i>; <i>poslije ponoći / po ponoći</i>. The days of the week.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 14 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Review of some verbs. More verbs. The locative case with prepositions: <i>o</i> and <i>prema</i>. Verbs <i>jesti</i> and <i>piti</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 15 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Verbs <i>jesti</i>, <i>piti</i> and <i>moliti</i>, use of nouns in the accusative and genitive cases.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 16 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The imperative. The imperative positive. The negative imperative and its two forms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 17 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The Imperative - Part Two. Conjugation of the verbs <i>trebati</i>,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">morati</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">, <i>doći</i>, <i>ići </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">and </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">pisati</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">, in the present and the imperative. The imperative for the third person. The imperative of the verb <i>biti</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 18 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Possessive pronouns in the nominative. The plural possessive pronouns. The family. Ordinal numbers. The months of the year.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 19 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Possessive pronouns. Declination of ordinal numbers in the accusative, genitive and locative cases.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 20</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <b>-</b> Situations and vocabulary: The Post Office and the Bank. Verbs <i>moći, željeti </i>and <i>morati</i>. The dative case, singular and plural.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 21 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The instrumental case. Cases where the instrumental answers to <i>s kim?.</i> Cases where the instrumental answers to <i>čime</i><i>?</i>. The instrumental case indicating location.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 22 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> We present two Croatian songs Croats and two interviews, which can be read and heard in Croatian, and their translation into English.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><a href="" name="8614694184409913835"></a><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 23 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The vocative case. The vocative in Croatian literature.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 24 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Past tense. Past participle of the verb <i>biti</i>. Negative form of the past tense. Particularities of the past tense.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 25</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> - The past tense of reflexive verbs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 26 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Collective nouns. Their declination. The verb <i>imati</i>: its use in the accusative and genitive cases.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 27 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Declination of personal pronouns. Stressed and unstressed forms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 28 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> In this lesson we present two songs and two interviews, in both Croatian and English.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lesson 29 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The future tense. The verb <i>htjeti</i>. Negative and interrogative forms in the future.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Lesson 30 -</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> The future tense - Part II. Future of reflexive verbs - affirmative and negative forms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:studiacroatica@gmail.com"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">studiacroatica</span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #474b4e; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">@gmail.com</span></b></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-2213757997011614622011-01-26T20:10:00.001-05:002011-01-26T20:15:06.300-05:00National Federation of Croatian Americans - Letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TUDF_IS-0xI/AAAAAAAABcA/V3XOLonzcg0/s1600/nfca.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TUDF_IS-0xI/AAAAAAAABcA/V3XOLonzcg0/s200/nfca.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Verdana,Helvetica,Arial; font-size: 14px;"><b>National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation Issues Text of Letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Concerning Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina</b><br />
(Washington, D.C.) The National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation (NFCA CF) released today the text of a letter from its President, John P. Kraljic, addressed to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the letter, Mr. Kraljic expressed the NFCA CF’s growing concern with the status of Croats and the Roman Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).<br />
<br />
The NFCA CF had been motivated in part by a recent letter from Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka to officials of the Republika Srpska (RS) complaining about the apparent connivance of RS police forces with attacks on personal and real property of Croats in Bishop Komarica’s Diocese. In his letter to Secretary Clinton, Mr. Kraljic further expressed the NFCA CF’s belief that the subordination of the constitutional, political and economic rights of Croats in BiH has led both to the trampling of Croat rights in RS as well as elsewhere in the country. Mr. Kraljic specifically called on Secretary Clinton not to sanction any settlements concerning the future of BiH that may be reached between Serb and Bosniak leaders at the expense of the Croats and Catholics of the country.<br />
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The full text of Mr. Kraljic’s letter is attached.<br />
<br />
The NFCA CF is the national umbrella organization of Croatian American groups that collectively represents approximately 130,000 members. For additional public affairs information, please contact Mr. Joe Foley, Public Affairs Director, at (301) 294-0937, or NFCA CF Headquarters at (301) 208-6650. The email address is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:NFCAhdq@verizon.net" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank">NFCAhdq@verizon.net</a>. For recent newsletters, important NFCA CF membership application and chapter information, and other Croatian American news please visit the Web Site at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.nfcaonline.com/" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank">www.nfcaonline.com</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation (NFCA CF)</b>2401 Research Blvd, Suite 115<br />
Rockville, MD 20850<br />
PHONE: (301) 208-6650<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
FAX: (301) 208-6659<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
E-MAIL: <a href="mailto:nfcahdq@verizon.net" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank">nfcahdq@verizon.net</a><br />
WEB SITE: <a href="http://www.nfcaonline.com/" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank">www.nfcaonline.com</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Verdana,Helvetica,Arial; font-size: 14px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space">NFCA<br />
<br />
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF CROATIAN AMERICANS<br />
<br />
____ ____<br />
<br />
The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton<br />
Secretary of State<br />
US Department of State<br />
2201 C Street, NW<br />
Washington, DC 20520<br />
<br />
Dear Madame Secretary:<br />
<br />
The National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation wishes to express its continued concern with the status of Croats and the Roman Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).<br />
<br />
Since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA) in November 1995, the situation of the Croats and the Catholic Church in BiH has steadily deteriorated. On one hand, the hundreds of thousands of ethnically cleansed Croats in the Republika Srpska (RS), along with the predominately Muslim Bosniaks, remain subject to continued pressure forestalling their return to their homes. On the other hand, Croats in the Bosniak-Croat Federation have found that the Federation’s peculiar constitutional provisions have effectively left them without a voice in the three-man presidency of BiH.<br />
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The ongoing problems confronting Catholics and Croats in BiH have been recently highlighted again by Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka, whose diocese is based in the RS. A January 12, 2011, report by the Catholic Press Agency of Bosnia’s Bishops’ Conference notes that Bishop Komarica had sent a letter the previous day to the head of the Center for Public Security (CPS) in Banja Luka. The letter detailed numerous cases of the destruction of personal and real property of Croat returnees from the area, including in Šimići, Ivanjska, and Raljaš. In each of these cases, the complaints of the local Croats have been ignored by local RS police forces that are, apparently, working in concert with the perpetrators.<br />
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At first glance these incidents may appear to be nothing more than acts of petty crime. However, we believe that - given the history of the RS and the continued threats made by RS leaders to secede from BiH - they are part of an organized attempt to pressure the Croats of the RS to either leave the territory of the RS or to cow them into remaining silent in opposing the position taken by RS authorities concerning the future of BiH.<br />
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The fact that the Croats of Banja Luka feel compelled to turn to their Bishop for assistance with respect to these crimes further shows the legal and constitutional inadequacies of the DPA as it relates to the protection of the political rights for all Croats in BiH. This most recently became evident yet again after the re-election of Željko Komšić of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to the seat reserved for Croats in the three-man Presidency<br />
of BiH.<br />
<br />
While we certainly do not deny the legitimacy of President Komšić’s election, we must note that his election to this position had been, as practically all observers recognize, achieved almost exclusively through the votes of Bosniak supporters of the SDP in the Federation. The SDP has taken the position that BiH must be January 24, 2011 restructured as a unitary state. This is contrary to the position taken by the large majority of Croat political<br />
