TERROR AGAINST THE RETURN

AIM, ZAGREB, July 13, 1996

No one will ever know what Mijat and Milka Gagic, a married couple from Zelengrad near Obrovac, were thinking early in August last year. This eighty-two year old couple saw one army retreating nearby their house and the other, with different insignia, following its steps. Maybe they worried about their cow which was soon to calve, or about the fall sowing on their smallish plot in the backyard.

The last units that passed the Gagic's home belonged to the Croatian Army. They were advancing fast in the so called operation "Storm". Gagics survived the "Storm" and were among those rare who stayed behind in their Zelengrad. Not long after, one morning, they were found on their threshold, with slit throats.

Dusan Cvijanovic from Pisac, near Korenica, had already forgotten the "Storm". He managed to survive the first stormy "side-effects". He had planted some potatoes, cultivated them, weed them out, watched them grow. He crossed the filed up and down thousand times. He crossed it on June 25 this year, too. Then he stumbled on a wire of a anti-personnel mine which had "cropped up" between the potatoes.

These are just some among many cases which the activists of the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO) have recently presented to the press which were picked up from the archives of meticulously registered murders, disappearances, plunders, beatings, harassments, dismissals from work and other forms of human rights violations of Serbian nationality civilian population which stayed behind in the former UNPA zones. The situation was worst after the "Storm", but new cases of legal anarchy are daily reported to the archives, claim the HHO activists.

There is still no reaction on the part of the authorities, there are no interrogations, only attempts to hide the number of killed persons, said on that occasion Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, the HHO leader. He stated that the Committee representatives saw mass graves and crosses marked only "N.N." in Zadar and Sibenik, so that they came to the conclusion that bodies transported from the Krajina region were also buried there. Petar Mrkalj, HHO Executive Director, added that in some places the activists have noticed as much as three row of coffins buried under a thin layer of earth. They observed that everywhere where they had registered crosses their number had significantly increased after a few months. "The exhumation of bodies from these graves, which could be performed by the Hague Tribunal teams will greatly shock the Croatian public" claimed Cicak. In his subsequent explanation he was more precise - "I said the public, since the authorities are familiar with these data and know full well what I am talking about".

Few days later denials ensued. Police officers from Zadar and Sibenik confirmed that there were some bodies at the local cemetery which had been brought in from the hinterland, but pointed out that burials had been performed according to the international rules, after the identification of the victims and institution of investigation procedures against "unknown perpetrators". The Public Prosecutor of Sibenik said that during sanitation of the terrain 41 bodies were found, which were later buried after a proper forensic examination.

The officers particularly insisted that all killed, either civilians or army men, lost their lives in the course of war operations, rather than on account of retaliation.

The Minister of Interior, Ivan Jarnjak was asked about these mass graves. He accused HHO of "defaming its own state" which "has nothing to hide". He claimed that the security situation in the former occupied regions is "good and no worse than in any other part of Croatia". Legal proceedings have been instituted against perpetrators of these criminal acts and criminal charges filed against all known and unknown criminals", said Jarnjak in his interview to the "Slobodna Dalmacija".

However, Cicak claimed that no proceedings have been instituted, so that he called on Mate Granic, Foreign Affairs Minister to disclose the names of persons under investigation for alleged crimes after the "Storm". Namely, on several occasions - mostly in contacts with foreign visitors - Granic mentioned that "about 1,000 persons" were under investigation. Cicak asked for the names of those punished be, but there was no answer from Granic's office.

The HHO members claim that those rare perpetrators who have been caught were tried for milder offences, and that only one trial is now in process - of a group charged for multiple murders in the villages of Gocici and Varivode

• but that it is proceeding rather slowly and reluctantly.

At the press conference the HHO declared that some state institutions have refused to acknowledge power of attorney of defence counsels when they try to obtain documents for the Serbs who have left Croatia fleeing before the "Storm". Various registrars, public notaries, local clerks, etc. demand that people come personally. The classical "catch 22" - no documents without personal appearance, while they cannot appear as refugees are forbidden from entering Croatia without documents! Cicak said that he had addressed General Jacques Klein, Transitional Administrator for Eastern Slavonia and that Klein announced that he would soon bring to Croatia a team of fifty foreign lawyers who would secure documents for refugees. This announcement likewise did not provoke any reaction of the Croatian authorities.

In its last Presidential Statement the UN Security Council reprimanded Croatia for human rights violations. Mario Nobilo, Croatian Ambassador to the UN responded on July 11, repeating the assessment of the Croatian Government that the human rights situation in Croatia does not represent a threat to peace and security in Croatia and the region, at the same time reproaching the UN representatives for not having checked the number of Serb - returnees to Croatia. Nobilo claimed that about 7,000 of them came back, estimating that additional several thousands of those unregistered have also returned.

He pointed out that "such massive return of refugees has never been recorded in this area", and added that "the return process would have proceeded more quickly had there not been legitimate security reasons connected with the unorganized return of people who were involved with the side which has started the conflict in Croatia". Reminding that Croatia opened its doors to over 300 humanitarian organizations, Nobilo "expressed his hope that this openness will turn into disciplined , balanced, founded and coordinated investigations".

By their harsh statement at the press conference, Cicak and the HHO wanted to start a public debate on the situation in the region occupied during the "Storm". However, it is a question whether much will happen except for several denials and intensified public attacks on the Committee. For the time being, it is hard to expect a green light for a more massive return of Serbian refugees and "the functioning of a rule of law" despite the insistence of the Council of Europe, European Union and other institutions. Namely, at the same time when Nobilo sent a letter to the Security Council trying to justify his Government and pacify critics, an open message came from the top, directly from Tudjman, that there no return of Serbs will be allowed. Television broadcast this to a wide audience, together with a frenetic applause of the participants of the "Croatian World Congress" which Tudjman was addressing in his summer house on the Brioni island.

IGOR VUKIC