Ressurected Fascism in Former Yugoslavia
Proud Kosovo Albanian Hitler
Article by Julia Gorin Hitler in Kosovo
First, India brought you the Hitler cafe, then Croatia brought you Hitler sugar. Now, America’s Kosovo brings you Adolf Hitler himself. The text below is from a recently discovered travelblog [link available on Julia’s blog] of an adventurous young British tourist and Balkan enthusiast named Ed Alexander. He may be on the clueless side, but don’t miss a single observation he cluelessly makes, all the while defaulting to the Albanian-slash-terrorist-slash-State Department misspelling of Kosovo (“Kosova”). This takes place in southern Mitrovica, a town divided by a river into a multi-ethnic North, and a violently “purified” Albanian South:
We crossed over into the Albanian part of town and decided to try to fulfill a plan we’d been talking about for the last couple of days. When I was in Belgrade earlier in my trip, my kind host Sasa had recounted a story about a man who owns a restaurant, used to be in the Kosova Liberation Army and believes he is Adolf Hitler incarnate…
Serbs in Croatia Under Constant Intimidation and Abuse
Article by the German daily Spiegel Ethnic Hatred Lingers in Croatia
The nights scare Sofia Skoric most. The 71-year-old Serb woman sits in her sparsely furnished sitting room, her wrinkled skin bronzed by decades of sunshine. It’s getting dark outside and she no longer feels safe. It’s night again, and she and her husband Svetozar feel they may again fall victim to the rage of their neighbors.
Just like one night last summer. It was shortly after half past one when people started hurling bricks through the windows of their house. The police later counted 34 bricks in the house. Other Serbs in the small village of Biljane Donje were also targeted. Within a few hours, police had found the culprits: four young Croats from the neighboring village of Skabrnja.
Biljane Donje, a village of just eight houses without shops or a post office, is home to a handful of Serbs who have returned to Croatia after spending years away as refugees. The police have started patrolling the village regularly to protect the Skorics and other Serbs, but they can’t allay the residents’ fears. “I can’t get to sleep without sleeping pills,” says Sofia.
The nocturnal attack was only one of many incidents. Sofia tells of cars that suddenly stop outside her house with strangers screaming abuse at them, calling them “Chetniks,” or Serb nationalists.
Twelve years after the end of the civil war, barely a week goes by without the returning Serbs suffering abuse and intimidation. Retribution, not reconciliation, marks the lives of the former enemies.
New Montenegro’s Love Affair with New Croatia
Radio Free Europe recently reported that the pro-Serbian opposition members of the Podgorica municipal council have contested a March 1 decision to make Croatian President Mesic the Montenegrin capital’s first honorary citizen. The objections centered on Mesic’s conduct during the war between Croatia and the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Jovo Pajovic said Mesic contributed to the breakup of our common state, later gloating by saying, “I have done my job, Yugoslavia no longer exists.” Serbian politicians in 1991 were unsuccessful in preventing Mesic becoming president of Yugoslavia. Mesic subsequently returned to Croatia, where he opposed the policies of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman in Bosnia-Herzegovina, pressing for Croat union with Bosnian Muslims in order to jointly fight Bosnian Serbs. Miodrag Besovic of the Serbian List said Mesic “has by his political activities caused much trouble and pain for the Serbian people and is directly responsible for the bloody breakup” of Yugoslavia. Similarly, Nebojsa Batricevic of the Movement for Change said that “the culprits and organizers of the war, the promoters of the war are exactly those who have given and [been] offered this recognition.”
But, as another clear sign of Djukanovic’s fiefdom getting ever-closer and cozier with the Undead of Croatia, Podgorica mayor discarded all of the objections and went ahead with granting Croatia’s Mesic a status of an honorary citizen. Podgorica’s mayor Miomir Mugosa will take the honors to Croat president to Zagreb tomorrow.
The next logical step for these new “Montenegrins” is to honor their own Nazi war criminal, by adopting his song as their national anthem. Montenegro Serbs are protesting again, but who cares what Serbs have to say?!
Montenegro Wants a National Anthem Authored by a WWII War Criminal
The Serb People’s Party (SNS) asked the international community today to prevent the posthumous promotion of a Montenegrin war criminal, as the author of part of the national anthem was convicted for war crimes.
In a letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, EU countries and US, SNS chairman Andrija Mandic pointed out that Sekula Drljevic, the author of part of the Montenegrin anthem "Oj svjetla majska zoro" [Oh, Bright Dawn of May], was convicted for WWII war crimes.
Mandic says in the letter that Drljevic glorified Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Ante Pavelic [leader of WWII Independent State of Croatia] and urged the Ustasha [WWII Croatian pro-Nazis] to commit crimes.
“A man with such a biography is the author of two of the four verses of the national anthem of Montenegro, the youngest European state. Historical documents prove this beyond doubt,” he said.
The SNS leader believes that this appeal will encourage the international community to do its utmost in accordance with political responsibility so that they could together resolve this problem which was of a human, civilizational and political nature.
“We are alarmed to say the very least, as are citizens whom we represent in the Montenegrin parliament, as the toleration of such manifestations and public restraint would mean a retreat from the open promotion of Neo-Nazism in the heart of modern Europe,” Mandic said.
SNS official Gojko Raicevic said at a news conference that his party would ignore the Montenegrin anthem as long as the “reassertion of Drljevic’s deeds” remains.
He said that “citizens should respect state symbols and be loyal to the state in which they live only if these symbols and the state do not insult their dignity and threaten their rights”.
“By ignoring the Montenegrin national anthem we express our respect for the huge number of Serb victims who suffered under Nazi ideology. By ignoring the current Montenegrin national anthem we express our support for the values on which contemporary Europe is based,” Raicevic said.