parties in BiH. The latter fear that such a restructuring of the country, where the government will be elected based on a rule of one man-one vote, would cause the interests of Croats (the smallest of BiH’s three constituent peoples) to be subordinated to the domination of the numerically superior Serbs and Bosniaks. Such a political regimen would eliminate the already weak institutional safeguards that protect the Croats of BiH.<br />
<br />
These weak safeguards have had real economic consequences as the state-dominated economy steers its largesse toward Bosniak and Serb dominated areas at the expense of the Croats. This has in turn caused the declining and alarming demographic position of Croats in BiH to deteriorate further.<br />
<br />
Madame Secretary, we ask that the U.S. State Department take the foregoing into account and make known its displeasure with the attacks being undertaken against Croats in the RS. We respectfully request that your Department forcefully make known that it will not sanction any political, economic, legal, or constitutional settlements that may be reached between Serb and Bosniak leaders at the expense of the Croats and Catholics of Bosnia and Herzegovina.<br />
<br />
If the National Federation of Croatian Americans may provide additional information regarding our concerns as stated above, we would be pleased to do so. Your staff may contact the NFCA’s Public Affairs Director, Mr. Joe Foley, in Washington on telephone 301-294-0937.<br />
<br />
Thank you.<br />
<br />
Sincerely,<br />
<br />
John P. Kraljic<br />
President<br />
<br />
JK:jf<br />
<br />
CC:<br />
US Senator John Kerry, Chair, Senate Foreign Relations Committee<br />
US Senator Richard Lugar, Ranking Member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee<br />
US Senator Mark Begich<br />
US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee<br />
US Representative Howard Berman, Ranking Member, House Foreign Affairs Committee<br />
US Representatives Peter Visclosky and Elton Gallegly, Congressional Croatian Caucus<br />
Msgr. David Malloy, General Secretary, US Conference of Catholic Bishops<br />
Bishop Howard Hubbard, Chair, Committee on International Justice and Peace, USCCB<br />
<br />
National Federation of Croatian Americans<br />
<br />
2401 Research Boulevard, Suite 115, Rockville, MD 20850 USA<br />
Phone: (301) 208-6650 Fax: (301) 208-6659 E-mail: nfcahdq@verizon.net<br />
www.nfcaonline.com </span><a href="http://www.nfcaonline.com/" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank"><http: www.nfcaonline.com=""></http:></a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-41180446849015220622010-11-23T13:33:00.000-05:002010-11-23T13:33:50.128-05:00Misa conmemorativa: dr. Franjo Tudjman y colaboradores de Studia Croatica<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOwI3E14dyI/AAAAAAAABaw/6RjBDGdNjRQ/s1600/tudjman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOwI3E14dyI/AAAAAAAABaw/6RjBDGdNjRQ/s1600/tudjman.jpg" /></a></div><i>HDZ - Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica - Unión Democrática Croata</i> y la Redacción de <i>Studia Croatica</i> invitan a la Misa que se celebrará el domingo 28 de noviembre en el Centro Católico Croata en conmemoración del Fundador y Primer Presidente de la República de Croacia, dr. Franjo Tudjman, en el undécimo aniversario de su fallecimiento. También rezaremos por los colaboradores fallecidos de la revista <i>Studia Croatica</i> y del <i>Instituto de Cultura Croata</i> en el 50 aniversario de su fundación.<br />
<br />
Av. Ricardo Balbín (ex del Tejar) 4925, Ciudad de Buenos Aires<br />
La Misa comienza a las 11:30 horasStudia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-64812785119408170772010-11-23T11:23:00.002-05:002010-11-23T18:53:40.416-05:00Learn Croatian<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOvqW7l_e2I/AAAAAAAABas/_h87-Kn-eXw/s1600/learn03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOvqW7l_e2I/AAAAAAAABas/_h87-Kn-eXw/s1600/learn03.jpg" /></a></div><b>Learn Croatian</b><br />
<b><i><br />
</i></b><br />
<b><i>The Institute for Croatian Culture – Studia Croatica</i></b> (established 1960) offers a Course in Croatian Language – Introductory Level. The course is given using the resources of the Internet.<br />
<br />
It consists of a series of 30 lessons which are sent weekly to the students (7 months). The lessons are texts which contain the elements of Croatian grammar and conversation. Translations and explanations are provided in English. Lessons are sent every Monday.<br />
<br />
The lessons include sound files, as well as exercises for the student to solve (at his own pace). The solved exercises can be sent to the instructors, who correct and return them back to the students.<br />
<br />
The instructors will answer questions or doubts posed by the students.<br />
<br />
The instructors are Adriana Smajic and Joza Vrljicak.<br />
<br />
For more information, write to <a href="mailto:studiacroatica@gmail.com">studiacroatica@gmail.com</a><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #686f8b; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Croatian Internet Course -</span></span>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-47384010188600242252010-11-23T06:24:00.000-05:002010-11-23T06:24:25.220-05:00Croatia: Myth and Reality (21) - C. Michael McAdams - Myth: "The Serbo-Croatian Language"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOukMaqUrMI/AAAAAAAABag/4G4i40QeLJc/s1600/DSC03830.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOukMaqUrMI/AAAAAAAABag/4G4i40QeLJc/s200/DSC03830.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>CROATIA: MYTH AND REALITY<br />
<i>C. Michael McAdams</i><br />
<br />
MYTH: "THE SERBO-CROATIAN LANGUAGE"<br />
<br />
Myth: Serbs and Croatians speak a single common language known as "Serbo-Croatian."<br />
<br />
Reality: Croatians speak Croatian, which is written with the Latin Alphabet, and Serbs speak Serbian, which is written with the Cyrillic alphabet ("Serbian Alphabet").<br />
<br />
It became apparent by 1995 that Yugoslavia was dead. Despite that, many in the Western media and in academia kept its spirit alive by referring to a "Serbo-Croatian" language despite the fact that there never was a single "Serbo-Croatian" tongue.<br />
<br />
The Camel and the Virgin<br />
<br />
It is true that Serbian and Croatian are very similar, sharing personal pronouns and seven identical cases. But Serbian is written with the Cyrillic or Russian alphabet and Croatian is written with the Latin alphabet. Each has thousands of words that are totally different, including such common names as those of the months and even the words for "book" or "library." Moreover, thousands of other words have vastly different meanings in the two languages, sometimes with humorous result. A Serb referring to a nursing baby as odojce will have called the child a pig in Croatian. A Serbian railroad train, voz is a Croatian hay cart. A camel in Croatian, Deva can be the Virgin Mary in Serbian. There is no question, even by supporters of "Serbo- Croatian," that the two languages, even if taken as variants, are much less similar than Norwegian and Danish, or Flemish and Dutch among European languages.<br />
<br />
The Language of Politics<br />
<br />
"Serbo-Croatian" was used throughout the history of Yugoslavia as a political tool to homogenize the South Slavic peoples into a single nation; obviously without success. The very concept of a single South Slavic language can only be traced back to the mid- nineteenth century. In 1918 when the Serbian Army first occupied Croatia, one of its first tasks was to rip down every road sign, every railway station sign, every post office sign written in Croatian and replace them with signs in Serbian. In 1991, history repeated itself as the Serbian army destroyed Croatian signs in occupied Croatia and Bosnia.<br />
<br />
The Language of Dictatorship<br />
<br />
Under the Serbian Royal dictatorship of 1929-1934, the government did everything possible to force the Serbian language upon the peoples of Bosnia, Croatia and even Slovenia. Croatian children in Bosnia and southern Dalmatia were forced to use the Cyrillic alphabet in school. Many were prosecuted for criticizing the official "Serbo-Croatian" language. Despite that, all major Serbian and Croatian scholars, including Radosav Boskovic in 1935, Julije Bensic in 1939, Petar Guberina and Kruno Krstic in 1940, continued to recognize the separateness of the two languages.<br />
<br />
Such modern scholars as Branko Franolic, Dalibor Broiovid, the late Francis Eterovich, Christopher Spalatin and Ivo Banac, all agreed. Professor Banac of Yale wrote "...Serbian ekavian was pushed through as Yugoslavia's official language, most often in Cyrillic garb. Nor could it have been otherwise. There was nothing neutral in the acceptance of ekavian, which was frequently the code word for the wholesale adoption of Serb linguistic practices, including Serb lexical wealth. In short, Belgrade political centralism had a parallel linguistic direction, which amounted to the infiltration of Serbian terms and forms throughout Yugoslavia by means of the military, civil administration and schools,"<br />
<br />
The Language of the Revolution<br />
<br />
After World War II, despite promises of the Revolution, a single "Serbo-Croatian" language was, again to quote Banac, "grafted onto Marxist ideological imperatives." The government, the Party, the military, and the media were forced to use "Serbo-Croatian," which increasingly became Serbian with Latin letters in Croatia.<br />
<br />
The only reason that "Serbo-Croatian" existed and the only reason it was forced upon unwilling populations were the politics of an artificial Yugoslavia united by force against the will of the majority of its population. Branko Franolic wrote: "The linguistic convergence between the two languages, Croatian and Serbian, has been encouraged and hastened for political reasons by the Belgrade Federal Government which has imposed as "official language" the Serbian language already in use in the political, administrative and military spheres. Serbian has been used for political ends as a cohesive force within the "nation-state" of Yugoslavia. For that matter, the convergence between the two languages concerns not only the language but the organization and the social structure in which Serbian is the dominant language and Croatian the dominated."<br />
The Language of the Past<br />
<br />
Yugoslavia is dead. Neither an artiticial language, artificial borders, or a Stalinist demagogue like Slobodan Milosevic could restore the historical mistake that was Yugoslavia. Scholarly and professional organizations throughout the world have discontinued use of the term "Serbo-Croatian." Yet many in the media and academia cling to this linguistic fabrication. Each is entitled to an opinion. However, such scholars and organizations as Luka Budak, Chair of Croatian Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Ivo Banac at Yale University, the University of Zagreb, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Serbian Academy in Belgrade, assert that the language of the Croatian people is Croatian.<br />
<br />
