DESERTED ROADS OF KNIN

AIM Zagreb, April 5, 1996

"I think that Knin is now the most Croat of all towns. That it is more Croat than Zagreb or any other town and that it is only natural that a Croat should be appointed commissioner until the elections" - this is the assessment of the man who was until quite recently the commissioner for the town of Knin, Petar Pasic, a Serb who was after four years discharged from office by a decision of the Croat Government, and a Croat Ante Maricic was appointed in his place.

"Ethnic origin is not a measure of patriotism and I would never do the job of the commissioner only because I am of Serb nationality", said Mr. Pasic who was by a decision of Zagreb, appointed to another, indeed lower post - commissioner of newly established municipalities of Kistanje, Ervenik, Orlic and Civljani.

To a question about recent "quarrels" with the local learders of the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) who had "asked for his head" for months, Mr. Pasic answers that tensions were directed against him, "not as a man who just wishes to help, but as a man who was not a member of the ruling party and a man of Serb nationality".

"When the last opportunity was given to those people in negotiations in Geneva, I was the one who addressed them and asked them to stay in their state, to finally see how tragic everything is that their self-proclaimed leaders brought them to, which resulted in the exodus they were pushed into. I wished those people to remain and now I advocate that these people be given the right to a normal life. Individual excesses do not reflect the stance of the official policy", Mr. Pasic ends his statement.

Knin, however, continues to live "after Pasic", with all its problems which are difficult to resolve, although Croat authorities, after operation "Storm", promised the world to those who return. According to official assessments, there are almost seven thousand people living in Knin nowadays. Most of the banished Croats returned, and a large number of Croats from Bosnian Posavina, central Bosnia, Banja Luka and Vojvodina have been given a "home" here.

To a question whether the Serbs are returning, and how many of them have actually returned, Petar Pasic says that "in the territory of the town of Knin, 420 citizens of Serb nationality have remained, and more than 300 have already returned. I am not at all in favour of the return of those who hace committed crimes, nor those who have participated in demolition of democratic Croatia, by their arrival and mere appearance, they would create uneasiness among the Croats who have returned and they would disturb the good relations between the Croats and the Serbs."

"This was after all the epicentre of the rebellion against the Croat state, and when the Serbs do return here, it is necessary to take great care who should be allowed to come, and in what way", says Mr. Pasic. "What is being said now, what Babic and Mikelic have been doing lately, I think it is pure deception of those people again, because they have done it all the time, all four years. I think that they probably expect some kind of humanitarian aid, to use those people or use it only for themselves, as they have done here".

However, not even those few, mostly elderly Serbs who have remained in the villages of former "Krajina" feel safe in their homes. Namely, after a short "ceasefire", plunders have started all over again in the region of Knin, as a recent statement of the Office of Helsinki Committee of Human Rights (HHO) shows. "In the region of Knin Krajina, plunder, maltreatment of the remaining Serb population, systematic mining of housing and other facilities continue incessantly", the HHO statement reads.

In its information, the HHO gives the example of the village of Kricka near Drnis, and reminds of the destiny of the Cakic couple, Milka and Petar, who remained in their home and welcomed the Croat army, while another member of their family, their son, despite calls and pressures, did not join the rebels, but remained in Split with his family, where he still lives.

"After intervention of the HHO, family Cakic was connected to the electric power supply that same day. That very night, unknown persons mined the two-storey house built by their children which is very close to the house in which the Cakic couple lives, and levelled it to the ground", the HHO claims. According to the assessment of the Committee, this was "an act of retaliation and attempt to prevent normalization of the situation in the newly liberated territories, as a precondition for the return of Croat citizens of Serb nationality to their homes".

The Croat Helsinki Committee also assesses that in this case these were in fact "means of exerting pressure on the remaining population of Serb nationality to leave their homes".

There are, however, brighter aspects to the gloomy Knin reality. They are humanitarian organizations which take care of the elderly Serbs who have remained after the exodus of their sons and daughters after operation "Storm" nine months ago. One of these organizations is the Danish Red Cross whose activist, Ole Sorensen mentions that their activities are mainly turned towards a large number of people over 65 who have remained in the mountains after the events in August last year.

"They are completely abondened and left to shift for themselves, and we visit them together with teams of social workers, help them with everyday chores - washing up or preparation of meals", Mr. Sorensen, whom we talked to in his office in Knin, tells us.

"We visit them with medical staff, with technical and construction staff, we replace and repair their doors and windows, prepare firewood, bring them food twice a month", the Dane explains.

"We have eleven vehicles in the field every day. The whole operation costs a lot of money, because nowhere in the world humanitarian aid is not delivered 'to the doorstep'. But, these people are so far away in the mountainous regions, and some of them are in such a bad state, that they cannot come to the closest aid distribution centre which is sometimes kilometres away", Mr. Sorensen explains.

"At the moment we have the operation of helping people in delivery of firewood. There are 150 of them in a desperate situation. They are freezing. We must deliver 700 cubic metres of firewood. It is a very, very difficult operation. We have between 20 and 30 deliveries a day, with 10 to 14 heavy trucks. Two more days and we will finish this operation", the Dane says, adding that the International Red Cross assists people regardless of their nationality.

Let us go back to the darker side of the coin, which the Croat Helsinki Committee reminds of: "The Committee registers numerous incidents of mining houses in the entire newly liberated region in former Sectors North and South, assaults on citizens, physical maltreatment, plunder, not only with tacit support of uniformed persons, but with active participation of the officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in confiscating cattle".

DARKO C. BARAC