ROBBERIES ALONG THE BORDER

AIM Zagreb, 13 December, 1997

The bordering region of Croatia near Glina and Dvor on the Una in the past few months resembles Texas in the middle of last century. For a few months already in the region there have been frequent night robberies, often armed. The scenario of these robberies, as if practiced, is recognizable: unknown robbers come during the night, break into stables and drag away all the livestock they find. The targets are most frequently cows, horses and sheep, but the few remaining tractors have also been stollen from some pheasants. Owners of the stollen property are the Serbs, most of them returnees from exile in FR Yugoslavia, but also those who had remained in Croatia after action "Storm".

    All these leads but to one conclusion: it is obviously

an organized gang of robbers. Between July and December they robbed 19 households in four villages: Velika Obljaj, and in neighbouring Mali Obljaj, Kobiljak and Bojna. The most peculiar thing in the whole story is the fact that the peasants have for months been "guarded" by Croatian military police which has not caught a single robber so far. The official explanation of the police is that robberies are committed by the Bosnians from villages across the border surrounding Velika Kladusa.

The protected villages have been literally devastated. Just in the past three months, about 40 head of mostly bovine cattle have been stollen! Some peasants were robbed once, others were visited by the robbers up to four times. In a single night they tour several families. For example, in Veliki Obljaj, Rade Zoric was robbed and a mare of his was taken away, and during the same night, two cows and and a heifer were taken away from the stable of Dragan Cuckovic from Mali Obljaj. In his absence during the day, a cow of Pera Grmus was stollen, and the last, fourth cow was stollen from Dragan Cuckovic in August. His 17 sheep, a stallion and two calves were also stollen. A cow and a horse on the local market are worth about 1500 German marks. In the poor and neglected region along the border with B&H, this is a fortune. In the beginning of December Sava Draskovic, Evica Vujaklija, Pero Draskovic, Milka Cuckovic, Simo Cuckovic, Marija Madzarac, Djuro Miric, Rade Crnogorac were also robbed. Two cows were stollen from Stanko Dmitrovic in broad daylight, and his family was also robbed of two tractors. One was stollen after action "Storm" and the other in the beginning of November. The list of those robbed is much longer, of course.

Apart from being robbed, mortal fear is spreading among the peasants. The more fortunate ones were raided during the night, withouut shooting or bombs, but drained dry; those less fortunate encountered threatening "fireworks" or were beaten up. And these villages are just twenty kilometres away from Glina and just eighty kilometres from Zagreb.

The peasants addressed desperate letters to humanitarian organizations in Croatia - the Helsinki Committee and the Serb Democratic Forum, warning that they would collectively emigrate if nothing is done. Inhabitants of Kobiljak say: "We believed that as time went by, things would get better for us, but just the opposite is happening. It is getting worse and worse. We are increasingly exposed to attacks on us and our property and we are very concerned about our destiny..."

Peasants from Bojna write in the similar sense: "Everything has been stollen from us. That is why we are begging you to help us. We have in an orderly manner informed the police in Glina about it, however, not a single case has been resolved to this day. Our impression is and we believe that they do not wish to resolve them. When we ask what is happening, they blame it all on the people form the Bosnian side, on the Muslims. In the beginning we too believed them, but as time goes by, we are are more and more doubtful and more and more certain that it is just the opposite".

In all the robberies, the robbers knew exactly where everything was and how they could get there. How is that possible? According to everything seen so far, a different obscure scenario is coming into sight. During the day, policemen come to the village, on a "patrol". They visit the peasants and determine - formally, for their better protection

• where they have left their cattle and in what way the cattle are protected. Then they issue an order to the peasants not to leave their houses from sundown to sunrise, because they will be "lying in ambush and waiting" for robbers. In the meantime, under protection of darkness, robberies continue: even if the peasants hear that somebody has broken into their property, they do not dare go out, because of "curfew" and fear that the police might shoot at them under the pretext that they are shooting at suspects. In the morning they wake up and find their "guarded" stables empty. The police, of course, have seen nothing. Complaints, appeals, requests, demands... nothing has been of any help. All the perpetrators have remained unknown. "Everything guarded by the police has been robbed. "It would have been better for me if they had not guarded me", says Stanko Loncar from Veliki Obljaj, "Now I have nothing".

"A policeman told me recently: so what if they take everything away from you", says Marica Dmitrovic from Bojna. "Another one told me that he would come to take the ham". Along with two tractors, seven of their cows disappeared, and on 26 September, another two cows. The police - which had guarded all that - she says, just maliciously makes lists of what has been stollen. She too believes that this is the result of a conspiracy between the police and the bandits. Marica, like all the other inhabitants, just waves her hand when told by the police that they have been robbed by the Bosnians: she is convinced that it was done by the people from Glina, with the approval or even in cooperation with the police.

Not a single peasant from Obljaj and its surroundings knows the names of the policemen who guarded them. They usually do not dare even ask. "Our refugees in Serbia have learnt all this, it is a small world", comments Stanko Loncar from veliki Obljaj. "They all know that I have three sons-in-law, all three Croats. And now they all think: if this has happened to Stanko whose sons-in-law are Croats, what can happen to us?"

It seems that this is the catch. Robberies along the border, all things considered, have a political background. They are aimed at destroying the economic foundation of Serb villages and spreading fear among the inhabitants in order to prevent mass return of Serb refugees. Results are already evident. Some peasants, like Vjekoslava Ostojic fronm Kobiljak, could not take the fear and uncertainty, and ran away to Serbia, but it seems that her case is not the only one. "We are deeply concerned for our destiny" say peasants from Bojna. "We are quite convinced that this is done on purpose in order to make us, peasants and our returnees, panic. This is all done deliberately and we are afraid that it is organized in order to prevent people from coming home". "We are afraid", they say, "That we will be forced to leave our homes which we do not think will do hionour to anybody". It is almost impossible that these dounts are unfounded. Croatia nowadays has 34 thousand policemen and according to the number of policemen per capita is certainly at the very top in the world. A former policeman recently established in Novi list that with so many policemen in Croatia not a single German mark should be stollen. It is obvious that the top of Croatian Ministry of the interior - which is very well informed about it - does not wish to resolve this problem, or that it is the patron of these robberies. On the other side of the border, in B&H, Bosniacs who support Fikrtet Abdic live, so Croatia does not want the Serbs in that region. Why the Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs is tolerating ethnic cleansing is an open question. And it seems without any doubt that it is.

BORIS RASETA