Witness Speaks of Climate of Fear in Croatia

A witness in the trial of a politician charged with inciting Serbs to ethnic violence said the accused was unknown in Croatia when the clashes started.



The witness confirmed the view of the defendant, Vojislav Seselj, that the government of the newly independent Croatia “inspired horror” in Serbs, who “were certainly afraid by [the then President Franjo Tudjman’s] statements”.



Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, SRS, is charged by the Hague tribunal with making “inflammatory speeches in the media, during public events and during visits to the volunteer units and other Serb forces in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, instigating those forces to commit crimes” between 1991 and 1993.



The witness, whose identity was hidden for his own protection, said he was a member of the Serbian Democratic Party in Croatia’s Serb-populated region of Western Slavonia.



He is giving evidence under a pseudonym and with the use of voice distortion technology because he wanted to protect his family following certain unpleasant incidents on the streets of Belgrade. Seselj remains politically influential, and his deputy in the SRS was narrowly lost out in presidential elections this month.



The witness told the court that he heard about crimes committed against Croats by both SRS volunteers and Serb extremists living in Croatia in various villages in Western Slavonia during 1991 and 1992.



According to him, Croats were killed and beaten in the villages of Vocin, Cetekovac and Balinci, among others, while their houses as well as Catholic churches were razed to the ground.



“Sometime towards the end of 1991, we heard about crimes committed in Western Slavonia. A number of them we ascribed to volunteers up there to the north of Vocin. Those around Pakrac were ascribed to Serbian extremists among the local population,” the witness told the court.



But when asked by the court, he denied that Seselj’s rhetoric had helped to spark the first violent clashes in 1990.



“He was completely unknown to Serbs in Croatia at the time,” he said.



In his cross-examination of the witness, Seselj tried to establish reasons, other than his own rhetoric, for the crimes committed. He asked the witness to describe the political atmosphere in Croatia during the early 1990s.



The witness explained that Serbs were afraid of the new Croatian government because of memories of ethnic persecution in World War Two, when Croatia was ruled by the fascist Ustashe. He said that Tudjman’s regime was “perceived as the rehabilitation of the Ustashe state”.



“The Serbs in Western Slavonia had misgivings about Tudjman’s authority, his behaviour, his rhetoric, the provocation that ensued,” he said.



“I remember at all meetings we had, people only shouted, ‘Give us arms, give us arms’, because they were so frightened about seeing the new Croatian army on television.”



The indictment against Seselj alleges that he “instigated his followers and the local authorities to engage in a persecution campaign against the local Croat population”. Seselj has countered that the Croats created the animosity in the political climate of newly independent Croatia.



To demonstrate his point, Seselj asked the witness about the “enormous number” of camps for Serbs in Western Slavonia where torture was allegedly regularly conducted by the Croatian authorities.



The witness concurred with Seselj that according to a survivor from one such camp, Serb prisoners were tortured with electric shocks and “ordered to cut each others’ ears and then eat them”.



Seselj then went on to try to absolve himself of responsibility for the SRS volunteers that fought in Croatia. Although he is not actually charged with such direct responsibility, he explained that after Belgrade’s troops joined the conflict in September 1991, the volunteers came under central control.



A jocular Seselj embarked on a relentless line of questioning to show that SRS volunteers “were put on an equal footing” with national soldiers - being paid by the government, receiving the same military benefits and a military funeral back in Serbia. The witness confirmed all of his statements about the structure of Serb armed forces in Croatia.



But the indictment against Seselj refers less to the coordination of SRS volunteers during combat and more to the way he allegedly instigated violence and was responsible for acts of propaganda.



He is accused of inciting hatred towards non-Serb people, rather than with failing to prevent war crimes - a charge that would be more relevant for a military commander.



Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.