Croatia, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and General Gotovina as a Political Symbol

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Acknowledgments

Part of the research for this article was made possible by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. I would also like to thank Dejan Jović and Chris Lamont for organizing the workshop at the University of Sterling and for their feedback on earlier drafts of the article.

Notes

¹As former ICTY spokesperson Florence Hartmann has noted, the EU's decision to insist on ICTY conditionality has yielded results in pressuring the Yugoslav successor states to cooperate with the tribunal (Hartmann 2009, pp. 67–69). Former chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had long claimed that Gotovina was being hidden in Croatia or neighbouring Bosnia & Herzegovina with the help of hardline nationalists in the Croatian government and intelligence services, especially after the media revealed the latter had been obstructing the ICTY's work under orders from Tuđman in what was known as ‘Operation Hague’ (Slobodna Dalmacija, 17 October 2004). Both the Račan and Sanader governments vehemently denied that Gotovina was in Croatia during his period on the run, and the general's arrest on Spanish territory seemed to exculpate the Croatian authorities, even though Gotovina's exact whereabouts from 2001 to 2005 remain murky and subject to rumours.

²In 2009 this centred on the failure of Croatia to locate documents related to Operation Storm, collectively known as the ‘artillery journals’.

³I consider cult here to be defined as ‘an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, especially as manifested by a body of admirers’ (Webster's 1998, p. 488).

⁴Croatia's war for independence and resistance against Greater Serbian aggression directed from Belgrade had been marred by the systematic persecution of its ethnic Serb minority, the murder of Serb civilians in towns from Slavonia to Lika, and the widespread looting and destruction of Serb regions following the liberation of occupied territories (Goldstein 2008, pp. 699–751).

⁵Interview with Nenad Ivanković in Dom i svijet, 11 February 2002, available at: www.hic.hr/dom/373/dom03.htm, accessed 1 April 2009.

⁶The Croatian government embarked on a process of de-Tuđmanisation after 2000, which in principle related to a shift away from the radical nationalism, overt corruption and increasing authoritarianism of the 1990s and towards greater EU integration (Søberg 2007; Matić2008).

⁷ Feral Tribune, 15 February 2002; Jutarnij list, 24 August 2007.

⁸ Jutarnji list, 24 August 2007; Feral Tribune, 31 August 2007; Nacional, 8 January 2008.

⁹‘Jutarnji list is Publishing a Forgery’, press statement from Gotovina's defence team (20 February 2005), available at: www.antegotovina.com/print.aspx?clanak=3320&LID=1, accessed 1 April 2009. Gotovina's lawyer Luka Mišetić subsequently claimed that the charges against his client were fabricated as part of an internal struggle in French politics. See Globus, 29 August 2007; Jutarnji list, 29 August 2007 and Feral Tribune, 31 August 2007.

¹⁰Špegelj also discusses the tensions between the officers who had come from the JNA, and the émigrés and HDZ members who were more receptive to the rehabilitation of the ‘spirit and model of the NDH [pro-fascist Croatian regime during World War II]’ (Špegelj 2001, p. 195). See also Tus (1999, pp. 75, 89).

¹¹The exact role of MPRI, which received Pentagon approval to begin working with the HV in early 1995, remains subject to debate. Its spokesmen have denied any ‘role in planning, monitoring, or assisting in Operation Storm’, in order to distance themselves from any possible association with the war crimes committed in the course of that action (New York Times, 13 October 2002). Sociologist Ozren Žunec, who has written extensively on the Homeland War, however, argues that MPRI had been present for years in Croatia (the organisation had initially sent its employees as border monitors to Croatia as early as 1991) and that ‘in one way or another, MPRI was involved in many functions of the structure of the Croatian Army’ (Žunec 1999, p. 143).

¹²Galbraith (2006, p. 126); interview with General Atif Dudaković, ‘We Needed Operation Storm as Much as Croatia Did’, Bosnian Institute, 15 September 2006, available at: http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2225,accessed 30 June 2010; Chollet (1997, pp. 32–34); Tanner (2001, pp. 296–98).

