CONSCIENCE AND DESERTION

According to official data, less than a thousand conscripts in Croatia exercised the constitutional right of conscientious objection and requested to do their military service in civilian capacity. Although Croatia has made, by accepting the right to conscientious objection, a substantital step towards the achievement of democratic order, the legal solutions in force have numerous drawbacks. The right to conscientious objection should considerably reduce the number of deserters. The number of deserters has never been made public in Croatia, although Mirsad Bakcic pointed out that a considerable number of cases of desertion was being considered by the Military courts. The most recent mobilization aimed at filling in the brigades for warfare on the B&H front could additionally increase the number of deserters in Croatia.

AIM, ZAGREB, January 11, 1994

To date less than a thousand conscripts in Croatia have used the possibility of invoking the right of conscientious objection, namely, asked to discharge their military service without weapons. The Commission for Serving the Army in Civilian Capacity, which has been established less than two years ago within the framework of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Croatia, received in the past period, as pointed out by its Chairman Dr. Ladislav Krapac, " more than two hundred and less than a thousand requests" for approving the right to conscientious objection, of which only four have been refused." The right to conscientious objection, which was not recognized by the Yugoslav legislation, is guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, promulgated at the end of 1990 and subsequently further and more precisely elaborated within the Law on Defence. Its provisions stipulated the procedure for exercizing the right to conscientious objection, as well as the obligation of informing every conscript, at the time his personal data are entered into the appropriate records, of the possibility of invoking the right to conscientious objection. In the first version of the Law ,the right to conscientious objection was granted only to recruits, while conscripts who had already done their military service were given a three-month time limit during which they could submit their request for exercizing the right to conscientious objection. To the most part, owing to the activities of the Anti-War Campaign of Croatia, in May 1993, an amendmend was passed to the Law on Defence, according to which all conscripts were given a period of one year - until the end of May 1994 - in which they could exercize the right to conscientious objection.

Although aware that, contrary to the other states on the soil of former Yugoslavia,Croatia has made, by accepting the right to conscientious objection, an important step towards the achievement of a Western type democratic model, the Croatian peace-movemement members consider that the current legal solutions contain some major drawbacks. " We still do not have an alternative civilian manner of doing military obligation but rather military service which is discharged without the requirement of carrying weapons," claims Srdjan Dvornik, an activist of the Anti-War Campaign of Croatia. Such a formulation is also contained in the Law - namely one of its provisions stipulates that military service in civilian capacity is a rule carried out within the framework of the Croatian Army, however without the necessity of carrying weapons. Dvornik goes on to explain that such a definition is contrary to the Croatian Constitution, which recognizes conscientious objection against carrying out military duties rather than against the carrying of weapons. Dvornik adds in conclusion that in the Army only military duties can be carried out, and that according to international law, civilians who actively help the Army are considered to be a legitimate target of attack in time of war. The peace-movement members hold that this discrepancy between the Constitution and the Law should be resolved, and what is more important, that those who invoke the right to conscientious objection should be enabled to discharge their military obligation outside the Army, i.e., truly in civilian services. Therefore, they suggest the organization of alternative military service,not on the part of the Ministry of Defence, but by some other governmental agency. The peace-movemement members also require that the obligation of doing military service by those individuals who have submitted a request for the recognition of the right to conscientious objection be stayed in the duration of the procedure of its resolution, which usually takes three months.

One of the principled objections to the regulations that pertain to conscientious objection which the peace-movement members have reiterated from the time of the adoption of the Law of Defence, is connected with the provision which requires the applicant to give an explanation of his religious, moral or other beliefs due to which he refuses to serve the Army, namely to make them convincing. " Conscientious objection is a matter of personal decision and its appropriateness cannot be decided upon by some commission", Srdjan Dvornik points out, adding that in most Western countries the right to conscientious objection is almost automatically recognized, with the verification of only some basic facts contained in the request. On the other hand the officials from the Ministry of Defence consider that military service in civilian capacity is not a universal civil right. "We must protect ourselves from the abuses of military service in civilian capacity. Each country has its own protective filter. After all, serving the army is not only a duty but an obligation and right - you have to defend the country you live in", Stjepan Adanic the Assistant Minister of Defence for the Civilian Sector points out. According to Adanic, only those individuals who can prove that they had beliefs which prohibited the use of arms prior to being drafted or mobilized can be granted the right to serve in civilian capacity. In the same line of thought, Adanic explained that in his opinion atheists should not have the right to conscientious objection.