Many governments no longer recognize "Serbo-Croatian" as a language at all. The U.S. State Department, the Voice of America, and the U.S. Defense Language Institute, among others, all recognize Serbian and Croatian as separate languages, as do major universities large enough to have separate South Slavic language programs, such as Macquarie University in Sydney. Finally, in 1988, the International Organization for Standardization in Switzerland restored "Croatian" and "Serbian" to its listing of the world's languages. The listings had been replaced by "Serbo-Croatian" in 1970 at Belgrade's insistence.<br />
<br />
There were still those who ignored such scholars, institutions, and governments and continued to refer to the "Serbo-Croatian" language. When the Serbian propaganda film Vukovar: Poste Restante toured North America in 1996 it was advertised as "Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles." There were also those who longed for a restored Yugoslavia. Clinging to the relics of the past did not change myth into reality.Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-50145045888330405532010-11-23T06:15:00.000-05:002010-11-23T06:15:38.485-05:00Croatia: Myth and Reality (20) - C. Michael McAdams - Myth: "Borders were Drawn to Benefit Croatia"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOuiN5KAxPI/AAAAAAAABac/QS6fduqAWag/s1600/DSC03919.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOuiN5KAxPI/AAAAAAAABac/QS6fduqAWag/s200/DSC03919.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>CROATIA: MYTH AND REALITY<br />
<i>C. Michael McAdams</i><br />
<br />
MYTH: "BORDERS WERE DRAWN TO BENEFIT CROATIA"<br />
<br />
Myth: Serbia's borders with Croatia and Bosnia were drawn up secretly by Tito, a Croatian, in 1943 benefiting Croatia at the expense of Serbia.<br />
<br />
Reality: Croatia's border with Serbia is essentially the same as in 1848 and 1918, with the exception of those lands taken from Croatia and given to Serbia and Montenegro under both Yugoslav regimes.<br />
<br />
From the launching of wars of aggression against Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia attempted to rationalize seizing the lands of others by asserting that the internal borders of the former Yugoslavia were merely administrative lines drawn after World War II. The myth is that Tito, a Croatian, drew the internal boundaries of Yugoslavia to the advantage of the Croatians and Bosnians and to the disadvantage of Serbia. The objective of the myth was to stress to the world that the borders of the former Yugoslav republics were merely administrative boundaries with no historical significance. Once this myth was taken as reality the reasoning follows that such trivial borders are subject to change, by force if need be, to favor Serbia.<br />
<br />
Although sections of Croatia and Bosnia were governed by different branches of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, the eastern borders of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina were established in their current form with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718 and, with the exception of those places where Serbia has seized land from Croatia, those borders have changed little since 1848.<br />
<br />
Serbia has expanded its borders after each of its numerous wars since 1813. Today Serbia controls more territory than at any time in modern history. In the north, it has annexed the lands of the Hungarians and Croatians. In the south, two hundred thousand Serbs rule over two million ethnic Albanians in the absolute police state of Kosova. Montenegro became a mere Serbian province. In the west, one half of Bosnia was sacrificed to Serbian aggression by the "Great Powers" in 1995.<br />
<br />
The myth that Serbian lands were held by Croatia was employed by the Serbian government to launch a war of aggression to seize valuable gas and oil fields, rail and shipping corridors and port facilities. Eastern Slavonia, where Serbian aggression resulted in the complete devastation of the ancient city of Vukovar, had a Serbian population of 16.4% according to the 1991 census. Dubrovnik, which endured months of siege by Serbian forces, had a Serbian population of only 6.2% in 1991. Neither region was ever a part of Serbia.<br />
<br />
Croatia's Ancient Borders<br />
<br />
Like most European nations, the borders of Croatia changed over the preceding thousand years reflecting the ebbs and flows of the great empires. When King Tomislav united Pannonian and Dalmatian Croatia in 925, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus chronicled that Croatia encompassed some 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles), with a population exceeding two million, and fielded 60,000 horsemen, 100,000 foot soldiers, 80 galleys and one hundred cutters, a formidable state for tenth century Europe.<br />
<br />
At that time, the Serbs were dominated by Bulgar Byzantine rulers and establish their first state in 1170. Serbia attained its zenith under Czar Stephen Dusan who died in 1355. His death resulted in civil war among Serbian chieftains, leading to a Turkish invasion. The Serbs suffered a staggering defeat at the battle of Kosova in 1389 and another at Smederevo in 1459. Serbia remained only as an Ottoman vassal province well into the nineteenth century when it was wholly reestablished as an self-governing state by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.<br />
<br />
Bosnia and Serbia have been separated by the River rina since Theodosius the Great deemed it so 395 A.D. boundary divided the Eastern and Western Roman Empires and was always the dividing line between East and West, Orthodoxy and Catholicism, Latin and Cyrillic. The Bosnian border, far from being a creation of Tito, is without doubt one of the oldest on earth.<br />
<br />
The expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century also had enormous effect on the size and character of Croatia. The Croatian lands of Bosnia and Hercegovina were absorbed by the Ottomans in 1463 and 1482, diminishing Croatia to a 16,000 square mile crescent defending Europe from the Turks. In 1699, the Habsburgs regained all of Croatia and Slavonia and colonized Germans and a substantial number of fleeing Serbs into Slavonia and Vojvodina. Upon the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna incorporated Illyria into Austria.<br />
Serbian Expansionism<br />
<br />
Even when still an Ottoman principality, Serbia gained territory in 1833 and 1878, bringing its size to some 18,500 square miles. The newly established Serbian state almost immediately began to covet its neighbors' lands and developed the official slogan "Serbia must expand or die!" Serbian expansionism was first directed toward the south into Macedonia and west toward the Adriatic through Bosnia and Hercegovina. In order to thwart Serbia's westward expansion, the Austrian protectorate of Bosnia-Hercegovina was annexed to the Empire in October 1908. As various European powers took sides supporting AustriaHungary or Serbia in diplomatic and military alliances, the groundwork was laid for confrontation and the eruption of what would come to be called the First World War.<br />
<br />
Denied Bosnia, Serbia turned to Macedonia, then a nart of the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan War of 1912 freed Macedonia from Turkey but led to a squabble over the spoils between the victors Bulgaria and Serbia. Aided by Greece and Romania, Serbia defeated Bulgaria and seized the lion's share of Macedonia and all of Kosova. Only the establishment of a new Albanian state prevented Serbia from reaching the Adriatic.<br />
<br />
Within the Habsburg Empire<br />
<br />
When the Croatians elected a Habsburg as their king in 1527, they did so with the understanding that the crown would honor the rights, statutes and customs of the Croatian Kingdom. While this principle was often violated by Hungary and Austria, Croatia maintained a great deal of autonomy and its ancient Sabor or Parliament and Ban or Viceroy. By 1914, the Croatians were on the verge of restoring their full political rights within the Empire.<br />
<br />
The heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was a progressive who envisioned a new Empire based upon elevated recognition of the Kingdom of Croatia. Many historians believe that Ferdinand envisaged replacing the "Dualism" of Austria-Hungary with the "Trialism" of Austria-Hungary-Croatia or even a federal system based upon the American or Swiss model under a single benevolent Emperor. The specter of such a Croatian state, perhaps encompassing Bosnia-Hercegovina, presented a significant threat to Serbia's vision of westward expansion and a "Greater Serbia." On Serbia's National Day, June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Serbian terrorist organization "Black Hand," assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. Princip was one of seven assassins sent by Colonel Dragutin "Apis" Dimitrijevid, Chief of lntelligence. Within weeks Europe was at war.<br />
<br />
Yugoslavia<br />
<br />
Serbia made no secret of its objectives in the War. As early as September 4, 1914, the Serbian government circulated a letter to all of its diplomatic missions calling the war an opportunity to establish "a strong southwest-Slav state [to] be created out of Serbia, in which all Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes would be included." Serbia was more than amenable to bargaining away Croatian lands to Italy in a secret annex to the Treaty of London in 1915 in order to fulfill the dream of a "Greater Serbia." Making use of the well intended but unelected Yugoslav Committee, Serbia with the support of the victorious Allies, annexed Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Slovenia and Montenegro in 1918 into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Contrary to popular myth, no consent either of the Croatian or Bosnian peoples or their representatives was ever granted to form Yugoslavia. To the Serbs, the new state was "Greater Serbia," with a Serbian king, ruling from the Serbian capital with Serbian laws.<br />
<br />
The borders of the Triune Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia- Dalmatia and those of Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1918 were roughly those that had been in place since 1848. In the north, Croatia acquired two small territories from Hungary, Medimurje and Baranja, but lost several coastal islands to Italy in negotiations between 1918 and 1920.<br />
<br />
When King Alexander proclaimed himself absolute dictator and changed the name of the country to Yugoslavia in 1929, he abolished the traditional borders and reorganized the country into nine banovinas (groups of countries), named after rivers and the prefecture of Belgrade. Croatia was partitioned into the 15,649 square mile Banovina of Savska, essentially Croatia proper and Slavonia, and the 7,587 square mile Banovina of Primorska, primarily Dalmatia. While some traditionally Bosnian territory was added to Primorska Banovina, the oil and mineral rich region of Srijem, Croatian since 1718, went to the Serbian Banovina of Dunavska.<br />
Banovina of Croatia<br />
<br />