¹³A poll conducted in early 2005 during the broadcast of one of Croatia's most watched political television shows, Latinica, is just one indicator of Gotovina's popularity while he was evading capture. Viewers were asked if they were to encounter Gotovina, would they report him to police or help him hide. Only 8% of the respondents said they would turn him in, while 92% said they would help him avoid arrest. Of those who said they would help him, 76% said they believed he was innocent (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEvVcjLaDFw, accessed 30 June 2010).

¹⁴This psychological warfare included fake radio broadcasts and leaflets of alleged RSK government evacuation plans. These actions are referred to in the amended joint indictment of Gotovina, Čermak, and Markač issued on 17 May 2007 (available at: www.icty.org/x/cases/gotovina/ind/en/got-amdjoind070517e.pdf, accessed 30 June 2010).

¹⁵In a statement that was aired on all Croatian media, Tuđman called on ‘Croatian citizens of Serbian nationality, who did not actively participate in the rebellion, to stay in their homes without fear for their lives or property, and await the arrival of Croatian authorities’ (Vjesnik, 5 August 1995). However, some Croatian historians have argued that the publication of the so-called Brioni Transcripts (based on recordings of a Croatian government meeting on the Brioni Islands on 31 July 1995 to discuss the plans of Operation Storm, available at: www.camo.ch/brijunski_transkripti.htm, accessed 12 October 2009) are proof that Tuđman's call for Serbs to stay was not sincere, while others have insisted that the Brioni text was taken out of context and manipulated in order to accuse Tuđman of ethnic cleansing (Goldstein 2008, p. 747; Marijan 2007, p. 140).

¹⁶Transcript of film Oluja nad krajinom (2001), available at: www.b92.net/specijal/oluja/index.php?start=0&nav_id=174029, accessed 5 June 2008.

¹⁷ New York Times, 6 August 1995.

¹⁸During Gotovina's trial, the former president of the Croatian Helsinki Committee, Žarko Puhovski, admitted that the figures of the report were not precise due to the difficult conditions in the former war zone and the lack of cooperation from the Croatian government (Novi list, 17 February 2009; Novi list, 18 February 2009).

¹⁹ Globus, 5 August 2005.

²⁰Amnesty International Report EUR 64/04/98, Croatia: Impunity for Killings after Storm, August 1998, available at: www.amnesty.org, accessed 5 June 2008.

²¹Amended joint indictment of Gotovina, Čermak, and Markač issued 17 May 2007, available at: www.icty.org/x/cases/gotovina/ind/en/got-amdjoind070517e.pdf, accessed 30 June 2010.

²² Nacional, 24 June 2003. Although these documents seem to leave little doubt that the RSK was planning the evacuation of civilians long before Operation Storm was even conceived, it should be kept in mind that some of the documents have been identified as fabrications, part of the propaganda campaign carried out by Croatian intelligence services to destabilise the Krajina prior to the military offensive (Feral Tribune, 2 August 2003).

²³Peter Galbraith, the former US ambassador to Croatia, emphasised this fact during his appearance on the witness stand at the Milošević trial (Jutarnji list, 26 June 2003; Jutarnji list, 27 June 2003; Feral Tribune, 5 July 2003). Transcripts of the testimony are available at: www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/030625ED.htm, and www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/030626IT.htm, both sites accessed 25 March 2009.

²⁴Journalist Darko Hudelist, in a controversial biography of Tuđman, alleges that ‘Tuđman is the father of the Homeland because, once and for all, he was able to resolve the Serb question in Croatia … It certainly does not sound nice, but it is correct: Tuđman's strategy towards the Serbs in Croatia consisted of the plan that by the end of the Croat–Serb war there would be less than 5% of them left’ (Hudelist 2004, pp. 680, 709).

²⁵See the report by Human Rights Watch (1999).

²⁶In a recording of a conversation held on 24 August 1995 in his office, Tuđman can be heard discussing the resettlement of Croats, including émigrés living in Paraguay, in regions abandoned by the Serbs (Lucić2005, pp. 485–86; Goldstein 2003, p. 432). The conversations referred to here are from transcripts of recordings that Tuđman made in his office during his administration, similar to the Nixon tapes. They were secret recordings of meetings, subsequently made public by former President Stjepan Mesic.

²⁷ Nacional, 23 January 2007.

