Byzantine Blog

Serbs to Be Eradicated

Croatian forces have used the most cruel methods to liquidate Serbs during the latest Croatia's genocide called Operation Storm. Tudjman's forces were killing Serbian refugees fleeing from Krajina all the way through Croatia and deep into the territory of Republika Srpska (Bosnia-Herzegovina). The roads behind the refugee columns were littered with corpses. Croats have used 47 fighter jets and military choppers for attacks on the refugees, along with artillery and infantry.

Head of the Veritas centre, Savo Strbac, said Croats themselves have collected and buried the remains of 911 Serbian victims, mostly under the “unknown” tag. Half of the bodies were exhumed and only one third has been identified. The majority, 2,500 people still classified as missing eleven years later remain unaccounted for.

According to historian Dr. Momcilo Pavlovic, the numerous crimes over civilian population in the triumphant advance of Croatian forces during Operation Storm were committed in compliance with the order of Croatian president Franjo Tudjman who, toward the end of July 1995, sent a message to his army headquarters:

We have to strike in such way that Serbs get completely eradicated.

Myth-Mania

Half of the murdered civilians were over 60 years of age.

- As they were running away from the artillery and death, people were leaving everything behind and going into the unknown - said Sanda Raskovic-Ivic. - Many never reached Serbia, they were dying and being murdered in the refugee columns. I was in the office when they brought in a woman whose daughter was killed in the refugee column. She was carrying her dead child in her arms eight to ten kilometers along the way.

Professor Svetozar Livada said:

Through the myth-mania the mass crime was elevated to a triumph, and criminals were turned into heroes. Operation Storm was an ethnic cleansing, a thoroughly planned ethnocide, culture-cide and rural-cide. Croatia will never dare to face its own truth, that in a brutal attack that lasted four days 1,960 people were killed and 280,000 expelled.

In the book Manufacturing Consent co-authored with Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman pointed out the double standards applied on crimes committed during civil wars on the territory of former Yugoslavia. For Vecernje Novosti daily he said:

Operation Storm was the true ethnic cleansing violently executed. If the Serbs have done anything similar the action would have been labeled as genocide.

Croatian Demonology

The best forensic pathologists from the Military Academy of Medicine have performed the autopsy on the bodies of the Operation Storm victims. According to their reports, 345 men and 64 women were shot, 7 men and 6 women were hanged, while 8 men and 20 women were killed by beating with blunt objects.

Two of the men and four women had their intestines cut out. Among the victims whose arms were broken, cut off or torn out five are male and one female. Croatian troops have cut the ears off 30 men and 7 women. They have cut the eyes out of 31 men and 38 women. The bodies of 3 men and 3 women show monstrosities performed on their genital organs. They cut the head off one man. There were bodies with the skin pealed off the faces. On the bodies of 240 men and 55 women the autopsy analysis couldn't confirm the exact way in which they were killed. The demonic seal of Croatian forces is most obvious in the case of a three year old girl whose body was thrown to pigs. They burned 96 women and 35 men alive. They hacked 16 women and 17 men to pieces. 27 women and 117 men were stabbed to death.

Hague Tribunal For Serbs Alone

Proud of the Operation Storm results, Franjo Tudjman held a meeting with Croatia and Herzeg-Bosnia state representatives in presidential palace in Zagreb on August 24, 1995. The book Stenographic Notes on Division of Bosnia documents that Operation Storm was planned for a rather long time, but these are just few excerpts from the book, recording the part of the above mentioned meeting:

- Gentlemen, the liberation of the territories of present-day Croatia and this region is now assured, - said Franjo Tudjman. - We have secured the future of Croatian state for centuries. Right now they will have to take us into account even as a regional force. We shall send the word to Croatian emigrants around the world and pay the charter flights and ships to bring back hundreds of thousands of people - Croats - since our country is desolate, all those regions are desolate, everything we have just liberated in Western Slavonija, and especially Knin, Banija, Kordun and Western Herzegovina [present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina] is desolate...

- To someone who turns up from The Hague we shall present documents showing there was neither planning, nor committing of any war crimes, - said Pavao Miljevac, Tudjman's general.

- Do not allow them to touch Operations Lightning and Storm, - said Tudjman. - This was the liberation of Croatia, we have to be uncompromising here. That tribunal was established against Milosevic. You can say that there were some 30 cases of criminal behavior and 20 were processed after the Storm. Not a single Croatian general should go to The Hague.

Translation of the article by V. Popovic, from Vecernje Novosti.