Linta Calls for Ban on Operation Storm Celebrations
As commemorations for victims are held in Serbia and Croatia, Miodrag Linta urges the EU to ban the celebrations, while Žarko Puhovski notes both sides live in irreconcilable narratives.
As commemorations for victims are held in Serbia and Croatia, Miodrag Linta urges the EU to ban the celebrations, while Žarko Puhovski notes both sides live in irreconcilable narratives.
Every year, as the anniversary of the military-police operation "Storm" approaches, the public in Croatia and Serbia is again confronted with deeply divided memories of August 1995. This year is no different. While commemorations for Serbian victims are held in Belgrade and Knin, and Zagreb prepares its central celebration, conflicting narratives about the events that defined the end of the war, but also left lasting consequences on relations between the two countries, come to the fore again.
The president of the Alliance of Serbs from the Region, Miodrag Linta, has on this occasion asked Serbia to launch an initiative towards the European Union with the aim of banning Croatia's celebration of "Storm". In a statement to the media, Linta called the operation ethnic cleansing and provided specific figures.
"It is absolutely unacceptable that a member state of the European Union celebrates the ethnic cleansing of a people every year. Croatia celebrates the persecution of 250,000 Serbs and does not acknowledge more than 2,000 Serbian victims, of whom more than 1,200 were civilians," Linta said, adding that Croatia thus threatens peace and cooperation with Serbia.
Linta's claim that the 2015 ruling of the International Court of Justice qualified "Storm" as ethnic cleansing is incorrect. At that time, the Court fully rejected both Croatia's lawsuit and Serbia's counterclaim for genocide. Although it established that serious crimes were committed against Serbian civilians during and after the operation, it explicitly concluded that "Storm" was neither genocide nor ethnic cleansing with genocidal intent. Even earlier, in 2012, the Appeals Chamber of the Hague Tribunal acquitted Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, overturning the theory of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at expelling Serbs.
In Serbia, a commemoration was held at the Church of Saint Mark in Belgrade, where officials from the refugee agency stated that more than 250,000 Serbs were expelled from Croatia during and after the offensive, that around 1,700 people were killed, and that more than 700 are listed as missing. Meanwhile, in Croatia, a service was held at the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Diocese of Knin.
The president of the Serb National Council, Boris Milošević, whose grandmother was killed after "Storm", spoke at the commemoration in Komić near Udbina. In that village, in the summer of 1995, eight Serbian civilians were killed or went missing, including 93-year-old Sava Lavrnić and her son Petar, while immobile Marija Brkljač was burned alive in her own home. "No victim, Croatian or Serbian, deserves to be forgotten. The innocence of a victim does not depend on which side they were born on," Milošević said, warning that no indictment has been raised for this crime even after three decades.
He added that "the ineffective investigation repeats itself from village to village, from case to case," also recalling the recent decision of the Constitutional Court, which for the third time established that no effective investigation was conducted into the war crime against eight civilians in Uzdolje near Knin. Milošević, who participated in the "Storm" celebration in Knin in 2020, three weeks later, together with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Croatian Veterans Tomo Medved, laid wreaths in Grubori for six killed elderly civilians.
Prof. Dr. Žarko Puhovski, former member of the top of the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO), which was the first to publish the list of killed civilians of Serbian nationality, analyzed for Slobodna Dalmacija the deep division that persists to this day. "'Storm' is a great victory, a great day for the Croatian nation and the Croatian state, there is no dispute about that. The question is the price paid for it. And the price was that between 125 and 150 thousand citizens of Serbian nationality left Croatia under duress," he emphasized.
Puhovski explained that the coercion was twofold: "It suited the Serbian side to get as many Serbs as possible to settle in Kosovo in order to change the ethnic composition of the population. At the same time, they wanted to shame Croatia and damage its image as a victim. Croatia's idea, on the other hand, was to gain territory with as few Serbs as possible so that they would no longer be a disruptive factor, which was Tuđman's favorite expression."
According to him, the two sides are completely irreconcilable. "The Serbian side would like to be the victim, but would not like to admit that it was defeated. The Croatian side would like to be the winner, but would not like to admit that the victory was achieved in a violent way." He also warned that "undoubtedly several hundred civilians were killed in the days after the liberation of the territory of the so-called Krajina."
Speaking about the operation itself, Puhovski presented striking statistics: in just 84 hours, 10,000 square kilometers of territory were liberated, at a pace of over 120 km²/h. "That was not possible in real combat conditions. The fact is that the real fighting at the end took place mainly in the area around Petrinja. Everything else was almost a free pass," he said. He believes that Belgrade "obviously wrote off the so-called Krajina" because the operation, strategically wisely prepared via Dinara, passed with almost no resistance that was expected.
Puhovski is pessimistic about the prosecution of war crimes. "The same story is constantly repeated, that there is no reconciliation until all crimes are punished. But in reality, there is no talk of punishing even 10 percent of the crimes. Simply too much time has passed," he said. As an example, he cited the case of the Zec family, whose killers were caught, then acquitted and decorated. "The group that killed the Zec family in Zagreb was caught, and then acquitted. They all received medals from the President of the Republic, and one of them was for two years the bodyguard of the second most powerful man in the state, then-Minister of Defense Gojko Šušak," concluded Puhovski, assessing that the state thereby, in fact, accepted that crime as its own.
