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Anniversary of yet another massive war crime

Belgrade, August 4th, 2008

Public Announcement: Anniversary of Yet Another Massive War Crime
 
It is now thirteen years since the military police Operation Oluja (Operation Storm), which caused a mass exodus of the Serbian population from the so-called Serbian Krajina.

During this operation and the days that followed, Croation military and paramilitary formations took the lives of hundreds of civilians, mostly elderly people.

Even among the numerous war crimes which characterized the wars of the Ex-Yugoslavia, Operation Oluja still stands out.

The participants in this crime, who obviously had the goal of ethnically cleansing the territory, have still not  been brought to justice. Today in the Hague, in accordance with the principle of command responsibility, the head of the operation, A. Gotovina, is on trial, as areseveral commanders with direct responsibility.

It is our hope that this process will not end – as have some other war crime trials in the Ex-Yugoslavia – with the kind of verdict which would additionally compromise the idea of the Hague Tribunal as a means of transitional justice and as the main mechanism of justice and justness; we must emphasize that the the responsibility for the crimes committed in Oluja lies with the International Community, whose representatives in the area at that time were passive observers as people were killed and the houses of those murdered or driven out were looted and burned.

Out of respect for all the innocent victems, we cannot avoid also naming the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and his operatives from Krajina, as well as the Serbian intellectual elite, who for years were spreading the belief that Serbs cannot live together with others. Then, like proper hypocrites, they abandoned their own creation, Republika Srpska, and left its people to the fate of refugees.

Thus we saw the false nature of their patriotism.  Columns of refugees on the Serbian border were received by Women in Black, together with other „anti-Serbian elements,“ giving them tangible help in the form of food, clothing, medicine, and visiting them afterwords in their refugee camps. No self-proclaimed patriots were in sight, unless it was to arrest the refugee men in order to take them to Arkan’s military center in Erdut or to similar places.

Let Operation Oluja be one more warning of what this false patriatism can lead to – this patriotism based on financial and political interests, which through spreading hatred the practice of ethnic cleansing leads to tragedy for the common people while profiting the chosen intellectual and criminal elite!

Women in Black - Belgrade