From 1918 through 1938, Yugoslavia had thirty-five governments with a total of 656 ministers. Only twenty-six had been Croatians. The top-heavy Army had 161 generals. One, in charge of supply, was a Croatian. In the elections of December 1938, the Croatian Peasant Party and its leader Vladko Macek were defeated by a very close count of 1,364,524 to 1,643,783 for the royalist government. Given the fraud and terrorism common to all Yugoslav elections, it was apparent that the Peasant Party had won a stunning victory. Even government figures confirmed that over 650,000 Serbs had voted for Macek. Despite this, the Stojadinovic government refused to recognize the results or form a coalition government. Confronted with the threat of armed insurrection, Prince Paul sacked Stojadinovic and replaced him with Dragisa Cvetkovid. He was a former mayor of Nis and a person open to negotiation concerning the "Croatian Question." The result was the Sporazum or "Agreement" of August 26, 1939 which formed the semi-autonomous Banovina of Croatia covering 38,600 square miles with a population of almost four and one-half million, 80 per cent of whom were Croatian. The new Croatian Banovina was connected to Yugoslavia only in matters of defense, foreign relations and a common postal system. Its borders included all of the two previous Banovinas, portions of western Bosnia and a portion of western Hercegovina. Eastern Srijem and the strategic bay of Kotor with the southernmost tip of Dalmatia remained in Serbian hands.<br />
<br />
The Independent State of Croatia<br />
<br />
The formation of the Banovina of Croatia was a gesture that could have saved Yugoslavia in 1918, but coming only a week before the outbreak of World War II, it was simply too little, much too late. When Yugoslavia disintegrated at the first sign of German troops, a new Independent State of Croatia (NDH), was established on April 10, 1941. Its borders, which incorporated Bosnia-Hercegovina, were finalized by the Treaty of Rome on May 18. While Germany was willing to recognize the pre-1918 borders of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina in the new state, Italy demanded and received most of the Dalmatian coast and established an occupation zone comprising almost one third of the country. The NDH covered some 46,300 square miles with a population of 6,750,000. Internally the state was divided into 23 prefects or velike zupe which were further divided into 142 districts and cities. Although Italian Dalmatia technically reverted back to the NDH upon the fall of Italy in 1943, much of the region was in Partizan control for the remainder of War.<br />
<br />
The Second Yugoslavia<br />
<br />
Tens of thousands of Croatians fought and died in the Croatian Partizan brigades that began the Liberation War under Josip Tito on June 22, 1941. The Partizans promised a new Croatian Republic, with full rights and autonomy, within a new federated Yugoslavia.<br />
<br />
After the Partizan victory, a commission was instituted to determine the borders of the new Yugoslav state. That commission was headed by Milovan Djilas, a Serb from Montenegro, and included ministers from Serbia, Croatia and Vojvodina. In the west, Croatia recovered all of Italian Dalmatia, including Zadar and Istria. After years of negotiations, the border was finalized in 1954, with Croatia gaining most of Istria, the city of Zadar and those islands occupied by Italy between the World Wars. In the south, the commission gave Montenegro access to the sea by removing the port of Kotor and the surrounding districts from Croatia. In the north Croatia's border returned to its pre-war configuration with the inclusion of Medjimurje and Baranja which had been Hungarian prior to 1918 and which had been seized by Hungary during World War II.<br />
<br />
The borders of the Banovina of Croatia included a great deal of territory traditionally part of Bosnia-Hercegovina, including the cities of Travnik and Mostar. In 1945 the border was returned to 1918 boundaries with minor adjustments in the Bihac area where a number of Croatian villages were given to Bosnia-Hercegovina. But it was on the border with Serbia that Croatia would endure its greatest territorial loss in 1945. The oil and mineral rich eastern Srijem region, with the city of Zemun, Croatian territory since 1718, but partitioned by Alexander in 1929, was joined to Serbian Vojvodina. In the Serbian wars of aggression of 1991-1995, Serbia attempted to seize even more of eastern Slavonia while Croatia made no territorial claim to Srijem.<br />
The Republic of Croatia<br />
<br />
The Croatian people declared themselves to be free and independent on June 25, 1991. One year later, virtually the entire world had recognized Croatia within the borders designated in 1945. The overwhelming majority of Croatia's twelve hundred mile border is based upon ancient boundaries that Croatia brought with her into Yugoslavia in 1918. In those areas where the borders were changed, Serbia gained and Croatia lost. Despite this fundamental reality, the Republic of Croatia made no territorial claims against any other nation. Since 1813, Serbia and Serbia alone has constantly expanded in its quest of a "Greater Serbia" stretching from Bulgaria to the Adriatic Sea. It is a quest that has cost the lives of millions over the past century and one-half and caused the most brutal war in Europe since World War II. As in the previous wars of Serbian aggression, Serbia was rewarded for its brutality as one-half of Bosnia was given to Greater Serbia in 1995 through the Dayton partition.<br />
<br />
Serbia's Unquenchable Thirst<br />
<br />
Even with this prize, Serbia's unquenchable thirst for the lands of others was not satiated. After the Dayton partition was signed and sealed, "Yugoslavia" as "Greater Serbia" still called itself, laid claim to the tiny isthmus or prevlaka of Ogtra, a spit of land only 170 meters wide at the entry to the harbor of Boka, Montenegro. All of the harbor and the land around it was Croatian for centuries, but the harbor itself was given to Montenegro after World War II, and its Croatian population (a majority in 1945) was driven out. In 1996, just as in 1918, the so-called "Great Powers" could not comprehend why Croatia would want to keep its lands out of Serbian hands and urged "negotiations" to mediate the "dispute." Prevlaka was a part of the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) from the fifteenth century until 1808 and a part of Dalmatia since. In all of history, it was never a part of Montenegro or Serbia. But having stolen the Bay of Kotor in 1949 and driven out its majority Croatian population in the years following, the small peninsula was seen as a threat to the security of the natural harbor that is home to the "Yugoslav" Navy.<br />
<br />
The reality is that neither in the twentieth century nor in the past, has Serbia lost one square kilometer, on a map or on the ground, to Bosnia or Croatia. Serbia's dream of a "Greater Serbia" became a nightmare for the fourth time in the twentieth century. It is time for such myths about Croatian and Bosnian borders attempting to justify that nightmare to be put to rest.Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-22970772849837032492010-11-23T06:05:00.000-05:002010-11-23T06:05:06.736-05:00Croatia: Myth and Reality (19) - C. Michael McAdams - Myth: "There was no Retribution Against the Croatians"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOufzn8PhkI/AAAAAAAABaU/pFbxDDBALOg/s1600/DSC03819.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOufzn8PhkI/AAAAAAAABaU/pFbxDDBALOg/s200/DSC03819.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>CROATIA: MYTH AND REALITY<br />
<i>C. Michael McAdams</i><br />
<br />
MYTH: "THERE WAS NO RETRIBUTION AGAINST THE CROATIANS AFTER WORLD WAR II "<br />
<br />
Myth: Because Tito was a Croatian, no retribution was taken against Croatian officials, soldiers or civilians after World War II by the victorious communists.<br />
<br />
Reality: Thousands of Croatians were slaughtered immediately after the War; tens of thousands more were sent to prisons; government officials were executed, and those who escaped were tracked down and murdered in foreign lands well into the 1960s.<br />
<br />
That there was no retribution against the Croatians after World War II is not so much a myth as an outright attempt to falsify history. As is the case with several other myths, Serbian apologists gave new currency to this story in the world press during the Croatian war for independence of 1991-1995.<br />
<br />
Bleiburg<br />
<br />
Until the mid 1990s, the post-war massacres of Croatians were almost unknown outside the Croatian community. To many Croatians, the single word "Bleiburg" summarizes the pain endured by a nation, The Bleiburg-Maribor massacres were documented in such works as <i>Operation Slaughterhouse</i> by John Prcela and Stanko Guldescu, <i>In Tito's Death Marches and Extermination Camps</i> by Joseph Hecimovic, Operation Keelhaul by Julius Epstein, Bleiburg by Vinko Nikolic, and perhaps best known, <i>The Minister and the Massacres</i> by Count Nikolai Tolstoy. Tolstoy's account of how one British officer was implicated, so outraged the British authorities that Tolstoy was sued for millions and the book was banned. That these massacres occurred is irrefutable. Only the number of deaths and the depth of American and British duplicity are in question.<br />
<br />
The story of Bleiburg began in early 1945 as it became clear that Germany would lose the War. As the German Army retreated toward the Austrian border, the Red Army advanced, and the communists began their consolidation of power, anarchy prevailed in what was Yugoslavia. A dozen or more nationalist movements and ethnic militias attempted to salvage various parts of Yugoslavia. Most nationalists, Croatian, Slovenian, and Serbian alike, were anti-communist and all had visions of the Western Allies welcoming them into the coming battle against communism. Croatians especially cherished the totally unsupported notion that Anglo- American intervention would save an independent Croatian state, just as they did in 1989.<br />
<br />
As in every other part of eastern Europe, armies, governments and civilian populations began moving toward the Western lines. Some were pushed before the retreating Germans; others followed in their wake. Many traveled in small bands, armed or unarmed, while others were well organized into mass movements of people and equipment. Along the trek north they fought the Partizans and each other. Many surrendered; others fought to the death.<br />
Retreat from Zagreb<br />
<br />
The retreating German Army, usually without bothering to inform its erstwhile allies, took with it much of the material support for the Croatian armed forces. Despite conditions, several Croatian generals wanted to defend the city of Zagreb from the Partizan advance and fight to the finish if necessary. The communists made it clear that the city, swollen to twice its size with refugees, would be destroyed if they met resistance. A final meeting of the Croatian government was held on April 30, 1945, at which the decision was made to abandon Zagreb and retreat into Austria.<br />
<br />
Still quite naive concerning Allied intentions, many Croatian officers hoped that the still sizable Croatian Army would be allowed to surrender to the British to fight again against the Russians. Since both Croatia and Britain were signatories to the Geneva Conventions, the Croatians felt that at worst they would be treated as prisoners of war.<br />
<br />
The exodus from Zagreb began on May first. Two hundred thousand civilians were flanked by two hundred thousand soldiers. Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac took charge of the government for the few hours until the arrival of the Partizan army. Minister Vrancic was dispatched to Italy as a peace emissary, and several highranking English speaking officers headed the main column toward Austria.<br />
