Barbarian Revenge

The 'Storm' as a symbol of a natural phenomenon transferred to the social area is Croatia's defeat. The defeat reflects itself in the animalism of destruction, devastation and barbarian revenge. In the style of the nature, it is the elemental tyranny of the stronger, carried out by wild animals, some of which have been extinct in these regions for millennia: 'tigers', 'pumas', 'ravens', 'vipers', 'grasshoppers', etc. In only three days, the new population policy of Europe's oldest nation in the name of 'God and Croats' and Christian tradition banished over two hundred thousand fellow-countrymen from their century-old hearths because they had rebelled in the name of ideology and mythomania of 'God's people'. The (Croatian) Parliament's slogan for the resolution of the Serbian question 'Under the ground or out of the country' has been achieved, and so has another slogan from the Parliament 'not one Serb less, all the Serbs less'. The consequence is 12,000 square kilometers of wasteland.

We could not think of Krajina without Croatia or Croatia without Krajina; now we cannot think of Krajina without the Krajina Serbs unless we want Croatia to be Europe's Krajina. Standing on Jarce hill near Obrovac on August 19, 1995 and watching fire everywhere, I thought of Nero and the burning Rome. Sector South was burning and the generations' building heritage vanished without trace. The areas were first ethnically cleansed, systematically plundered and then, with the help of special units' mechanized means set on fire by cannons, incendiary bombs and bullets, gunpowder, synthetic explosives and inflammable liquids. The roofs which were not burnt down were being broken for the weather to do its part of the job, wheat was set on fire, polluted by petroleum, gas, faeces; dead cattle were thrown down the wells, everything that could be of any use was broken, destroyed, plundered or taken away.

Eastern Orthodox believers were tormented, killed, imprisoned, humiliated and their churches, cynically, spared. At the same time, death notices, prayer-books, pictures of patron saints were drilled with bullets, stabbed with sets of needles and smeared with faeces. What sublime Christianity!?

The `incinerated land' method which had been tested in the hometown of the constructor of civilization heritage, Nikola Tesla, was applied to 14 social communities and some 650 settlements. Some settlements were spared and now, without basic infrastructure - electricity, water, communal services - are offering hospitality to bewildered colonists from the Banja Luka area. Startled, they wonder who did all this, why they have been brought here, where those people are, how they would explain that they did not plunder the houses, how they are going to live here? The destruction most of all affected institutions - schools, libraries, post offices, shops - and least of all inns, those village parliaments.

Murdered cattle are lying about backyards and roads. In search of food and water some of them shut themselves inside raided houses and died there. Others died of poisoning by cabbage or young clover. There are only two cattle-collecting crews in the entire region. They kill what they cannot catch and send it to meat market.

The most dreadful images are those of what was left after the attack on lines of refugees on the road from Topusko to Glina and further to Dvor. Twenty kilometers along the road, blood-stained bundles are lying about alongside other things which had obviously belonged to refugees, such as plastic bags, broken tractors, trailers, carts, cars, dishes, household things, pictures, etc. In the wind of war, the owners and possessions parted forever. Many families split up, neighbors parted. There are lost children and desperate abandoned old people. Some of them are placed in camps euphemistically called 'reception centers', others are still hiding in woods or valleys sentenced to sure death since, according to the words of the pacifiers of 'new order', civilian authorities have no mercy for them.

The battle, which practically never occurred, defeated the Croatian doctrine of independence, tolerance, Christian culture, humanism and general culture because it had chosen the ideal of ethnic purity and got the blood-stained wasteland. Only about 1,800 Serbs have remained in the entire region. History is written by winners and reviewed by innocent victims who are always the moral winners. This is where Croatia defeated itself.