How Long Will We Silently Amnesty the Executioners?
As the state leadership prepares for the Operation Storm anniversary, Cronika.hr columnist Mladen Pavković sharply criticizes selective justice and unpunished war crimes.
As the state leadership prepares for the Operation Storm anniversary, Cronika.hr columnist Mladen Pavković sharply criticizes selective justice and unpunished war crimes.
Croatia is preparing to mark the anniversary of the Military-Police Operation Storm. Minister Tomo Medved yesterday unveiled a monument to veterans in Hrvatska Dubica and stated that Croatia will never apologize for the operation, emphasizing that Storm was a flawlessly executed military-police operation that, after all failed attempts at a peaceful solution, was the only way to liberate the occupied territories of Croatia. At the same time, ahead of August 5, 2026, different tones are emerging.
Columnist Mladen Pavković, in his column published on the Cronika.hr portal, raises uncomfortable questions about the state's relationship with war crimes. "While political elites parasitize on victims to score cheap points, the real murderers and masterminds have been enjoying freedom for decades. What kind of message is the state sending to its own people? A message that brutal crime in these lands truly pays off," Pavković wrote.
He believes that the same picture repeats year after year: the state leadership and political elites lay wreaths and give speeches, while the key issue is systematically marginalized. From the podiums, he claims, empty phrases are repeated, such as "our heroes live as long as we remember them" and "we gather to ensure this evil never happens again."
Pavković particularly highlights the shameful record of prosecuting crimes committed after Operation Storm. While Croatian generals spent years defending the honor of the Homeland War before international tribunals, domestic institutions failed the most important test. The number of actually punished aggressor criminals for hundreds of killed civilians and burned villages is devastatingly insignificant.
As an example of complete impunity, he cites events from 1945. Partisan units and the communist regime, after the end of World War II, liquidated hundreds of thousands of innocent people without trial. "It is a shameful fact that in more than three decades of independent Croatia, not a single communist executioner or mastermind has sat on the defendant's bench," Pavković emphasizes, blaming political elites who deliberately obstructed lustration and trials.
The same pattern of incompetence and lack of political will is visible at other execution sites. He recalls November 18, 1991, and the massacre in Škabrnja, where people were killed on the doorsteps of their homes, and enemy tanks crushed everything in their path. The key masterminds and direct perpetrators have largely remained beyond the reach of the law.
Pavković particularly criticizes the constant responses of the state apparatus that a certain war criminal is "unavailable to Croatian judiciary," while murderers freely walk in neighboring countries. Families of the missing have been begging for information about the graves of their loved ones for three decades, and those who know where they are face no legal consequences.
"Justice that is delayed by thirty or seventy years is not justice-it is its public execution," Pavković warns.
He concludes that the state loses its moral legitimacy when it allows the murderers of innocents to go unpunished. Political elites must stop using graves as backdrops for their own promotion and activate the institutions. Otherwise, every lit candle and laid wreath will remain merely a monument to their own hypocrisy.