<br />
The retreat was well ordered, and the protecting flank armies insured that all of the civilians arnved safely at the Austrian border by May seventh. A number of military units remained behind to fight delaying actions as late as May twelfth. Still other units, known as Krizari or "Crusaders," fled into the hills and fought sporadic guerilla actions until 1948.<br />
<br />
The huge column, numbering perhaps as many as one- half million soldiers and civilians, including Slovenes, some Serbs and even a few Cetniks, finally came to rest in a small valley near the Austrian village of Bleiburg. The leaders had no way of knowing that their peace emissary, Dr. Vrancic, had traveled as far as Forli, Italy, by plane and car under a white flag only to be stopped short of his goal. At Forli, Vrancic and Naval Captain Vrkljan, who spoke fluent English, were detained by a Captain Douglas of British Field Security who was more interested in their diplomatic grade Mercedes-Benz automobile than their mission to see Field Marshal Alexander in Caserta. He held the emissaries incommunicado until May 20 when he pad them thrown into a POW camp and confiscated the and Betraya in the belief that their envoys had made some engagement with the British, the multitude of humanity set up camp in the valley to await the outcome of negotiations. One of the first groups to arrive at British headquarters was a contingent of 130 members of the Croatian government headed by President Nikola Mandic. All were told that they would be transferred to Italy as soon as possible by British Military Police. All were then loaded onto a train and returned to the communists for execution. It was the intent of the British to turn over all Croatians, as well as Serbs and Slovenes, to the communists from whom they had fled.<br />
<br />
When the Croatian military leaders realized that they had led hundreds of thousands into a trap, some committed suicide on the spot. The British extradited at first hundreds, then thousands of Croatians. Some were shot at the border, while others joined the infamous "Death Marches," which took them deeper into the new People's Republic for liquidation.<br />
<br />
Realizing the importance of the clergy to the Croatian people, most church leaders were arrested. Although Archbishop Stepinac was sentenced to death, he was saved by a massive outcry of world public opinion and died, probably of poisoning by the secret police, under house arrest in 1960. Two bishops, three hundred priests, twenty-nine seminarians and four lay brothers were less fortunate and were executed.<br />
<br />
The number of Muslim religious leaders executed has never been determined, although the figure is thought to be in excess of six hundred. Churches and mosques were closed or destroyed throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The new government dynamited the minarets around the mosque of Zagreb, turned the building into a museum glorifying the communist victory, and renamed the square in which it stood "Victims of Fascism Square." One of the first acts of the Croatian government in 1991 was to rename the plaza.<br />
<br />
Almost every government official from the President to local postmasters, every military officer above the rank of major, and virtually every Ustase officer, regardless of rank, was found guilty of "crimes against the people." Many were executed. Enlisted members of the Ustase were often found guilty <i>en masse</i> and sent to concentration camps where many died. All top ranking members of the government were executed. Chief-of-state Ante Pavelic escaped only to be gunned down by an assassin in 1957. Even the memory of those anti-Partizans who had died in combat during the war would disappear as every non- Partizan military cemetery in Croatia was plowed under. In 1996 Croatian President Franjo Tudjman suggested that a memorial to those who were slaughtered after the war be dedicated at Jasenovac. This was the site of a concentration camp run during the War by the Ustases, and after the war by the communists, where a huge memorial was erected to the "Victims of Fascism." The suggestion was met with an outcry in the international media. Far from being a gesture of reconciliation among the Croatian people, as Tudjman intended, it was seen as an affront to those already memorialized.<br />
<br />
Denial and Discovery<br />
<br />
The total number of people liquidated may never be known, but figures of one hundred to one hundred and eighty thousand have been voiced by some, up to onequarter of a million by others. Despite the scholarship and masses of documents proving the contrary, the Yugoslav government denied that the Bleiburg-Maribor massacres or any subsequent liquidation of anti-communists occurred. As late as 1976, special teams were active in Slovenia and southern Austria covering up evidence of the crimes. The American and British governments, implicated in the forced repatriation that led to the slaughter, also sought to cover-up or at least ignore the crimes. With the departure of the communist regime in 1990, the truth began to come to light. In caverns in Slovenia and Croatia, researchers using spelunker's equipment descended into the mass graves long before sealed. They found layer upon layer of human bones, crutches, rope, and wire used to bind the victims. Many of the skulls had a single bullet hole in the back. Estimates ranged from 5,000 victims in one cave to as many as 40,000 in another. When news was made public, other mass graves were reported throughout Croatia and Slovenia. No one had ever spoken publicly of them before.<br />
<br />
In 1990 the Croatian Parliament formed a commission which included foreign experts to determine, for the first time, the full extent of the post-war massacres. In May of 1994, an international symposium was held in Zagreb to explore the Bleiburg Massacres, and in May of 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of Bleiburg, scholars from around the world gathered again in Zagreb and at Bleiburg to set about the formal process of determining how many perished. Since every marked grave was destroyed; it presented a difficult undertaking requiring years of grizzly exploration and detailed research.<br />
<br />
In 1996, the world's attention turned to more recent war crimes as new mass graves were found throughout Bosnia and Croatia and the Bleiburg massacres were again relegated to history in the Western press. The crimes of 1945, like those of 1995, will no doubt go unpunished. Whatever the final result, it will never again be said that Croatia did not suffer in post-war Yugoslavia.Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-91247002813607999602010-11-23T05:51:00.000-05:002010-11-23T05:51:44.216-05:00Croatia: Myth and Reality (18) - C. Michael McAdams - Myth: "The Croatians Executed Dozens of American Airmen"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOucmZZYQiI/AAAAAAAABaQ/SDJJVeDoHTk/s1600/DSC03816.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOucmZZYQiI/AAAAAAAABaQ/SDJJVeDoHTk/s200/DSC03816.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>CROATIA: MYTH AND REALITY<br />
<i>C. Michael McAdams</i><br />
MYTH: "THE CROATIANS EXECUTED DOZENS OF AMERICAN AIRMEN"<br />
<br />
Myth: The Croatian government during World War II had a policy of executing downed Allied airmen and dozens of Americans were executed by the Croatians during the War.<br />
<br />
Reality: The wartime NDH Croatian government, signatory to the Geneva Conventions, had no policy of executing captured airmen of any nationality. No American airman was executed by the NDH Croatian government during World War II. There is considerable evidence that Allied prisoners of war in Croatia were very well treated in captivity. As many as 1600 American airmen were rescued by Croatian and Bosnian Partizans and returned to service. Almost unique among myths, it is possible to actually trace the origin of this story back to its source; "the Balkan Intelligence Chief."<br />
<br />
Reader's Digest<br />
<br />
At INS headquarters in Los Angeles, kept under lock and key and marked "secret" is the file of Andrija Artukovic....According to the testimony of one American Intelligence chief in the Balkans section during the Second World War, he also approved orders that sent dozens of American pilots to firing squads<br />
<br />
The preceding quotation made its international debut in the December 1973 issue of Reader's Digest magazine. No author or source was given. Like most myths, it took on a life of its own and more recent versions have added the "official policy of the Croatian government."<br />
<br />
When asked to name the "American Intelligence chief' or cite their sources, the editors of Reader's Digest first claimed that the article had been "carefully checked by our research and legal departments and we believe they found adequate support for a.ll the factual statements." Despite hundreds of requests from scholars, political leaders, the media-watch organization Accuracy in Media, and others, the magazine was never able to produce the name of the intelligence officer or any evidence that a single American was executed by the Croatian NDH government during the War.<br />
<br />
By April of 1974, Reader's Digest began refernng all inquires to their legal department. Finally on March 25, 1974 the editors, responding to a formal request by California State Assemblyman Doug Carter, admitted that the charges were "claims and allegations, not necessarily fully documented facts."<br />
The "Balkan Intelligence Chief"<br />
<br />
The myth did not originate with the Reader's Digest in 1973. The identity of the "Balkan Intelligence Chief" can be traced back to the June 26, 1958 edition of a small California newspaper, the Palos Verdes News when John J. Knezevich, its Serbian-American publisher wrote:<br />
<br />
During the last war, I was head of the Balkin (sic) section of the United States Army and Navy Joint Intelligence Collection Agency...I know whereof I am speaking."<br />
<br />
Knezevich went on to accuse World War II Croatian cabinet minister Artukovic of no fewer than 740,000 deaths, including the deaths of "dozens of American pilots." This was not Knezevich's first article on the subject. He had made the charges in his newspaper as early as May 17, 1951. Whether Mr. Knezevich held any post with the intelligence community during World War II is not known. However, it seems implausible that a Chief of Balkan intelligence would have consistently misspelled the word "Balkin" in all of his writings. What is known about Knezevich is that he was active in several Serbian organizations in southern California and was active in a number of anti-Croatian and anti-Catholic movements of the 1950s. His newspaper column "Review of Events" was a regular front-page feature, often filled with anti- Tito, anti-communist, antiCroatian, and anti-Catholic propaganda.<br />
<br />
