ZAGREB, Aug 6, 2020 - Anyone who thinks that the state can be an excuse for war crimes is seriously mistaken, the leader of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), Milorad Pupovac, said in Uzdolje, near Knin, on Thursday, in an address to a memorial ceremony for eight Serb civilians killed there in the wake of Operation Storm 25 years ago.

"Even more mistaken are those who think that peace can be built by ignoring killings like these and without showing empathy for the suffering that people endured," he added.

Pupovac said that the victims had been "perfidiously and inhumanely" killed by those who thought they were doing a big thing and those big things justified such crimes.

Pupovac said that the people attending the commemoration had gathered together to stand up to such thinking and belief, adding that they would continue to organise such memorials to condemn those crimes and encourage the authorities to identify those responsibly and bring them to justice.

"We will continue to gather together in the belief that by respecting the suffering endured by our compatriots, both Croats, and Serbs, we will create a society of peace in which we will close the chapter on the war rather than reopen it every year, a society in which people will be able to live in peace and look to the future," Pupovac said.

War crimes against Serbs seldom prosecuted

SDSS MP Anja Simpraga warned that while the war crimes committed against Croats were recognised and formally commemorated and many Serbs were prosecuted and punished for those crimes, this could not be said of the war crimes committed against Serbs and of their expulsion.

"War crimes against Serbs have been seldom punished, particularly those committed during or in the wake of Operation Storm. The places of their suffering are marked and commemorated by Serb organisations only, and they don't seem to exist for the state and the government. The same is true of the expulsion of nearly 200,000 Serbs during Operation Storm alone, not counting those expelled during Operation Flash and those expelled from many towns outside the war zones," Simpraga said.

She said that there was no public awareness among the Croats of such large-scale suffering of Serbs and no awareness of the need to express regret and empathy.

"Condemnations of war crimes are getting fewer and fewer over the years and are giving way to callousness and unchristian ridicule, hatred of the remaining Serbs, intolerance towards what makes them different from Croats, and violence," she added.

Simpraga recalled that in addition to the 200,000 Serbs who had fled from Operation Storm, nearly 2,000 had been killed during or in the wake of the Croatian military offensive, and "hundreds of villages and a thousand houses" had been devastated. She said it was high time to shed light on the war crimes, what had happened during the war, and the damage that had been done not just to Serbs but to Croatia itself.

"It is necessary to stop the hatred and violence against Serbs and start building a society of tolerance and respect for diversity. It is also necessary to stop keeping quiet about other people's suffering during the war and ridiculing it but rather show respect for the suffering of all (both Croats and Serbs). That's what honourable warriors and wise and honest politicians do and what true priests preach," Simpraga said.

Stevan, Janja and Djurdjija Beric, Milos Cosic, and Sava, Milica, Jandrija and Krstan Sare were killed in Uzdolje on 6 August 1995. No one has been brought to account for these murders.

Pavle Strugar, the war criminal who shelled Dubrovnik, causing not only wanton destruction and horrific damage to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, but also a terrible loss of life, has passed away in Serbia.

Strugar was born on the 13th of July, 1933 in Peć, in the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia, now Kosovo. The Montenegrin general served in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), undertaking various different roles, and eventually becoming the commander of the Second Operational Group of the JNA, which operated in southern Croatia, in 1991.

Under his command, the JNA monstrously attacked Dubrovnik in 1991, in a siege which caused tremendous damage to the city, and took the lives of both veterans and civilians. The terrible siege of Dubrovnik lasted until 1992, with Strugar retiring one year later, in 1993.

As Jutarnji reports on the 13th of December, 2018, the retired General Pavle Strugar has died in Belgrade following a short but serious illness.

Strugar was tried and sentenced for his actions, as well as for the deaths of civilians at the Hague tribunal, this was coupled with the fact that in 1991, he did nothing to prevent the horrendous war crime of the shelling of Dubrovnik. The Montenegrin initially attempted an appeal to his sentence, but that was later withdrawn.

Strugar voluntarily handed himself over to the Hague Tribunal in 2001, making a name for himself as the first Serb or Montenegrin to make such a move. Because of his part in the criminal shelling of Dubrovnik, a beloved UNESCO World Heritage Site, he was sentenced to a pitiful 7.5 years in prison, and of course, he didn't even serve that, after serving a mere two-thirds of his sentence, he was released back in 2009. 

Strugar will be buried this Saturday at the Bežanijska cemetery in the Serbian capital, according to a report from Mondo.rs.

Make sure to stay up to date with our news page for much more.

Amid rumours that the finance minister, Zdravko Marić, is set to step down from his position within the Croatian Government as soon as next month, PM Andrej Plenković has been having his refusal to outright deny the claims scrutinised, with some believing that this means Marić's departure was imminent and due to take place in early 2019. It seems however, that Marić isn't going anywhere.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 9th of December, 2018, HDZ President and PM Andrej Plenković said on Saturday that Finance Minister Zdravko Maric isn't going to leave the government.