²⁸See also the discussion about the controversial role of the ICTY as historian in Žunec (2007, pp. 23–66). For a comparative perspective, in particular the role of the so-called ‘Holocaust trials’ and the history of World War II, see Osiel (1997) and Douglas (2001).

²⁹Statements made to journalists and others, including the author, after the commemoration in Knin, on 5 August 2007. Sanader was quoted in Vjesnik, 6 August 2007.

³⁰The polemics and media spectacle surrounding the proposed publication of a history textbook supplement about the 1980s and 1990s is illustrative of the sensitivity over narratives of the Homeland War. The Croatian NGO Documenta published the controversial textbook supplement along with a collection of press clippings and commentary which vividly shows the divisions between historians who argue that there are multiple perspectives and approaches in analysing the recent past, and those who advocate a single narrative that should be promoted by the state and ministry of education (Documenta 2007). A response from those opposed to the textbook supplement was published a year later (Skenderovićet al. 2008). Serbian historian Mile Bjelajac and Croatian sociologist Ozren Žunec have identified many of the contested narratives within both Croatian and Serbian historiography and politics in their essay about the war in Croatia (Bjelajac & Žunec 2007, pp. 11–65).

³¹The editor of the right-wing weekly Hrvatski list noted bitterly that ‘the same members of the HDZ who hung posters of the general in public places in Zadar’, and who even used those images to call for a public uprising against Račan's former coalition government and Stjepan Mesić were pressured by Sanader and the international community to turn away ‘from the symbol which until yesterday embodied their own political philosophy’ (Hrvatski list, 30 December 2004).

³²Cited in Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Balkan Crisis Report, 547, 16 March 2005, available at: iwpr.net/?p=bcr&s=f&o=241979&apc_state=henibcr2005, accessed 5 June 2008.

³³ Jutarnji list, 18 March 2006. The same poll revealed that 54.7% of the respondents thought he was innocent.

³⁴ Feral Tribune, 24 March 2005.

³⁵Interview with Ante Gotovina in Slobodna Dalmacija, 4 August 2000, available at: www.arhiv.sloboodnadalmacija.hr/nedjelja/20000804/, accessed 1 April 2009.

³⁶ Vjesnik, 6 August 1996; Vjesnik, 6 August 1997.

³⁷The text of the Croatian government's declaration of cooperation with the ICTY was published in Narodne Novine, 41, 18 April 2000, available at: www.nn.hr, accessed 12 October 2009. Following the arrest of Mirko Norac, the escape of Ante Gotovina and the refusal of Janko Bobetko to appear before the tribunal resulted in internal pressure from numerous demonstrations by veterans and nationalists, and international pressure from the chief prosecutor and EU member states who felt the Croatian government was not doing enough regarding cooperation.

³⁸During 2004, for example, the Croatian government effectively extradited generals Čermak and Markač and cooperated in handing over documents, but was criticised repeatedly by Carla Del Ponte for failing to take concrete actions in arresting Gotovina or even challenging his heroic image in public; some HDZ officials attended pro-Gotovina events, had pictures of Gotovina in their offices and publicly insisted on his innocence (Večernji list, 11 October 2004; Novi list, 24 November 2004; Globus, 10 December 2004). Veteran HDZ parliamentary deputy Đuro Perica told reporters that ‘90% of HDZ members are against the government's policy of extraditing our heroes to the Hague tribunal’ (Novi list, 23 February 2005).

³⁹ Novi list, 6 August 2005.

⁴⁰For more on Thompson, see Catherine Baker's contribution to this collection.

⁴¹ Hrvatski list, 11 August 2005.

⁴² Globus, 12 August 2005. Croatian authorities successfully prevented any serious acts of violence associated with demonstrations in support of indicted Croatian generals, despite the often heated rhetoric of veterans' organisations and the radical right, such as the threat of terrorist bombings in Vukovar if Gotovina was arrested (Novi list, 1 June 2005).

⁴³ Hrvatski list, 11 August 2005.

⁴⁴ Vjesnik, 14 December 2004.

⁴⁵ Novi list, 18 March 2005; Vjesnik, 18 March 2005.

⁴⁶ Večernji list, 12 December 2005.