Knezevich is first mentioned in the extradition case of Andrija Artukovic, a wartime Croatian cabinet minister wanted by communist Yugoslavia for crimes against the state. On May 8, 1951, Knezevich asked to appear in camera before the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Examiner. He presented "confidential" information that he had seen documents signed by Artukovic ordering the execution of dozens of pilots. Under examination however, Knezevich refused to state whether he had ever been anywhere in the Balkans during the War; what he had done, if anything, in the military; and generally refused to answer direct questions.<br />
<br />
The INS Examiner discounted his testimony and none of it was ever presented. Nor was the charge concerning American pilots ever mentioned in any future proceedings in the United States or Yugoslavia from 1951 until 1986. Obviously, the American and Yugoslav governments would not have passed up such an important witness or such a charge had they found the slightest shred of evidence to support his story.<br />
<br />
Knezevich penned the final chapter of the story on July 24, 1958, when he listed all of the charges that he had made against Artukovic, including the execution of American pilots. He wrote: "Inasmuch as neither the writer or publisher are in a position to prove independently the truth or falsity of these assertions, they are all and singularly retracted. (signed) Palos Verdes News John J. Knezevich." Knezevich died in 1965.<br />
The Airmen and the Baroness<br />
<br />
Learning the realities of the fate of American airmen in Croatia during World War II proved even more interesting than uncovering the source of the mythology. Between the years of 1973 and 1979, this author undertook primary and secondary research into the subject which resulted in a monograph titled Allied Prisoners of War in Croatia 19411945. Fewer than one hundred airmen, American, British, Russian, South African, and Partizan, were held by the Croatian government during the War. The myth that "dozens" or twenty-five per cent, were executed was significant.<br />
<br />
Over several years, the author was able to locate ten Americans who had been prisoners-of-war in Croatia. They were interviewed and surveyed, as were guards, the American-born priest who celebrated Mass, and others who were present at the estate of the Baroness Nikolic which served as the prisoner-of-war "camp" on the outskirts of Zagreb.<br />
<br />
It was learned that the estate at 203 Pantovcak in Zagreb had no fence. Visitors were welcomed and some prisoners visited a nearby tavern until German soldiers visited the same establishment. Prisoners- of-war had a radio and listened to U.S. Armed Forces radio, and the camp tennis champion was Frank Ryan of Sommerville, New Jersey. Ironically the same site was fenced and well guarded during the 1991-1995 war as the official office of the president of Croatia. Baroness Nikolic considered the airmen her guests and afforded them the best treatment and food available given the wartime conditions, including a generous wine ration. Several prisoners worked in the villa's vineyards records were kept of all such work so that they could be paid after the war as provided for by Geneva Conventions. Given the chaotic state at the end of the war, the sirmen were given vouchers instead of cash. One former prisoner, a guest of honor at a Los Angeles Croatian Day celebration in 1979, still had his voucher and vowed to cash it in when Croatia became independent.<br />
<br />
Often the Croatian Red Cross provided the airmen such luxuries as chocolate and cigarettes that were unavailable to the average Croatian soldier. While wounded or ill Croatian soldiers could expect little more than meager supplies in field first aid stations, American flyers were treated at Zagreb's finest hospital and there is photographic evidence of visits to them by Croatian Chief of State Pavelic and other officials.<br />
Americans Helping Croatians<br />
<br />
In early 1945 an attempt was made to evacuate American pilots from what was soon to be a war zone. Croatian Air Force General Rubcic saw to it that twelve American pilots were trained in the use of Croatian planes, which tepresented the last hope for the air defense of Croatia's capital. After familiarization on the collection of German, Italian, French, and British manufactured aircraft, fourteen Americans and one Croatian liaison officer flew to Italy. There they tried to convince American forces to land on the Dalmatian coast and meet the Red Army at the Drina tiver.<br />
<br />
In 1943, Croatian Lt. Colonel Ivan Babic had flown a similar mission to American occupied Italy to suggest to the Americans that such an invasion would meet no resistance and that the Croatian Army would even establish a beachhead for them. The American command knew that the Dalmatian coast was Hitler's great weakness and that such an attack could split the German armies. Neither the Croatian nor American commanders knew that Yugoslavia had been designated as within the Soviet sphere. Allied forces continued to fight and die moving up the boot of Italy. Babic, working secretly for the Croatian Peasant Party, was thrown into a British prison for his efforts.<br />
<br />
Other Americans offered their services to the Croatians in order to try to save Croatian troops from the communists. Lt. Edward J. Benkoski, pilot of the P-38 fighter "Butch," joined Englishman Rodney Woods and John Gray, a Scot, in attempting to negotiate for the Croatians in May 1945. Another American officer accompanied Croatian officials to negotiations at Bleiburg, Austria, at the end of the war to keep Croatians from being returned to certain death in Yugoslavia. They failed. The Americanborn priest Theodore Benkovic who often celebrated Mass for the airmen wrote:<br />
<br />
Despite constant American bombings, the Croatians bore no hatred toward the Americans, for in a fatalistic way they held it to be necessary. I saw my countrymen held captive in Mostar, how the people treated them well, even offering the American flyers the few cigarettes they possessed; how they begged me to make known to my countrymen of their hope of liberation by the Americans. None of the airmen interviewed or surveyed recalled any instance of mistreatment and some provided documentary and photographic evidence of very close personal relationships with Croatian officers and members of the Croatian Red Cross. The study failed to find the name of any Allied prisoner-of-war who was executed and found no "official policy" of executing airmen. Some airmen did recall that they were warned in pre- flight briefings that they would be executed if captured by the Croatians. That information was supplied by Mihailovic's Cetnik who were paid in gold for each airman returned to the Allies.<br />
<br />
In January 1966, the Baroness Nikolic visited the United States to attend a showing of her art works. Several of her former "prisoners" welcomed her to Cleveland. One, Gene Keck of Washta, Iowa, traveled nine hundred miles by bus to see her again. "She's my second mother...I was her baby when we were on her estate in Zagreb." Often the mythology is diametrically opposite of the reality.Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-4260434474974023232010-11-23T05:30:00.001-05:002010-11-23T05:32:27.494-05:00Croatia: Myth and Reality (17) - C. Michael McAdams - Myth: "Two Million Serbs Died"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOuXwzcV0BI/AAAAAAAABaM/HbN2_EtcRjE/s1600/DSC03807.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOuXwzcV0BI/AAAAAAAABaM/HbN2_EtcRjE/s200/DSC03807.JPG" width="150" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">CROATIA: MYTH AND REALITY<br />
<i>C. Michael McAdams</i><br />
MYTH: "TWO MILLION SERBS DIED"<br />
<br />
Myth: Between 500,000 and 2,000,000 Serbs were n dered by the Croatian government during World War II.<br />
<br />
Reality: The exact number of war victims in Yugoslavia during World War II may never be known due to fifty years of intentional disinformation by the Yugoslavian and Serbian governments, Serbian exile groups, and others. However, it is likely that approximately one million people of all nationalities died of war-related causes in all of Yugoslavia during World War II and that as many as 125,000 Serbs died of war-related causes in Croatia during the War.<br />
<br />
The question of war losses during World War II represented the most divisive, heated and emotional issue among all of the nationalities of the former Yugoslavia during the post-War period. The bloody multi-sided war in Yugoslavia involved the German, Italian, Ustase, Partizan, Domobran, White Guard, Slovenian Guard and at least four different Cetnik armies. The multifaceted war pitted Serbs against Serbs, Croatians against Croatians, Serbs against Croatians, and Serbian Orthodox against Catholics and Muslims. The loss of life was heavy and difficult to document. As the war progressed, and even long after the war ended, the mythology of the numbers of victims continued to grow.<br />
<br />
Growing Numbers<br />
<br />
On the question of the number of Serbs killed in Croatia, it became possible to simply pick a number and virtually any press medium in the world would publish the figure without question. In one sixty day period in late 1991, David Martin put the number at 500,000 in the New York Times; Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic at 750,000 in USA Today; Josif Djordjevich at 1,200,000 in the San Francisco Chronicle; Teddy Preuss at 1,500,000 in the Jerusalem Post; and, setting an all-time record, Peter Lennings' ABC News program set the figure at a record 2,000,000. Further, each of the sources added a separate twist to the number. For some, the number represented total "killed," for others "murdered," others "murdered in concentration camps," and still others did not define how the losses occurred. None listed any source for the figures.<br />
<br />
To illustrate the magnitude of these charges, it would require killing one person every 90 seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the entire duration of the War to reach Mr. Preuss figure of 1,500,000. The fact is one million people did not die in Croatia from all causes during the War. Many scholars doubt that there were a million lives lost to war-related causes in all of Yugoslavia during World War II.<br />
<br />
Yet this mythology runs deeper than virtually any other. As early as April 1942, only twelve months into the war, the Serbian Urthodox Church in America, based upon Mihailovic's reports, claimed that over one million Serbs had already been killed in Croatia. As the war progressed, the numbers continued to grow in the Serbian press until actually exceeding the number of Serbs in Croatia. It must be noted that, just as in the wars of 1991-1995, no Croatian or Bosnian troops set foot in Serbia during World War II. Thus all accounting of Serbian losses must be for those living in Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina.<br />
<br />
Post-War Accountability<br />
<br />
After World War II, the Communist Yugoslav government set the total demographic losses for all of Yugoslavia from all causes at 1,700,000. The figure was never verified and was contradicted by demographic data comparisons between the Yugoslav census of 1931 and 1948. Nevertheless, this figure, which included natural mortality and decreased birth rate, was presented to the West German government for war reparations.<br />
<br />
