Dear President ...

Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and general Blagoje Adzic, federal minister of defence, are expected to, among other things, start an investigation concerning the murders and mutilations of civilians and disarmed soldiers in Croatia, to punish the culprits and to forbid further publishing of lists with the names of the deserters. Serbian government is asked to satisfy seven more demands like, for instance, to drop charges against Vuk Draskovic (the leader of Serbian Revival Party who has been accused of organizing the March 9 riots in Belgrade and of causing two deaths and considerable material damage) and the unconditional lifting of the ban imposed on "Rilindja" (the main Albanian newspaper in Kosovo).

These are some of the requests listed in the letter which the Helsinki Watch Committee sent to the mentioned recipients on January 21 of this year. In the 23 pages long letter numerous examples of human rights violations are listed under various sections: "Executions without trial", "Missing persons", "Hostages", "Looting"...

The letter, which resembles the best horror stories, begins with "Dear President Milosevic and General Adzic". We learned that there will soon be another letter beginning with "Dear President Tudjman". He should receive it by February. Until January 24 (Wednesday) neither the Army nor the Serbian authorities issued any official announcements concerning this matter. The recent report on the atrocities of the federal army in Croatia seems to have disturbed the international public more than the public at home. It was published at the same time in the USA, in Britain, France and in other western countries, immediately after the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia by the EC. The authenticity of the report was doubtful since it has never been said who the author was and the federal army rejected it with disgust, saying that it couldn't care less for the misinformation "forwarded by an unidentified monitoring team" (there have, however, been rumours that the report was made by the EC monitoring team stationed in Zagreb). Anyway, as far as this letter is concerned, we know who the author is. Moreover, every incident described in the letter mentions the source as well (accounts of the witnesses, hospital autopsy reports...). We quote here one of many examples given in the letter to Milosevic and Adzic, put under the section "Executions without trial". It is a story of a woman from Hum (Podravska Slatina, Slavonia) who witnessed her father's execution:

"I think it happened on December 1, the children and I went to see my parents and my brother. Five or six policemen from Krajina showed up at the door, they were wearing camo uniforms. They came by car with registration plates 'Z-101 - SAO Krajina'. They wanted us to give them the radio transmitter, which we didn't have. They didn't believe us so they searched the house. Since they didn't find it, they took my parents, my brother, the children and myself to Vocin. They handcuffed my brother and called him 'ustasha' because my other brother was serving in Croatian Guard. After we arrived at the police station in Vocin they said: 'Here you will see slit throats'. They put us in a room where people would come in from time to time and say: 'You ustashe, we'll cut your throats and we'll kill you'. We were in custody from 2 p.m. until 8 p.m. and during that time an inspector was questioning us every now and then. He was in his early thirties and he said he was from Daruvar. They let us go at 8 p.m. and we stayed with friends in Vocin. We were told to report to the police at 8 o'clock next morning.

In the morning we went to see the inspector. There was another man with him. He was wearing a white coat. He said he will have to kill us because we are all ustashe. At half past three that afternoon we were taken back to Hum and we saw that my father's house was burnt down. There were other chetniks in the village. They forced my mother, my children and myself to get in the house, while my father remained outside. When we entered we heard something like a hand grenade explosion. Three chetniks were shouting: 'The old man stays'. I recognized Jovan C.'s voice, we went to school together for years. I heard my father saying: 'Don't shoot', then we heard shots and when we stepped out in the court yard we saw my fathers body: half of his head was missing. We hid in the house of B.D., an orthodox (a Serb), and he helped us move away my father's body".