⁴⁷One day after a group of youths, several in Ustaša uniforms, damaged the Social Democratic Party offices in Zadar, Račan was asked to comment about the possibility of violent protests in response to Gotovina's arrest: ‘I don't think the demonstrations will be very big’, he told reporters, ‘and the reason is very simple. The HDZ had previously organised protests against my government, but today they certainly won't demonstrate against Sanader’ (Novi list, 10 December 2005).

⁴⁸In 2009, after a long and controversial trial, the Zagreb county court found Glavaš guilty of crimes against Serb civilians in Osijek and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, but he had already fled to Bosnia & Herzegovina, arguing that the trial was a political farce directed by his former ally Sanader.

⁴⁹ Index.hr, 11 March 2005, available at: www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak.aspx?id=254250, accessed 3 October 2009.

⁵⁰Veteran political commentator Davor Butković noted in 2005 that ‘by glorifying Gotovina in his speeches, Glavaš has again institutionalised nationalism as one of the founding tenets of the ruling party's ideology’ (Jutarnji list, 19 March 2005).

⁵¹Matija Gubec led a failed peasant uprising in 1573 and was put to death with a crown of hot iron on his head.

⁵²The scions of two Croatian noble families, Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan were executed outside of Vienna in 1671 after plotting against the Habsburgs.

⁵³A close collaborator of Ante Starčević, the ‘father’ of Croatian nationalism, Eugen Kvaternik was killed in a bungled attempt to start a rebellion in the Krajina region against Viennese rule in 1871.

⁵⁴Stjepan Radić, a founder of the Croatian Peasant Party and uncontested leader of the interwar Croatian national movement, was mortally wounded in the Yugoslav parliament by a deputy of the Serbian Radical Party in 1928, paving the way for King Alexander's royal dictatorship.

⁵⁵The leader of the Croatian Communist Party during World War II, Andrija Hebrang died under mysterious circumstances (apparently executed while in prison in 1949) after the Tito–Stalin split.

⁵⁶Accused of collaboration with the Ustaša regime and imprisoned by the communist authorities, Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac symbolised the repression of the Catholic Church in post-World War II Yugoslavia.

⁵⁷ Novi list, 10 September 2005; Globus, 23 September 2005.

⁵⁸ Vjesnik, 16 March 2005.

⁵⁹ Krilnik was the highest military rank used by the Ustaše during World War II, and briefly by paramilitary groups in Croatia in 1991.

⁶⁰Pamphlet issued by Hrvatski politički uznici hrvatske, in the possession of the author.

⁶¹The reporter noted about 100 people dressed in Ustaša uniforms (Glas Slavonije, 15 May 2005).

⁶² Glas Slavonije, 15 May 2005.

⁶³The streets of Split were covered with Gotovina graffiti especially in the aftermath of his arrest (Feral Tribune, 16 December 2005). In March 2005, a church outside of Rijeka was defaced with Ustaša symbols, ‘Long live Gotovina’, and anti-Serb and anti-EU messages (Novi list, 12 March 2005). And in October 2005, two Partisan monuments in the Gorski kotar region were covered in paint glorifying the NDH and proclaiming Gotovina a hero (Novi list, 11 October 2005; Novi list, 17 October 2005).

⁶⁴ Feral Tribune, 17 March 2005.

⁶⁵ Novi list, 13 December 2005.

⁶⁶ Washington Post, 1 July 2006.

⁶⁷ Los Angeles Times, 19 January 2003.

⁶⁸ Feral Tribune, 22 September 2006.

⁶⁹Turbo-folk is a popular genre of Balkan music, often with nationalist undertones.

⁷⁰In Tomislavgrad, near the Croatian–Bosnian border, the local government founded the Hajduk Group of Mijat Tomić (Hajdučka družina Mijata Tomića) in 1995 within the 1st Croatian Guards Unit in order to ‘preserve the traditions’ of the town and celebrate the seventeenth century Croatian hajduk. See www.hbzup.com/tomislavgrad/kultura/hajducka/index.htm, accessed 10 June 2008. See also Jutarnji list, 15 July 2001, for other examples of Croatian hajduks. The football club of Split, Croatia's second largest city, carries the name Hajduk.

