Byzantine Blog

Canadian Officers: Croat Atrocities Covered Up

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) recently reported about Canadian officers being frustrated by inaction over a “1995 ethnic cleansing operation by Croatians against Serbs” — the Operation Storm. The reason why Croat atrocities are being covered up, the Canadian soldiers say, is that the Americans have helped Croats plan and execute the biggest ethnic cleansing operation of the entire Yugoslav conflict.

Four years ago, CBC Radio ran a special trying to bring the issue of Croat war crimes to the public attention:

“Canadian soldiers had been protecting Serbs in Krajina for three years when Operation Storm rolled in. Croatian troops ethnically cleansed the area of Serbs. After the 4 day ‘Operation Storm’, the army went through and systematically burned houses, shot civilians, and killed their farm animals. The Canadian troops tried to stop them, but their rifles were no match to aerial bombardment. Since then the Canadians have been trying to testify about war crimes [...]”

Massacre in the Medak Pocket Region

It was Canada’s own war reporter and author, a former professional soldier Scott Taylor who first wrote about Canada’s peacekeepers in general and the men of the 2nd Battalion of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in particular, who were engaged in a battle with Croats and faced with their and the savagery of their wartime commander, currently Kosovo Albanian provisional “prime minister” Agim Ceku, never indicted for any of the war crimes he committed.

On March 27, 2006, Taylor wrote again about the Medak Pocket slaughter in Croatia:

“[...] Over 200 Serbian inhabitants of the Medak Pocket were slaughtered in a grotesque manner (the bodies of female rape victims were found after being burned alive). Our traumatized troops who buried the grisly remains were encouraged to collect evidence and were assured that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.

“Nevertheless in 1995, Ceku, by then trained by U.S. instructors as a general of artillery, was still at large. In fact, he was the officer responsible for shelling the Serbian refugee columns and for targeting the UN-declared “safe” city of Knin during the Croatian offensive known as Operation Storm. Some 500 innocent civilians perished in those merciless barrages, and senior Canadian officers who witnessed the slaughter demanded that Ceku be indicted. Once again, their pleas fell of deaf ears.”

Operation Storm: Croats Slaughtered Even the Animals That Belonged to Serbs

According to the CBC, Canadian officers documented numerous Croat atrocities during Operation Storm and find it entirely baffling that not one person of those who committed vicious war crimes has been arrested and brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

“Just amazing. You can see the holes in the back of the head,” said Capt. Gerry Carron, showing pictures he took to document the killings.

“We found people in wells,” he said. “There was an old lady we found head-first in a well. Why did they do that?”

Professor Chossudovsky wrote about the Canadian peacekeepers of the Second Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment who witnessed the atrocities committed by Croatian troops in the Krajina offensive during Operation Storm, citing a Canadian officer who testified:

“Any Serbs who had failed to evacuate their property were systematically cleansed by roving death squads. Every abandoned animal was slaughtered and any Serb household was ransacked and torched.”

General Jean Cot offered a similar, bloodcurdling account: “I have found no sign of human or animal life in the several villages we passed today. The destruction is total, systematic and deliberate.”

Protecting the Big Boss

But the word and testimony of the honorable Canadian officers is obviously considered a trifle in certain quarters, especially when compared to what needs to be kept hidden and protected — the Western and, particularly, American involvement in the Croat ethnic cleansing and repeated pogrom of Krajina Serbs.