Evidence of Crimes in Western Slavonia Begins to Surface

AIM Zagreb, February 5, 2001

The recent exhumation of 13 bodies from a mass grave in the village of Snjegavic, in the Pozega-Slavonia municipality, not even mentioned by Croatian news media, could serve, if the state leadership is willing, to launch an investigation to determine who is responsible for the tragic events of the fall of 1991 in Western Slavonia for which the Croatian side is to blame. The exhumation was ordered on the basis of an anonymous report on the murder of Serb civilians, looting and torching of their homes and property in Snjegavic, a remote village on the slopes of Mt. Psunj, committed by Croatian army soldiers. The report was received by the Zagreb state attorney, but no one did anything about it. Shortly after the change of government in elections held on Jan. 3, 2000, the report was forwarded to Rudolf Macek, district attorney in Pozega. Although no one wants to speak about the possible investigation and no one knows anything, the digging was carried out at the site the report mentioned on Dec. 11, last year. It confirmed that the mass grave was indeed located at the site specified by the report. Thirteen bodies were recovered from it and transported to the Zagreb Institute of Forensic Medicine. The results of attempts to ID the bodies and determine the manner of death, that took place over nine years ago, are still not known.

The exhumation in Snjegavic once more brought to the surface the story of the fate of 26 villages in the region of Mt. Papuk and Mt. Psunj, involving one of the most compromising documents of the War for the Fatherland -- the order for the evacuation of purely Serb settlements (except for three villages with mixed populations) in the former municipality of Slavonska Pozega, which indicates that it was a planned ethnic cleansing campaign.

The order was an obscure document issued by the Crisis Headquarters of the municipality of Slavonska Pozega on Oct. 29, 1991, mentioned here and there in some publications, but only recently fully revealed for what it is -- dramatic evidence -- in the Feral Tribune newspaper.

A copy of a poster put up at main roads and intersections in Pozega municipality at the end of October, 1991, whose contents was read by the local radio station many times, shows that the evacuation was justified as an attempt to save the lives of the villagers, and had to be carried out within 48 hours. The names of 24 villages were specifically mentioned: Oblakovac, Vucjak, Cacavacki, Jeminovac, Snjegavic, Cecavac, Koprivna, Rasna, Pasikovci, Kujnik, Orljevac, Crljenci, Slobostina, Milivojevci, Podsrece, Vranic, Njezic, Pozeski Markovac, Klisa, Odzakovci, Poljanska, Kantrovci, Gornji Vrhovci, Lucinci and Oljasi, to which another two villages -- Smoljanovci and Busevac -- were later added. In these exclusively Serb villages, of which only three were ethnically heterogeneous, a total of 2,120 people lived, according to the 1991 census. The order was signed by the Crisis Headquarters, headed then by the incumbent head of the Pozega-Slavonia municipality and a member of the Croatian Democratic Union presidency, Anto Bagaric, prominent members of the then ruling party, and Miljenko Crnjac, a general of the Croatian army, then commander of the 123th Brigade active in the region. It instructed civilians to take with them only what they needed to survive: food, clothes, linen, items for personal hygiene, cutlery, jewelry and money, and, of course, their livestock as well. An eyewitness says that the villagers were told to lock their homes well to ensure that, when they return, they would find everything as they had left it. The order also said that the duration of the order "will depend on stability in the region," which was badly disturbed due, as the document said in its introductory part, "to armed activities of Chetnik terrorist and Yugoslav People's Army forces, which continue to endanger the civilian population in the western part of Slavonska Pozega municipality."