"There will be no departure," Plenković told journalists after the he was questioned about whether or not he'd talked to Marić himself about his alleged departure from the cabinet before the end of his mandate, as was being circulated by some media outlets.

The Prime Minister, upon being questioned about the criticisms of controversial SDSS President Milorad Pupovac regarding recent arrests in Vukovar, said that he didn't listen to that press conference, adding that the current government is not interfering with the work of the police or with the work of DORH in any manner whatsoever.

He pointed out, in order to quell people's natural suspicions that "there are no invisible political hands" holding any influence over this process.

When asked about the elections for the European Parliament, PM Andrej Plenković stated that the party would be "almost sure" on their own and that at least five mandates can be expected. "We'll win convincingly in those elections," he said briefly.

Concerning the controversy around the procurement of Israeli F-16 aircraft, Plenković reiterated that everything that the Republic of Croatia did in this process was done systematically, thoroughly, and in fine detail, and that open issues, if there are any, exist solely between Israel and the United States of America, and are nothing to do with Croatia or the part Croatia played in the process.

He confirmed that he visited Zagreb's mayor Milan Bandić was taken to hospital yesterday morning, adding that Bandić claims to be feeling good and that he believes that he will recover and be back on his feet quickly.

Make sure to follow our dedicated politics page for more on PM Andrej Plenković, the Croatian Government, and updates from both domestic and European politics in Croatia.

Back in the 90s, Dubrovnik, best known today for being the Pearl of the Adriatic, was an entirely different place. Ravaged by war and under attack from the JNA (Yugoslav People's Army) and their Serbian and Montenegrin helpers, who made sure to not only burn houses, but to steal from them too, Croatia's southernmost city suffered one of its most devastating attacks on this very day, back on the 6th of December, 1991.

As Morski writes on the 6th of December, 2018, today will remain scarred into history's bloody memory as the day when the City of Dubrovnik was defended. The attack, which began on Friday, December the 6th, 1991, at 5:50 am, saw the JNA put its weight behind its senseless and barbaric attack on the Croatian city of the arts. The aggressors launched a horrendous assault on the beloved UNESCO World Heritage site, showering the city with blows from the sea and the land, assisted by heavy weaponry including cannons, mortars, and tanks.

The JNA's end goal was to weaken and break Dubrovnik's last line of defense from the former Hotel Belvedere, which now lies in ruin as a star reminder of this shameful assault, to Sustjepan, located along Rijeka Dubrovačka. On just that day, more than 600 Yugoslav Army grenades rained down on the city's historic core, killing and injuring along their way. The JNA, Serbia and Montenegro were quickly met with international condemnation following this act of terrorism, with Serbia and Montenegro ostracised by the European Community, and by the world.

As the fires caused by the attack didn't take long spread across the city, a group of veterans located at Srđ's Fort Imperijal, a Napoleonic building at the very top of the mountain, managed to fend off the brutal and relentless Yugoslav attacks and prevent the defeat of Dubrovnik's last defense, today marks the solemn anniversary, and we honour and celebrate Dubrovnik's War Veterans Day, as Dubrovniknet reports.

During this primitive and unjustifiable attack, nineteen people lost their lives, and sixty were injured, some very seriously. Nine of Dubrovnik's buildings burned, and the damage to the UNESCO World Heritage site's historic core was vast, as it was throughout the rest of the city. At 16:00, the relentless attack ended, with the JNA accepting defeat and finally withdrawing. The courage and the enormous sacrifice of Dubrovnik's war veterans is the reason the city is as it is today.

Pavle Strugar, a former JNA General, was sentenced and rightly put behind bars at the Hague International Tribunal for failing to take command of responsibility during the horrific JNA attack on Dubrovnik on this day back in 1991. Miodrag Jokić also pleaded guilty to six counts of the charges against the JNA for the attack on Dubrovnik, he was also sentenced and jailed.

Make sure to follow Total Dubrovnik for more on the Pearl of the Adriatic.

ZAGREB, August 23, 2018 - Croatia on Wednesday extradited to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) former Army of BiH member Hasan Ružnić, who is suspected of war crimes against Serbs, the BiH Prosecutor's Office said.

ZAGREB, July 6, 2018 - Croatia's Supreme Court has reduced the 15-year prison sentence to 13.5 years for Dragan Vasiljković aka Captain Dragan, wartime commander of a Serb paramilitary unit, for war crimes committed against Croatian soldiers and civilians during the 1991-1995 war of independence.

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ZAGREB, February 24, 2018 - The lessons drawn from the work of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) should be fair and efficient prosecution of perpetrators of serious crimes in armed conflicts and well as deterrence against possible war crimes, academician Davorin Rudolf said at a conference which the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) held in Zagreb on Friday.

ZAGREB, February 19, 2018 - Sisak County Court on Monday sentenced a Serb citizen in absentia to 20 years imprisonment for the murder of three and attempted murder of four Croatian police officers while commanding a Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) tank.

ZAGREB, January 31, 2018 - The Constitutional Court has rejected a complaint by wartime assistant interior minister Tomislav Merčep who in 2016 was convicted of war crimes committed at the start of the war in Croatia in the early 1990s.