A Facebook status by Veljko Mladenović, which spreads across social networks every year in early August, offers brutally honest self-criticism of Serbian aggression against Croatia and calls for confronting the past.
Every year in early August, the same text begins to circulate on social networks in Croatia and Serbia. The author is Veljko Mladenović, a Serb who is not a public figure, but whose status about Operation Storm has been read by hundreds of thousands of people. His central message, which resonates again this year, can be summed up in one sentence: "If we hadn't gone to attack Croats with tanks in '91, we wouldn't have fled on tractors in '95."
Mladenović begins his status with an image familiar to many. He reminds that the Zagreb-Belgrade highway, 382 kilometers long, was opened on July 27, 1950, and was then a symbol of connection. "It was a time when roads connected, and then the nineties came, so tanks went one way on that highway, and tractors the other," he wrote.
The status then becomes a direct indictment of the policy from Belgrade. "The first tanks in the SFRY against one nation since WWII were deployed in 1991 in Belgrade. Everything else was just a consequence of that decision," the text states. The author leaves no room for doubt about the cause-and-effect relationship: the aggression in 1991 led to the exodus in 1995.
Mladenović addresses his compatriots with words that are rare in the Serbian public sphere, reminding them of what preceded Operation Storm. "The war didn't start on 05/08/1995 but in 1991. When, with the help of the JNA, we expelled 550,000 Croats and destroyed 1,436 Catholic sacral buildings, not a single church remained standing in the occupied territory," he states. He adds that Croatia was bombed daily, Vukovar was razed to the ground, and 20 percent of the territory was occupied.
In his text, he also draws a historical parallel with Nazi Germany, asking what would be said about Germans if, after World War II, they blamed others for their tragedy. "You would say: 'No, you are to blame yourselves; you supported Hitler and committed crimes, that's why you became refugees...'" wrote Mladenović, adding that 98 percent of Serbs supported Slobodan Milošević.
The status does not stop at the past but sharply criticizes the current authorities in Serbia. Mladenović reminds that Croatia offered the Z-4 plan, which the Serbs rejected, and that "Operation Storm would never have happened, and all refugees would still be living on their properties in Croatia, had they not been 'liberated' by Milošević, Šešelj, and Vučić, with the border Karlobag-Ogulin-Karlovac-Virovitica."
Aleksandar Vučić, the current president of Serbia, is described as a "accomplice in persecution and a radical" who, alongside Slobodan Milošević and Vojislav Šešelj, promised Serbs the houses of expelled Croats from Vojvodina. Alongside him, Milorad Dodik is also in the crosshairs, and Mladenović concludes: "My dear Serbs, as long as your leaders are like Vučić, Dodik... there will be STORMS."
The author of the status does not spare ordinary citizens of Serbia either. "A people that did not rise up in armed rebellion, did not arrest its leaders when they intended to commit crimes against others, has no right to disclaim responsibility for those crimes," he wrote, calling out those who supported Milošević, Šešelj, Vučić, Radovan Karadžić, and Ratko Mladić.
"You are guilty of this evil; your hands are bloodier than Croatian hands, because you committed genocide against your own and other peoples," the status reads. Mladenović also criticizes Serbian films like "Dara of Jasenovac" and "Storm," asking whether they show Vučić's rally in Glina, charging refugees for water, or the late Babić's admission of guilt before the Hague Tribunal.
In the end, Mladenović tells his compatriots that instead of stories about "heroes, legends, and the Serbian world," they should tell their children that "in Europe, for 31 years, there have been no borders and that people there are divided mainly into good and bad, and never by national, religious, or racial basis."