Most inhabitants, as is shown by the documentation of the Pozega civilian defense, complied with the order. A part joined the rebel Serbs in villages near Pakrac, whereas a part of the elderly and infirm, together with some relatives, remained in the villages, awaiting whatever may come their way. In the evacuated area the Croatian military and police placed a ban on all movement. All military operations on the borders of the evacuated region, however, ended around Christmas, 1991, and after that there was no reason for the population not to return to their homes. Except for a single one: all their homes, farms, barns, and other buildings were systematically burned. Of 26 villages, 23 were completely leveled by fire, and only three -- Poljanska, Orljavac and Lucinci -- in which Croat houses were spared, offered some conditions for return. The evacuated Serbs realized, upon leaving, what was going on and crossed the Sava River into Bosnia, where the war had not yet started, or took a roundabout road across Bosnia and into Eastern Slavonia, then still controlled by the Serb Krajina government. They settled in the homes of exiled Croats, mostly near the border with Yugoslavia -- in Bapska, Ilok, Sarengrad and Lovas.

The public still had to be informed in some way why 23 villages under Mts. Papuk and Psunj, rather small in territory, had to be burned to the ground. The magazine Croatian Soldier took care of that, in the manner it usually preferred. In its issue of February, 1992, that is, immediately after the events took place, they described the burning of Gornji Vrhovci, one of the villages listed for evacuation, in the following manner: "When the 123th Brigade of the Croatian Army headed towards Gornji Vrhovci, a notorious enemy stronghold wherefrom for months villages in the northwestern parts of the municipality and positions of the Croatian Army have been shelled, the enemy's ranks were overwhelmed by panic. Fear forced them to flee in disarray after setting the entire village on fire. When the soldiers of the 123th Brigade reached the village, everything was still in flames."

This poor attempt at a coverup was in itself contradictory. How can someone "flee in disarray" while "setting the entire village on fire," which was "still in flames" when the Croatian army entered it? The situation in the village itself is additional proof of the magnitude of the looting in Gornji Vrhovci, as well as in other villages from the evacuation list. One can still see the walls of the houses which, before being put to torch, were meticulously stripped of everything, even of electrical wiring, bathroom tiles, faucets and switches.

The statements of witnesses put down in writing by various humanitarian and human rights organizations claim 70 civilians were killed after the evacuation. One such account pertaining to the village of Snjegavic turned out to be true, at least when the number of victims was concerned. The chairman of the former Pozega Crisis Headquarters, Anto Bagaric, hastened to give his version of events as soon as the report concerning the murders in that village surfaced. At the end of December, 2000, he told the Glas Slavonije newspaper that these were no civilians, but inhabitants of Snjegavic and its vicinity who "failed to comply with the Oct. 29 call of the Crisis Headquarters for evacuation, but instead transported on tractors all their property via the then occupied Bucje and Okucani to Banjaluka, and then returned to Mt. Psunj, to join the forces of the Banjaluka Corps. As uniformed members of that corps, they actively participated in military operations on Dec. 11 and Dec. 12 in which they were killed."

Bagaric said all this even before any autopsy results were released by the Zagreb Institute of Forensic Medicine, were identification of the bodies exhumed in Snjegavic is being carried out. According to eyewitness accounts, however, the situation is entirely different: the victims are up to 80 years old, and most of them are women.

The case of Western Slavonia, together with those of Pakrac Field and Gospic, and the crimes committed after the Flash and Storm military operations in Krajina, the former ruling Croatian Democratic Union kept sweeping under the carpet even at the cost of a dramatic straining of relations with the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which all contributed to Croatia's substantial isolation. The new government, elected on Jan. 3, 2000, during its first year in power has failed in showing any efficiency in prosecuting war crimes committed by Croats. It remains to be seen whether a special department or the Croatian State Attorney's office, as was announced on Jan. 12 by the Ivica Racan government, will indeed do anything in bringing the perpetrators of war crimes to justice.

Western Slavonia will be the first test, because the events there are rather clear. There is, on the one hand, a written order to evacuate 26 villages, the officials who signed it are known, as are the military and police commanders of the time. On the other hand, there are visible consequences of that order: 23 looted villages, burned to the ground. The case of Snjegavic, however, has shown that there were also civilian victims.

Drago Hedl

(AIM)