⁷¹In an interview, Škoro claimed that the song was not just about Gotovina, Mirko Norac and other Croatian generals indicted by The Hague, but about ‘the crucified Homeland’ and other martyrs from Croatia's past such as Petar Zrinski, Fran Kristo Frankopan and Matija Gubec (Večernji list, 9 June 2005). Similar sentiments are expressed in his song Hag (The Hague).

⁷²For a discussion of the veneration of criminals who became national heroes during the wars of the 1990s, see Čolović (2004).

⁷³ Novi list, 24 November 2004.

⁷⁴ Globus, 25 February 2005.

⁷⁵ Novi list, 5 February 2005.

⁷⁶In early 2005, under increasing EU pressure, Sanader and Mesić convened a meeting of all Croatian intelligence and security services in order to create a smaller team dedicated to tracking down Gotovina and implementing the government's ‘Action Plan’. This included breaking up Gotovina's support network, a coordinated shift in the ruling party's rhetoric on the Gotovina issue, and direct communication with the ICTY about Gotovina's possible whereabouts. Sanader also authorised Mladen Bajić, Croatia's chief public prosecutor, to pursue information leading to Gotovina more aggressively than the previous year (Novi list, 5 February 2005; Jutarnji list, 4 June 2005; International Herald Tribune, 27 December 2005).

⁷⁷ Obzor (Večernji list), 26 July 2008.

⁷⁸ Večernji list, 12 March 2005.

⁷⁹ Novi list, 5 March 2005.

⁸⁰ Globus, 18 December 2005. Goldstein used the term ognjištari to refer to these Gotovina supporters, which can best be translated as traditionalists, even though the Croatian word is derived from ognjište, or hearth (thus they could be described as ‘hearthists’).

⁸¹The party's founder, Ivić Pašalić, who was one of Tuđman's closest advisors, lost to Ivo Sanader in the struggle for the HDZ leadership following Tuđman's death.

⁸²The HIP was founded by Miroslav Tuđman, the former president's son and the former chief of Croatia's intelligence services.

⁸³For many years the party's office in Split displayed a large Gotovina poster, and the HČSP president, Luka Podrug, was active in organising public gatherings in support of the indicted general.

⁸⁴The caption for the advertisement read ‘2 January 2005—Together Again’, suggesting that as president Rojs would not arrest Gotovina, but rather would give him a position as an advisor (Hrvatski list, 23 December 2004).

⁸⁵ Nacional, 17 June 2003.

⁸⁶ Večernji list, 8 December 2005.

⁸⁷For public opinion polls see the webpage of the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, available at: www.mvpei.hr/ei/default.asp?ru=219&sid=&akcija=&jezik=2, accessed 5 December 2008; and Jutarnji list, 26 September 2006. Whereas support for the EU was around 70% for a number of years, it has generally been below or around 50% since 2005.

⁸⁸For example, see articles in Hrvatsko slovo, 6 October 2006; Hrvatsko slovo, 29 December 2006; and Fokus, 1 December 2006.

⁸⁹ Novi list, 18 March 2005.

⁹⁰ Večernji list, 10 January 2006.

⁹¹ Novi list, 12 December 2005. In February 2006, the Foundation for the Truth of the Homeland War was established to raise money for Gotovina's defence, fund research on the Homeland War, and provide scholarships to the children of veterans.

⁹² Novi list, 6 December 2006. Some 40 generals were invited by the HDZ to participate on this council, yet another body dedicated to the ‘truth’ of the Homeland War. For details on other political activities of former generals, see Feral Tribune, 10 November 2006.

⁹³ Novi list, 10 December 2005.

⁹⁴ New York Times, 2 January 2006.

⁹⁵ Fokus, 16 December 2005.

⁹⁶Right-wing publications regularly warn readers about the ‘dark plans’ of the West, including the ‘neocolonial ambitions of the United Kingdom’ and neoliberal economic interests which want to force Croatia into a new Yugoslavia masked as the Western Balkans (Hrvatski list, 15 February 2007; Hrvatsko slovo, 28 November 2008; Fokus, 20 February 2009).

⁹⁷ Novi list, 1 March 2005.