At the same time, the Belgrade media began circulation of the figure 750,000 Jews, Gypsies and Serbs killed in Croatia during the War. By 1958 the number 750,000 was used to describe losses at a single camp, Jasenovac. Such high numbers were used not only to gain additional war reparations from Germany, but also to legitimatize the communist government's role in saving the peoples of Yugoslavia from the horrors of nationalism.<br />
<br />
Germany refused to accept the 1.7 million figure and demanded documentation. On June 10, 1964, the Yugoslav government secretly ordered that for the first time the exact statistics regarding war victims be assembled. The task was completed in the Socialist Republic of Croatia by the Center for the Scientific Documentation of the Institute for the History of the Workers' Movement in Zagreb. By early November, the data had been collected and were sent to the Federal Institute for Statistics in Belgrade.<br />
<br />
When the data were tabulated, excluding Axis forces, the actual figure was 597,323 deaths for all of Yugoslavia. Of these, 346,740 were Serbians and 83,257 were Croatians. These figures excluded the deaths of any person who died fighting for the Cetnik, Ustase, regular Croatian Army, Slovenian Home Guards or who served in the German or Italian Armies. The government returned the data for retabulation, and the figures were confirmed and provided to Germany.<br />
<br />
Data Made Public<br />
<br />
In July of 1969, Bruno Busic, an associate at the Center for Scientific Documentation, published data from the 1964 study showing that 185,327 people were thought to have died of all causes in Croatia during the War and that 64,245 may have died in German or Croatian prisons or concentration camps. In September of that year the maga zine that published the data was banned and Busic was arrested in 1971. After serving two years in prison, he escaped to Paris where he wrote several monographs on political prisoners in Croatia. He was murdered in Paris in October 1978 by the Yugoslav Secret Police (UDBa).<br />
<br />
In 1985, the Serbian scholar Bogoljub Kocovic published a major scholarly research work which put the figure for total demographic losses in all of Yugoslavia at 1,985,000 of which 971,000 were war- related. Of these 487,000 were Serbs killed anywhere in Yugoslavia by any side including Germans, Italians, Croatians, Albanians, Hungarians, Soviets, American bombing or by other Serbs. Kocovic concluded that some 125,000 Serbs and 124,000 Croatians died in Croatia during World War II. Kocovic also noted what many previous demographers had ignored. The first post-war census was taken in 1948 and he wrote: "it is fully justified to take into account these post- war victims of communist terror," in reference to the thousands of Croatians slaughtered in late 1945 and 1946 in what have come to be called the Bleiburg Massacres.<br />
<br />
In 1989 The Yugoslav Victimological Society and the Zagreb Jewish Community published what is now considered the definitive work by Vladimir Zerjavic which set total war losses at 1,027,000 of which 530,000 were Serbs and 192,000 Croatians. 131,000 Serbs and 106,000 Croatians were listed as having died of all war-related causes in Croatia.<br />
The Myth Grows On<br />
<br />
Regardless of which scholarly study is consulted, no study has ever reached the figures so casually thrown about in the media. And despite all scholarlv evidence to the con trary, in 1996 the Serbian Ministry of Information in Belgrade continued to claim that 600,000 Serbs were killed and the President of Serbia claimed 750,000 were killed by the Croatians during World War II. The Western media, unfettered by any need for factual documentation, not only published these numbers, but, as in the case of ABC News, increased them by over one million victims.<br />
<br />
The Serbian scholar Bogoljub Kocovic best summarized the dilemma of those who would dare to seek the truth in this complex and volatile history:<br />
<br />
Very soon it dawned upon me that the major obstacle to my work would be the myths created over four decades about the number of victims; myths by now deeply implanted in the soul of the people of all religions, political beliefs and nationality; myths which, by repetition became a "reality". There will be many who will reject my study because it does not conform to their beliefs... Many of them are looking for spiritual food to ignite their hatred of the Croats.<br />
</span>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-54301332760692588212010-11-23T04:58:00.000-05:002010-11-23T04:58:09.080-05:00Mirza Dzomba and Goran Sprem to play for the World All Star team in New York City<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="The Big Apple 2011 - Team Handball Tournament" height="141" src="http://evbdn.eventbrite.com/s3-s3/eventlogos/5377859/784283814-4.jpg" width="200" /></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px;"><div><br />
</div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Dear Crown Croatian World Network,</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">My name is Shkumbin Mustafa, and I am the president of New York City Team Handball Club.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">I wanted to let you know that our handball club is organizing the second consecutive international team handball tournament this upcoming January 1-2, 2011 in New York City, where two world class athletes from Croatia are participating.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Mirza Dzomba and Goran Sprem are going to play for the World All Star team, together with Jackson Richardson, and Magnus Wislander among many other legendary handball faces.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Mirza and Goran have won both World and Olympic gold with the national team of Croatia. They are two of the most successful handball players to come from Croatia.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">I thought this could be something your would be interested, and an opportunity to notify the Croatian community about this event.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Below this e-mail I am attaching few links about the event. The event is for FREE, (get tickets here<a href="" style="color: #0000cc;">http://handballbigapple2011.<wbr></wbr>eventbrite.com/?ref=ecount</a>) we just ask people to give as little as $5 at the door to help start a Youth team handball center in NYC. We also have VIP tickets. Only 60 VIP seats that cost $50 a piece. Each VIP get a small promo bag with a t-shirt, and few little things, and get a chance to sit behind the players bench.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at anytime.</span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">Thank you,<br />
Shkumbin Mustafa<br />
203-993-7652<br />
<a href="http://www.newyorkcityteamhandball.com/" style="color: #0000cc;" target="_blank">www.newyorkcityteamhandball.<wbr></wbr>com</a></span></div><div> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><a href="" style="color: #0000cc;">http://www.prweb.com/releases/<wbr></wbr>2010/10/prweb4724684.htm</a><br />
<a href="" style="color: #0000cc;">http://germanyinnyc.org/index.<wbr></wbr>php?section=catevent&cat_evt_<wbr></wbr>id=1665&cat_id=3</a><br />
<a href="" style="color: #0000cc;">http://events.nydailynews.com/<wbr></wbr>manhattan-ny/events/show/<wbr></wbr>151473925-the-big-apple-2011-<wbr></wbr>team-handball-tournament</a><br />
<a href="" style="color: #0000cc;">http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/<wbr></wbr>20101031/bs_prweb/prweb4724684</a><br />
<a href="" style="color: #0000cc;">http://handballbigapple2011.<wbr></wbr>eventbrite.com/?ref=ecount</a><br />
<a href="" style="color: #0000cc;">http://www.<wbr></wbr>newyorkcityteamhandball.com/<wbr></wbr>home.php</a></span></div><div> </div></span></span>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-45798101274667757402010-11-23T04:49:00.001-05:002010-11-23T05:32:03.132-05:00Croatia: Myth and Reality (16) - C. Michael McAdams - Myth: "The Basket of Human Eyeballs"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOuOCNIHnkI/AAAAAAAABaI/q3PgApcIXBA/s1600/camisa4b.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MdakPLzVHVo/TOuOCNIHnkI/AAAAAAAABaI/q3PgApcIXBA/s200/camisa4b.JPG" width="145" /></a></div>CROATIA: MYTH AND REALITY<br />
<i>C. Michael McAdams</i><br />
MYTH: "THE BASKET OF HUMAN EYEBALLS"<br />
<br />
Myth: The Croatian wartime Chief-of-State Ante Pavelic routinely maintained a basket containing twenty kilos of human eyeballs at his desk side.<br />
<br />
Reality: This statement is literally a work of fiction taken from the novel Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte (Kurt Suckert, also known as Gianni Strozzi). The book was written as fiction, sold as fiction, and is cataloged in every library in the world as fiction. To cite Kaputt as a source about World War II is analogous to citing Gone With the Wind as an authoritative history of the American Civil War.<br />
<br />
That this tired tale is still being retold is the second most amazing part of this myth. More amazing is that anybody, no matter how blinding their hatred of Croatians, could believe it. And yet this myth was quoted as fact as recently as 1995 in official publications printed in Belgrade by the Ministry of Information of the Republic of Serbia and repeated by naive journalists around the world. The myth survived and was given renewed life by the Serbian government, journalists and politicians because it came with quotation marks. The legend had a footnote, a citation, an author and all the trappings of fact. The author was often cited as "the most famous Italian writer," "the Italian journalist" and even the "famed Italian historian", Curzio Malaparte. His famous quote from the 1946 English translation of the novel Kaputt reads:<br />
<br />
While he spoke, I gazed at a wicker basket on the Poglavnik's desk. The lid was raised and the basket seemed to be filled with mussels, or shelled oysters --as they are occasionally displayed in the windows ''of Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly in London.<br />
<br />
Castertano looked at me and winked, "Would you like a nice oyster stew?"<br />
<br />
"Are they Dalmatian oysters?" I asked the Poglavnik.<br />
<br />
Ante Pavelic removed the lid from the basket and revealed the mussels, that slimy and jelly-like mass, and he said smiling, with that tired good-natured smile of his, "It is a present from my loyal usatshis. Forty pounds of human eyes."<br />
<br />
Kaputt and its author both had fascinating stories to tell. In the original press release for the book, Malaparte ed that the manuscript was started in the Ukraine in 1941 and smuggled throughout Europe in coat linings and in the soles of his shoes. Finally, the manuscript was divided into three parts and given to three diplomats, to be reunited in 1943 on Capri where it was finished. The book chronicled Malaparte's movements around Europe in 1941 and 1942, when he claimed to have visited every front and knew every head of state, usually on a; first name basis. Malaparte apparently spoke every language and shared the charms of every beautiful princess.<br />
<br />
According to his own preface to Kaputt, his personal friendships with Mussolini, Hitler and others did not save him from being thrown into jail in July 1943 as antiGerman. Miraculously, he was soon freed and was working for the Allies by September of that year. It was while working as a propagandist for the Allies that Malaparte conipleted Kaputt, which he described as "...horribly gay and gruesome."<br />
