Comments - Latest Popular Stories, Instablogs Community by Balkanbaby

Ostojic

Ostojic — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Pejic, an ethnic Serb but born in Croatia, was said to be involved in the murder of 200 Croatians near Vukovar. He was arrested at at Belgrade airport on 19 March. Serbian authorities had started investigating his role in the 2003 massacre in which more than 1,000 civilians, soft targets, were killed.

Milind

Milind — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

“...following the Second World War all Germans with links to the Nazi regime’s crimes were shunned socially and received firm punishments. In Serbia these men are celebrated.”

After the WWII Germany was occupied by the Allied Forces and the Red Army, both arch enemies of the Nazis. The situation was different then. Serbia is still an independent country and Serbian nationalism is still intact. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to Serbs celebrating these war criminals especially in the light of the US and NATO campaigns against them during the war.

There will be more such situations where war criminals will be treated as heroes in Serbia keeping in view of the the West’s shameless support to the breakaway republics against Serbia esp Kosovo and more recently the lack of strong condemnation of the acquittal of Ramush Haradinaj.

Markus

Markus — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Civilians are the worst sufferers in a war. Civilians have died before and civilians will continue to die in conflicts more than the combatants. The conflicts that you pointed out where a large number of civilians died were and are being fought in old-fashioned way but with deadlier weapons. Combatants often take shelter behind civilians so the collateral damage is very high.

Not only this, rape, starvation, execution of innocent civilians are being used as weapons in war especially those fueled by hatred as we saw during the Balkan wars and seeing in Congo or Sudan.

Even in ideological and necessary wars such as Iraq where the U.S. says is using ultra-modern hi-tech precise ammunition to minimize civilian casualties, the civilian toll had been unacceptably high. So to expect civilians not to be targeted is wishful thinking.

Harri

Harri — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The field commanders who carried out the atrocities against unarmed civilians were just mere pawns in the hands of their political and military bosses. I am yet to see a high ranking or a high profile war criminal being brought to justice. There was an opportunity with Milosovic but the old man was wily enough to drag it long enough so that he could die before a verdict was read out. He may have died in prison, but he died an innocent man legally.

There was another chance to nail the Kosovar war criminal Haradinaj. What happened to the ITCY? I am aware that quite a few middle-ranked guys have been tried and sentenced for the war crimes in the Yugoslav war but the big fishes are always missing. (It is always so, isn’t it?)

It would be ridiculous to applaud if one of the drunkards or released criminals you mentioned who carried out rapes and murders is caught, tried, found guilty and sentenced to a thousand years in prison while his paymaster and main choreographer of the crime, the top general like Ratko Mladic is roaming around scot-free.

Chintan

Chintan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Vukovar is almost forgotten by the outside world. When the war started I was in 9th grade in school and the name became so familiar to me that if anyone asked me the names of 3 cities in Yugoslavia I would name it after Belgrade and Zagreb. The footages and ruinous remains of the town is still vivid in my memory. I reckon I even watched a movie that portrayed the town. Yes there was one more name, Banja Luka in Bosnia-Herzegovina comes to the mind. I guess a similar thing happened there. Isn’t it? Else why the name would be pronounced so often in TV and radio news? After the war ended I hardly heard of the name of Vukovar and Banja Luka. They almost disappeared from the event maps there until I saw this post now.

Irfan

Irfan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The worst is over. There won’t be another war in Europe. Yugoslavia was waiting to happen. Not much had been done prior to the buildup of the war when Serbia made its intentions clear that division of the country will not be tolerated. The Serbs should have seen this coming. Though it is not just the Serbs who committed war crimes, still they started it and made practices like summery executions of civilians, systematic rape and torture in concentration camps and other heinous atrocities usual business during the war. The inhuman crimes they committed against the Muslims in Bosnia will go down as one of the blackest crimes by men against men after the Jewish holocaust.

I am glad to see the division of Czechoslovakia was peaceful. There were some fears that it might end up in a Yugoslav like conflict. But by then Yugoslavia had given them and Europe more reasons than needed to avoided such a situation.

Sedat

Sedat — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After the Serbs I guess the Croats form the biggest balk of the war criminals. Even they carried out large scale war crimes against Serbs and other ethnic groups. Most prominent of them are Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac. Just like Serbian war criminals are celebrated as heroes in Serbia these three butchers are also celebrated in Croatia. Just like the brutal campaign by the Serbs that saw the fall of Vukovar as a military triumph by the Serbs some of their bloody and criminal tactics for military gains are seen as triumphs by the Croats. Franjo Tudjman was the main culprit behind this.

