From: ar3@cove.cis.ufl.edu (Aleksander Rapisavljevic)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.europe.misc
Subject: Re: Croatian dreams
Date: 1 Jan 93 20:03:45 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Florida CIS Dept.


pshane@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Ana M. Shane) writes:

>But unfortunately the policies of the Republic of Croatia were not
>even passively or remotely guaranteeing equality of Croatian citizens,
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>and the active Tudjamn's campaign was grounded on the most extreme
>nationalism and chauvinism, the laws that were passed were discriminatory,
> ........                   ^^^^^^^^^                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

   Ana, could you please do me a favour, and go back in your memory and
try to find out what source of information you used to learn this
about  Croatian constitution.
   I am sure you didn't read the constitution itself, and you
probably can not trace your source to anything like New York Times
nor Newsweek. The most you will come up with is "I think somebody
told me" or worse "I think I read it in s.c.yu".

   The fact is that Croatian constitution gave  all it's citizens
EQUAL rights nomater what their nationality. The reason for
Serbian insurgence in Crotia was based mainly on inflating Croatian
nazi past and you would agree that Tudjman could certainly do 
nothing to change history.
   As Serbian propaganda realized that world opinion was not
buying such justifications very well they started pointing out
that present Croatian constitution doesn't guarantee ADDITIONAL
MINORITY RIGHTS which are common in some European countries.
And finaly under the presure of U.N. and E.C. Croatia altered
the constitution to include these rights as a tradeoff for it's
recognition in 1992.

>What DO you consider "bending over back to stisfy Croatian Serbs"?

  Mr. Loncaric is probably refering to these  additional minority
  rights as described above.

>....the "incidents" of nationalist crimes against Serbs were NOT punished
>and their perpetrators not prosecuted.

  This is very well possible, but this started hapening later on
  when the agression by Yugo-army was well in process bringing
  a great degree of chaos to Croatia with boiling national
  passions. Understandably, there was not enough time or money
  to investigate these incidences properly.

>Please correct yourself. Slovenia was not attacked by Serbs but by
>YUGOSLAV army in which the highest command was not only Serbian but
>a mixture of many nationalities.

  It has been well established that at that time Borisav Jovic 
(Miloshevic`s close partner) along with Branko Kostic controled 
the Yugoslavian presidency with the direct command of armed forces.
 As a result of this all military operations
of Yugo-army coincided closely with Miloshevic's goals:
Several clashes with croatian police before the war in Slovenia
and allout agression against Croatia after Slovene war.
(it is hard to believe that some kind of federalizem would
prevail during the war itself).

>And also, how did B-H government trusted negotiations the most,
>when they never completed negotiations, never resolved the
>inner conflicts within B-H government, and yet went ahead with
>the secession KNOWING that they are exposing ALL citizens of
>Bosnia and Herzegovina to the hundred times more horrible fate
>than if they stayed within Yugoslavia...

   The decision folks of BiH were faced here was:

   1. To seceed  meant (as you correctly noticed) the  danger 
     of conflict with much stronger enemy, danger of ruthless
     killing, genocid and torture as it has been seen in Croatia
     before.

   2. Not to seceed. In this case Serbia would most probably
     spare the ordinary folks but it would prosecute democraticly
     elected Muslim and Croat leaders, it would introduce a
     pupet-government to BiH and any kind of resistance would
     be dealt with fierce prosecution, imprisonment and execution.
     This method has been already employed in Kosovo and it
     is the only reasonable choice for an occupator as history shows.
        For Croats and Muslims in BiH this would furthermore mean
     they would be forced to financialy support and fight for Yugo-
     army against their fellow nationals in Croatia, Slovenia or
     Kosovo  which they ideologicly supported.
        
  I agree with you that the choice was tough. Like in WWII many
  governments in Europe chose to collaborate with Naci Germany
  to avoid bloodshed and confrontation with mighty German military
  (like Spain, Hungary, CzekSl,Yugosl etc.) . 
  Young people of these countries ended up working in German factories,
  fighting against  Russia, US, Britain.... 
    I was brought up to despise traitors (collaborators) which
  is probably the reason why I respect the decision of BiH
  government.

> .... That didn't automatically
>mean being compltely subjugated to Milosevic, since they would
>have many many occasions to work for the democracy, against nationalism,
>and for the true interests of all the peoples in B-H.

   Right, like Miloshevic is very gentle with non-Serbs. 
You realy have a lot of faith in this guy. Wake up! 

toward truth

Aleksander Radisavljevic
Xref: sparky alt.politics.europe.misc:259 soc.culture.yugoslavia:10287 soc.culture.croatia:264 soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna:1014