WHAT IS CONCEALED IN TADEUSZ MAZOWIECKI'S BAG?

Western Slavonia a month after the action "Flash"

AIM, OSIJEK, June 5, 1995 After his two-weeks visit to the "former Yugoslav space", what did Tadeusz Mazowiecki, UN special envoy for human rights, take away in his bag? Mr Mazowiecki started and ended his visit in Croatia, and undoubtedly, Western Slavonia was in the focus of his interest. Although he talked with journalists on a few occasions in the course of his stay in Croatia, he was extremely vague and exceptionally cautious in his statements. But, sources close to Mazowiecki tend to claim that his report will include all those "spicy" details the journalists were interested in, but which he did not wish to present before they were profoundly verified.

Mr Mazowiecki arrived in Zagreb, on May 22, on the same day as the chief investigative judge of the International Court for War Crimes in the Hague, Judge Richard Goldstone. A day before, referring to unanymous UN sources in Zagreb, the Associated Press publicized that the United Nations experts, while touring Western Slavonia, discovered two locations - one at the cemetery in Okucani, and the other a kilometre or two further away in Vrbovljani - which could be designated as mass graves. The Croat administration found itself in bad trouble, and a day after the AP news was published, the Zagreb office of the Associated Press received a phone call from the Ministry of Internal Affairs seeking more precise information about the identity of the informers.

That same evening, Croat foreign Minister, Dr Mate Granic, and the Vice-Prime Minister, Dr Ivica Kostovic, met with Judge Goldstone, and in the statement after the talks, it was for the first time publicized that 188 citizens of Serb nationality were killed in the action "Flash", as the military operation of liberation of Western Slavonia was called. Dr Kostovic was quite precise - there were 20 civilians among the victims, and 34 more persons who were not members of the paramilitary units. Although it is not clear what Dr Kostovic meant by persons who were "not members of paramilitary units", they were obviously also civilians, meaning that almost one third of the victims of the combats in Western Slavonia were civilians. Evidently, pressured by the information publicized by the Associated Press, but also questions asked by Judge Goldstone, Kostovic stated that the victims were identified and buried, and that the places of their graves are known.

But, the information Kostovic supplied rather complicated matters instead of clarifying them. Namely, Minister of Defence, Gojko Susak, while reporting to the deputies of the Croat Assembly about the operation "Flash", a few days after the action was completed, stated that about 350 Serbs were killed during liberation of Western Slavonia, and that about 1200 were wounded. The obvious disproportion between Kostovic's and Susak's figures, as well as the fact that noone knew where such a large number of wounded people were, made various assumptions and speculations possible.

At the cemetery in Okucani and a kilometre or two away towards the South-West, in Vrbovljani, it is not difficult to find the places which UN experts indicated as possible mass graves. These are lots of freshly rolled land with the same dimensions in Okucani and Vrbovljani - approximately 15 times 10 metres. Traces of bulldozer caterpillars makes the impression that soil was dug up and then levelled. With one of its part, the freshly dug up soil at Okucani cemetery enters into the wheat field sowed next to the cemetery. Access to the cemeteries both in Okucani and in Vrbovljani is quite free and there is noone there who would ban admittance and examination.

Asked whether he had visited locations indicated as possible mass graves, Tadeusz Mazowiecki said to the journalists in Zagreb that he had toured one of the places, but at the time, he had not asked permission from the Croat authorities to excavate. After a meeting with Veljko Dzakula, the informal leader of the Serbs who remained in Western Slavonia, with whom he talked for an hour and a half behind closed doors at Pakrac Gavranica, in the house of Obrad Ivanovic, "Krajina" prime minister of the Pakrac Municipality, Mr Mazowiecki told the journalists that his associates were closely examining everything that had happened in Western Slavonia, and that they would be able to say what had really happened, once all the pebbles of the mosaic fell into place. But, Serb sources in Western Slavonia are already making essentially different statements from those made by the Croat Government, but the details they are providing cannot be heard from Mr Mazowiecki. According to these sources, the alleged mass graves in Okucani and Vrbovljani are just a bluff to divert the attention of the international public from real graves which are near towns of Covac, Smrtici, Medari, Paklenica, Raic and Jasenovac. According to these sources a part of the victims of the operation "Flash" were transported and buried outside the former UNPA "West". Serb sources provide no evidence for such allegations, so it is difficult to say how reliable they are without unbiassed verification.