I am not even going into the story that unlike the Serbs who refuse to hand over Mladic or Karadzic (so that they can start negotiations to become EU members), the Croats actually helped hunting down Gotovina. Why? Simply because it smacks of dirty EU and American politics.

The most shameful thing would be to see Gotovina escaping with a mild and symbolic punishment as many are speculating now following the acquittal of the Kosovar war criminal Haradinaj.

Predrag

Predrag — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

u must’ve sum balls 2 call zeljko raznatovic a notorious gangster n warlord. say that in belgrade n u can b beaten dead. the SDC was responsable 2 stop the croatian criminals 4m invading serbia from danube side. they’re beaten back n bombs launched hit sum building in vukovar that mite’ve also killed some civilian. its not only arkans bombs that hit people n building. arkan n arkans tigers r serbias proud identity. when he’s killed almost half people of belgrade attend his funeral. inocent people die in war. serbs die croats die. no big deal.

Vladimir

Vladimir — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

VUKOVAR FACED SUCH DEVASTATION BECAUSE OF THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF THE CITY. THE CONTROL OF THE TOWN WOULD HAVE MEANT SERB CONTROL OF SLAVONIA. DUE TO THIS SOLE REASON THE RESIDENTS HAD TO PAY SUCH A HEAVY PRICE.

SOMETIMES I THINK IF THE TOWN WAS WORTH FIGHTING FOR SO HARD BY THE DEFENDERS OF THE CITY FACING CERTAIN DEFEAT AGAINST A MUCH LARGER AND BETTER EQUIPPED ALLY OF YUGOSLAV ARMY REGULARS AND THE SADIST PARAMILITARY. THE STRONG RESISTANCE THEY PUT UP WAS THE REASON WHY THE CIVILIANS WERE SUBJECTED TO UNTHINKABLE BRUTALITY AT THE HANDS OF THE SERBS. THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN IT WAS COMING AND FLED. IT WAS A LOST CAUSE.

IT WAS LIKE THE END OF A MEDIEVAL SEIZE OF A TOWN FOLLOWED BY ITS SACKING AFTER DEFEAT. I GUESS IT WAS WORSE THAN THAT.

Julija

Julija — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Vukovar shall always remind the world what war can cause and what the much talked about war crimes are all about just like Auschwitz reminds the world.

As a tribute to the valiant defenders of the town and those innocent civilians who were massacred by Serbian war criminals a war museum should be built and a the ruinous water tower should be kept just like that as the atomic bomb dome in Hiroshima.

The immediate sufferings of the citizens of Vukovar town was much higher than that of the victims of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima because first they lived in terror inside the cellars for days and when they came out not knowing what lay in store for them were greeted by JNA and Arkan’s mercenaries who put them through hell.

Our Dutch soldiers also proved to be cowards when they let Serbs take away and kill Bosnian refugees in Srebrenica. They forced them out of the UN base to be massacred by the Serbs. We all shed our responsibilities. If Europe wanted it really bad, I believe it could have prevented the war. :(

Edward

Edward — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Pedrag, Sadly it is people like you that show ignorance and disdain towards all forms of culture and lead to Westerners who only get to hear your loud voices to believe that all Serbs are ranting nationalists.

To call Arkan a gangster and a warlord does not take balls. It is a fact. I have been to Belgrade on many occassions and in most company this is a totally acceptable way of describing the man. Furthermore, the majority of his admirers also believe his was a gangster since this was part of his appeal. They believed him to be outside the system and off the people in the tradition of the 19th Century Hajduk. Clearly this is romanticising a criminal (criminal not just in his wartime activities but also in his repeated stretches inside western prisons during his youth for bank robbery and for transporting weapons in Croatia in 1991).

Predrag

Predrag — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

ed, rite agree u. but ur sence in those words not gud. i feel offended like other serbian. u mean diff. so stop talkin shit n focus the develpment of croatia, serbia, china, usa n all countries. u make all serbia luk like criminals. STOP IT NOW. have beer enjoy life. leave serbs alone. they dont need ur certified document.

Edward

Edward — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In no way do I accuse all Serbs of being somehow evil! That’s just silly.

All I wish to do is raise the question of why Serbia has not been able to move forward following the fall of Milosevic. This failure can be seen in the assassination of Dindic, the popular support for Seselj/Radicals and the near miss at the previous election which almost saw Nikolic voted in as President. These, and many others, are examples which show that unlike Croatia and Slovenia, Serbia has chosen a different path to European integration.

Such an attitude, admitedly acknowledging abstention, is backed up by election results and firm popular support for Russia. All of this is fine except for when it takes comes to interaction with other countries: Kosovo and Croatia.