The advocates of conscientious objection as a fundamental civil right and the representatives of the Croatian government disagree on yet another issue - namely, can the argument used by Croatian citizens of Serbian nationality be accepted as viable for being exempted from serving the Army

• namely, that they do not wish to shoot at the members of their own nation which are "on the other side." Dr. Ladislav Krapac, the chairman of the Commission for Military Service in Civilian Capacity, claims that such, "political- ethnic" criteria are equally not acceptable in other European countries. Miro Bozic, a lawyer and activist of the Civil Council for Human Rights from Karlovac, points out that a large number of Serbs from Karlovac contacted him, namely those individuals who applied for the recognition of the right to conscientious objection primarily because they did not wish to shoot at their cousins who lived on the other side of the front-line in the immediate surroundings of Karlovac." Such arguments may be considered moral reasons," Mr. Bozic points out and adds that peace-oriented political beliefs can also be considered moral reasons for the non-acceptable of military service. Ratko Dojcinovic, member of the Civic Council for Human Rights from Karlovac claims on the basis of his own experience that those who do lodge a conscientious objection have to go through a particular procedure in the Army, namely, the officers try to convince them - by hook or by crook
• that they should change their mind. Dojfinovic thus spent 45 days in prison, was maltreated and insulted, all with the aim of, as he claims, making him change his mind and taking up arms. " At the end they beat me up and sent me to hard labour," Dojcinovic said, emphasizing that his was not the only case.

A special brigade was formed in Karlovac - the White Tigers - to which almost exclusively Serbs who refused to carry weapons were mobilized. Its members wear white boots, so that everyone can, according to Dojfinovic, recognize them at once and "classify them." " The Tigers"- he claims - are sent to the front line to dig ditches - being exposed during the entire time to the insults of "real" soldiers who consider them traitors. Dojfinovic says that pressure is also exerted on those Croats who have refused to wear arms.

The fact that the Ministry of Defence applies systemic measures towards citizens of Serbian nationality who exercize the right to conscientious objection is also claimed by Zoran Pusic, the representative ofthe Civic Council for Human Rights. "These people have the impression that it is also a form of ethnic cleansing," Pusic points out and claims that quite a large number of these individuals, although they have submitted a request to be granted the right to conscientious objection have ended up before the Military Court. Pusic believes that similar methods are used for exerting political pressure. In Karlovac, Pusic goes on to illustrate, out of 31 town-councillors, only those were called up for mobilization who were members of the Social Democratic Union.

It would be logical to expect that the right to conscientious objection is to reduce the number of deserters. From the outbreak of the war,the Crotian public has never been informed of their exact number. Answering a journalist's question how may cases of desertion have been brought to Military Courts, Mirsad Bakcis, the public military prosecutor said - "Quite a few." Only a few rulings have been passed to date, he added, primarily because it is procedure of long duratiron. It seems that the number of deserters in Croatia could suddenly increase after the recent mass-scale mobilizations, the aim of which was to fill in the brigades that were sent to the battlefields in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As disclosed by the Croatian Helsinki Committee and the Civic Council for Human Rights, and unconvincingly denied by the Ministry of Defence, more than two thousand men - mostly Croatian citizens originating from B&H - have been mobilized at the end of last year and sent to the B&H front.

As testified by the stories of two young men - which some foreign media carried - they were requested to sign statements in the Zagreb barracks that they were going to Bosnia voluntarily. Those who did not wish to sign such statements were nevertheless taken to Bosnia, like the two mentioned young men who were regular students at the Zagreb University and who suceeded in escaping from the buses that were transporting men to the battlefields of the neighbouring state. At present they are in hiding and are considering the possibility of applying to the Croatian authorities and requesting the protection of their right not to fight on the territory of another state.

VESNA ROLLER