NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/bit/listserv/mideurl/476

Text File | 1992-08-15 | 6.7 KB | 123 lines

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Date:         Sat, 15 Aug 1992 22:24:45 -0500
Sender:       Discussion of Middle Europe topics <[e-mail]>
From:         "Velibor M. Marenovic" <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Croatian "democracy"...
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>
> "The Globe and Mail" 8/15/92
>
>         CROATIAN LEADER TIGHTENS HIS GRIP
>
>         Aware that the West is busy elsewhere,
>         Tudjman enforces authoritarian rule
>
>
>             by Philip Sherwell
>         (Special to The Globe and Mail)
>
>
> ZAGREB---Buoyed by his comfortable election victory and conveniently ignored
> by a world community focusing its ire on Serb aggression, Predident Franjo
> Tudjman of Croatia is stealthily enforcing his authoritarian rule.
>     Critics say the former Communist general runs the newborn country
> like a medieval monarch, bypassing the normal decision-making process
> and surrounding himself with a coterie of courtiers.
>     Political opponents, Serb leaders and the few critical media
> have borne the brunt of a government crackdown. The human-rights monitor
> Helsinki Watch has condemned the clampdown on the media and free sppech.
>     The death this week of a leading Croat opposition military commander
> in a spectacular shootout at an army roadblock has fuelled fresh speculation.
>     Blaze Krajevic was the Herzegovina commander of the paramilitary wing
> of the ultranationalist Croatian Party of Rights, strident opponents of
> the President.
>     He was shot at a regular Croatian military checkpoint near Mostar,
> allegedly after his car refused to stop. Ten people were killed in the
> exchange.
>     Only 12 hours earlier, Mr. Krajevic's men had entered the Serb
> stronghold of Trebinje in eastern Herzegovina, apparently in defiance of
> official Croatian strategy.
>     Mr. Tudjman is acutely aware that the West, which already has enough
> on its plate with Serbia and Bosnia, is inclined to turn a blind eye to
> his domestic authoritarianism.
>     The only hitch would be if Croat forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina
> attracted international condemnation with actions such as a paramilitary
> march on Serb Trebinje.
>     Although details of the shootout are shrouded in mystery, there
> are striking similarities with the killing of the Party of Right's
> vice-president at a roadblock last autumn.
>     Dr. Tudjman is anxious to present a clean international image. He
> has long believed that Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a viable state and
> wants to annex territory if it falls apart---but he does not want Croatia
> to have been perceived as an aggressor.
>     The strained relations between Bosnia's beleaguered Muslim Slav
> leaders and their nominal allies in Zagreb received a new blow after the
> Croatian President invoked the threat of an Islamic state.
>     In language similar to the anti-Muslim propaganda of the Serbs,
> Mr. Tudjman said: "The world has realized that on the territory of
> Bosnia-Herzegovina, there are tendencies to create an Islamic state in Europe
> which is unacceptable to international factions."
>     Stung by the unexpected attack, Bosnia President Alija Izetbegovic
> refuted the "insinuation" and reaffirmed his oppostion to the plans of
> Bosnian Serbs and Croats to carve up the republic into ethnic enclaves.
>     Croat forces have efficiently secured their strongholds in
> Bosnia-Herzegovina while the international community has concentrated its
> gaze on Serb land grabs, detention camps and "ethnic cleansing."
>     A journey through Croat territory reveals the burned-out houses of
> Serbs also hounded from their homes.
>     Croats, who make up 17 per cent of the republic's population,
> say they defend 30 per cent of its soil. They are, in theory, fighting
> alongside Muslim government forces, although there are reports of clashes
> between the allies.
>     The Muslims, the largest ethnic group, have long suspected they are
> the victims of a planned Serb-Croat carve-up.
>     As Croatia applies for full membership in the Council of Europe,
> the President likes to portray his country as liberal, pluralistic,
> market-oriented and Western, in stark contrast to Communist, undemocratic,
> Orthodox Serbia.
>     The first elections since Croatia achieved independence returned Mr.
> Tudjman to the presidential palace and gave his ruling Croatian Democratic
> Union a comfortable parliamentary majority.
>     "The core group around Tudjman interprets this result as the
> justification for the continuation of their authoritorian approach to
> politics," said Zarko Puhovski, a Zagreb politics professor.
>     Mr. Tudjman, 70, tends to present his ministers and parliament
> with decisions as 'faits accomplis'.
>     He relies heavily on his kitchen cabinet, the supreme state council,
> which includes his son Miroslav. The new prime minister-designate, Hrvoje
> Sarinic, was previously his chief of staff.
>     Vladimir Seks, the country's state prosecutor and also a senior
> party leader, has already demonstrated his willingness to crack down on
> political opponents and free speech.
>     Three journalists from Slobodna Dalmacija, the biggest-selling
> morning newspaper and the only opposition daily, face prosecution for a
> satirical article juxtaposing photographs of Mr. Tudjman, Hitler and
> Stalin as students.
>     "We had the same trouble under the Communists. Tudjman is a
> Bolshevik general who became a nationalist leader. Now he talks about
> democracy. What can you expect?" journalist Predrag Lutic asked.
>     "The war is being used as an excuse for everything. If you are a
> political opponent, you are a traitor. I think the war will live on in the
> Croatian media for 20 years while democracy and human rights are ignored."
>     Meanwhile, Professor Milorad Pupovac, the leader of the Serbian
> Democratic Forum, an alliance of liberal Croatian Serbs, has also appeared
> in court after saying that Orthodox Serb children are under pressure to
> take the catechism and convert to Roman Catholicism in Croatian schools.
>     Investigations into the murders and disapperances of hundreds of
> Serbs living in Cratia are progressing at a snail's pace, if at all.
> Zagreb's Serbian Ortodox Museum and the seat of the leading Orthodox
> churchman in Croatia were blown up in April.
>     Persecution continues, with Serbians facing summary dismissal from
> jobs in Croatia and hounding from their homes in a smaller-scale version
> of the "ethnic cleansing" practiced in Bosnia. About 60 Serbian homes were
> recently destroyed in the southern Croatian town of Metkovic.