<br />
The critics agreed. Malaparte's two major books, Kaputt and Skin were 5 labeled "Best selling Nausea" by Time magazine. His writings contained pages of sordid tales about the evil world of Fascist Europe. Malaparte's basket of human eyeballs must be taken in context, as Time magazine wrote in 1952:<br />
<br />
"He shows mothers who sell their children into prostitution; but then, says Malaparte with a smirk, there are also the children who would gladly sell their mothers. He dwells for part of a chapter on a street peopled with twisted female dwarfs, who fed, he asserts gleefully, on the unnatural lust in the American ranks. Another chapter is concerned with a visit to a shop that sells blonde pubic wigs. U.S. soldiers, Malaparte explains, like blondes."<br />
<br />
These offensive themes only scratch the surface of Malaparte's sick writings. That the Allies won the War through the devices of a "homosexual maquis", flags of human skin, and an Allied general who served his guests a boiled child are all included in Malaparte's fare.<br />
<br />
Suckert-Malaparte-Strozzi<br />
<br />
"Malaparte" himself was an enigma. He was born Kurt Ench Suckert in 1898 in Prato, Italy, of Austrian, Russian and Italian descent. He attended the Collegio Cicognini and the University of Rome. He joined the Fascists at an early age and soon became the darling of the Fascist Propaganda Ministry where he wrote glowing volumes and even a work of poetry in praise of Mussolini. He served as a journalist for Corriere della Sera and travelled to Ethiopia in 1939. What happened after that depends upon which "Malaparte" is read. The world-travelling statesman fictionalized in his novels spent the war years in almost constant meetings with the likes of Mussolini, Count Ciano, Ante Pavelic, and the rich and powerful of Europe. Interestingly, Pavelic's name was misspelled Pavelic in all of his writings.<br />
<br />
Later, Malaparte claimed to have been one of "three Italian officers who organized the Italian Army of Liberation which fought for the Allies." After the fall of Mussolini he began writing under the name Gianni Strozzi for the communist daily L'Unita. That year he applied for, but was refused, Communist Party membership. Still later, he went to work for the Allied Fifth Army Headquarters as a minor liaison officer.<br />
<br />
Just as he had served the Fascists and the communists, Malaparte sought to ingratiate himself with his new masters. "The American Army is the kindest army in the world....I like Americans...and I proved it a hundred times during the war...their souls are pure, much purer than ours," Malaparte gushed.<br />
<br />
In November of 1952 a far different Malaparte wrote that, in fact, he had fallen out with Mussolini in 1934. Not only did he never meet most of the great leaders he wrote about, he admitted: "In 1938 I still remained under police control and was put in prison as a preventative measure every time a Nazi chief visited Rome...and from 1933 until the liberation, I was deprived of a passport..." Once called "Fascism's Strongest Pen," Malaparte angered Hitler with a book written in 1931 about the techniques of the coup d' etat. He was jailed by Mussolini from 1933 to 1938 and kept on a very short leash for the remainder of the Fascist era. The Italian Defense Ministry did confirm that he once served as a liaison officer to the Allies, but flatly denied that he had anything to do with organizing Italy's Army of Liberation.<br />
<br />
A prolific author of short stories and fictionalized accounts of Fascist victories, Suckert-Malaparte- Strozzi did interview Ante Pavelic during the War. The interview recounted in Kaputt, in Pavelic's office, was recorded on film. There is no basket to be seen or any conversation regarding a basket. After the War, Malaparte continued to write, as well as direct and produce movies, and was active in the Communist Party. In the Spring of 1957, the Party sent him on a comradely visit to China. Shortly after his return, he died on July 19, 1957.<br />
<br />
An enigma to the end, the viciously anti-Catholic Malaparte renounced communism and converted to Catholicism on his death bed. Later, Malaparte's friend and fellow journalist Victor Alexandrov let it be known that Malaparte had admitted the story of the basket of human eyeballs was fiction. Thus Curzio Malaparte and his unpleasant fiction were relegated to the dust bin of literary story in all of the world except Belgrade.Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-482944384959232941.post-61594133407109394252010-11-22T20:18:00.000-05:002010-11-22T20:18:11.603-05:00Sanne Kurz - Cinematographer - New Years Eve or Xmas in Europe?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #888888; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Sans',verdana,arial,helvetica; font-size: 11px; text-align: left;"><h2 class="post-titulo" id="post-410" style="color: #acb200; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 2px;"><a href="http://sannekurz.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/sanne-mir-kamera-crop-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://sannekurz.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/sanne-mir-kamera-crop-2.jpg" /></a><a href="http://sannekurz.com/2010/11/08/new-years-eve-or-xmas-in-europe/" rel="bookmark" style="color: #63b4cd; text-decoration: none;" title="Permanent link to New Years Eve or Xmas in Europe?">New Years Eve or Xmas in Europe?</a></h2><div class="postmeta" style="color: #999999; font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding-top: 1px;">November 8, 2010 at 20:49 · Filed under<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/documentary/" rel="category tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" title="View all posts in documentary">documentary</a>and tagged:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/35mm/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">35mm</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/documentary/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">documentary</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/exhibition/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">exhibition</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/film/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">film</a>,<a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/israel/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">Israel</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/movie/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">movie</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/munich/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">Munich</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/trailer/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">trailer</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/wim-wenders/" rel="tag" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;">Wim Wenders</a></div><div class="postentry"><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 1.2em 0px;"><span style="color: #888888;">…come visit the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.pinakothek.de/pinakothek-der-moderne/" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Himmelfilm @Pinakothek der Moderne Munich">Pinakothek der Moderne Munich</a>, where Himmelfilm will screen in the exhibition Documentary Film in the 21st Century till 20.2.2011. Inspired by a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://sannekurz.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/begin-and-end/" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Himmelfilm - song that inspired the making of this movie">song of British band The Orb</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong>Himmelfilm</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>has been shot a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong>few weeks after 9/11 in Israel</strong>. Having a large bag of collected sounds, universal memories of people such as<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://samcoley.com/?page_id=820" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Himmelfilm - Dick Ross who was a child in New Zealand about documentary film making">Dick Ross</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.mariemiyayama.de/marie_miyayama_filmmaker/HOME.html" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Himmelfilm - with filmmaker Marie Miyayama">Marie Miyayama</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.wim-wenders.com/bio/wim_wenders_bio.htm" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Himmelfilm - with Wim Wenders">Wim Wenders</a>,<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1389025/" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Himmelfilm - with Byambasuuren Davaa">Byambasuuren Davaa</a>, Hussam Chaddat, Yossi Tzafrir,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/9630/1/Mirna-Brkanovic-working-on-her-debut-film.html" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Himmelfilm - Mirna Brkanovic latest works">Mirna Brkanovic,</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Luigi Falorni and many others in our luggage, we tried hard reflecting on what skies were like when people were young. News blaring every single day news from Iran, Irak and Afghanistan,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong>war in the air</strong>, gas-masks beeing handed out, “Der Himmel war ein Feind für mich” – as Mirna Brankovich states in the movie.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 1.2em 0px;"><span style="color: #888888;">Carrying a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong>small baby of two months</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>with us through the desert,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong>Himmelfilm</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>has been made by Jiska Rickels (dir) and Sanne Kurz (co-dir, cinematographer). Marion Neumann (1st AC) and Yuval Tzafrir (editor) helped in Israel, Gisela Castronari (editor) and creativepictures (prod) in Munich.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 1.2em 0px;"><span style="color: #888888;"><strong>Himmelfilm</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>has found its theatrical release in Benelux as supporting film with Wim Wenders Land of Plenty. It screened in Cannes and Rotterdam in 2005 and won in 2004 the Civis Intl. Media Award of the EBU.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 1.2em 0px;"><span style="color: #888888;">To read more insights, see some images of first letters exchanged between the makers and the dungeon where the 35mm work-print rests in peace, check out my<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://sannekurz.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/begin-and-end/" style="color: #8ab459; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Himmelfilm - making of, background infos and origin">blog</a>.</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 1.2em 0px;"><span style="display: block; text-align: center;"><br />
</span></div></div></span></span>Studia Croaticahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07417136432922135328noreply@blogger.com0