One of the witnesses, Husein Petrovac, a 65-year old retired man from Okucani, claims that he was an eye-witness of what was happening there on the eve of the action of the Croat police and army. According to his statement, after midnight on April 30, he heard screams and shots. Allegedly, it was already known in Okucani that there would be an attack of Croat forces, so a part of the population wished to start towards Stara Gradiska and withdraw to Bosnia over the bridge across the Sava. Petrovac claims that members of special units which had arrived from Knin and Banjaluka opened fire at them, and the corpses lay on the road until, after the arrival of Croat forces in Okucani, they were buried at the town cemetery by the members of civilian protection forces from Nova Gradiska.

Quite a different story, however, can be heard from sources close to the United Nations in Zagreb. Most of the civilians were killed in refugees' camps while they were withdrawing, panic-stricken, from Okucani towards Stara Gradiska. Since together with the civilians, military units of rebellious Western-Slavonian Serbs withdrew along the same road, there were mixed lines of tractors, military vehicles, personal cars, tanks, horse-drawn carts, armoured transporters... Such lines were targets of Croat units, and a considerable number of civilians were killed in this way.

The cited story may explain the mysterious film of a foreign television team which was telecast by Croat television in its program called which is telecast just before midnight and which presents information which cannot be seen in news programs of the Croat television. In the mentioned contribution, specialized medical units of the Croat Army could be seen washing the road with chlorine from tank trucks. These sequences were allegedly shot in the vicinity of the village Nova Varos which is on the road leading from Okucani to the bridge on the river Sava near Stara Gradiska.

If the statement of the eye-witness Husein Petrovac is correct that civilians killed by special units from Knin and Banjaluka are buried at the cemetery in Okucani, the question where are those killed on the road between Nova Varos and Stara Gradiska buried remains without an answer. Is their mass grave in Vrbovljani? The Minister of Internal Affairs of Croatia, Ivan Jarnjak, additionally muddled up the whole story by stating towards the end of May that there were no mass graves in Western Slavonia. Does this mean that all persons killed - all 188 of them, as Vice Prime Minister, Dr Ivica Kostovic, claims - were buried individually? If they were, where are their graves?

The same goes for the wounded. The figure of 1200 wounded Serbs presented by the Minister of Defence, Gojko Susak in the Assembly, was obviously exaggerated. But, if one takes into consideration the usual rule that there are three wounded per one killed, it is still not clear where are more than 500 wounded Serbs from Western Slavonia. In answer to the question of the journalist whether he knew anything about the wounded, after his meeting with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Veljko Dzakula said word for word: "It is not a small number. Noone knows anything about these people - neither who they are nor where they are."

That is how the Western Slavonian story continues, so it remains to be seen what Mazowiecki meant by diplomatically answering "there was certainly that too" to a question of a foreign journalist about bloodshed in Western Slavonia. His report will certainly be concentrated on this issue, so probably many things will become clearer. It is also possible that the Croat Government will in the meantime, in order to forestall Mazowiecki's report, come out with new, more specific data about everything that has happened in Western Slavonia during the action "Flash". Perhaps certain allegations might then either be denied or verified that a part of the units of Croat forces which took part in the operations, broke loose and exceeded the limits of the strictly planned action which determined precisely how it should be led.

On several occasions during his stay in Croatia, Mazowiecki emphasized that one of the important objectives of his mission was to search for an answer to the question how to organize life of the remaining Serbs in Western Slavonia, in order to prevent their mass emigration. In that sense, the visit of Tadeusz Mazowiecki - with no merit of his - at least for the time being will yield best results. Namely, a day before he left Croatia and went to write his report in peace, the following news arrived from Stara Gradiska: "On Friday at 14.30 h, the bridge across the Sava near Stara Gradiska was demolished, Nikola Ivkanec, commander of the Police Station in Pakrac stated. It is assumed that the explosion was caused by thunder which activated the explosives which were under the bridge. A convoy of 122 Serb citizens from the Pakrac region who expected to leave for Bosnia in organization of UNHCR and which had started on their way at 14.00 h, was stopped and returned to the starting point".

DRAGO HEDL