Justice Raped - Putting Milosevic’s Death In Perspective

The fall of the Berlin Wall, so symbolic of the collapse of Communism in Europe, occurred on the 19th November 1989.

Yet long before that, the banned Croatian Democratic Union had been planning a coup with a view to detaching Croatia from the Yugoslav federation and creating a new, ethnically pure, Roman Catholic, Croatian State.

The death of Tito in 1980 opened the way. On 30 May 1990, to the delight of the Vatican, President Franjo Tudjman announced his ten point plan to the newly elected parliament in the capital Zagreb. This included “the carving out of a new position for Croatia within Yugoslavia;” together with, “the re‑Europeanisation of Croatia,” and, “the spiritual rejuvenation of the Croatian people”.

Then on June 25th 1991, Croatia and its Roman Catholic neighbour to the north, Slovenia, declared independence.

On 8th November Croatia severed all legal and constitutional ties with the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The overjoyed, but ever cautious, Vatican felt it safe to recognise the new state on 13th January 1992.

Two days later the European Union followed suit. A huge thanksgiving mass was held in Zagreb Cathedral.

On 22nd May 1992, Croatia’s security was guaranteed by her admission to the United Nations, “the highest level of international recognition that can be achieved by any country”.

On 19th Septtember 1992 the UN Security Council issued Resolution 777, declaring that the, “state formerly known as Socialist Federal Republic Yugoslavia, what we simply called Yugoslavia, no longer existed”.

As a consequence the area south west of Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, was cut off and became a nation state by default.

The other major partner in the now much shrunken Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, lay to the south east. It too suddenly found itself completely isolated. Though still defiantly calling itself the Federal Republic of Yigoslavia, it was in reality only small Serbia and Montenegro.

The Serbs were scattered throughout the whole of former Yugoslavia, with sizeable enclaves even in Croatia. They felt aggrieved and sought forcibly to carve out a “Greater Serbia” of a size more in keeping with their former historical dominance in the region. They attempted to capture corridors of land to link their isolated enclaves. More than a millennium of history lay behind the Serbs desire to preserve their national identity and protect their Serbian Orthodox Religion, with its far flung shrines and holy places now widely scattered and ill protected.

The Vatican rubbed salt into Serbian wounds when on 10th and l1th September 1994 Pope John Paul II made a high profile visit to the new Croatia, a bowl of former Yugoslav soil being raised for the papal kiss of this King of Kings. The Pope’s arrival was eagerly greeted by a million strong crowd at an open air mass in Zagreb. His itinerary had originally included a visit to Sarajevo, capital of the new Bosnia Herzegovina. But the Vatican suddenly cancelled without explanation. Nevertheless one was soon forthcoming. Under the headline, ‘The Catholic Church is Accused of Complicity in the killing of Serbs,’ The New York Times of September 6, 1994, gave the real reasons for the cancellation of the Pope’s visit to Sarajevo as follows:

“Serbian anger, which is evident in the Bosnian Serbs refusal to assure the Pope’s visit, is essentially rooted in the events of World War II, so a papal visit might have been greeted with whistles and boos. During the War, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, greeted the installation of the Pavelic regime as ‘God’s hand at work’ and never publicly denounced the onslaught on Serbian civilians. The ferocity of this onslaught, which often involved conversion of Greek orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism at gun point or their massacre in churches, was well known in the Vatican.” Too true. The new Bosnia Herzegovina’s ethnicity profile tells it all: Muslims 40%, Serbian Orthodox 31%, and Roman Catholics 15%. We can forget “whistles and boos”. The Pope would more likely have been assassinated, even had the Bosnian Serbs not known that, after vespers in Croatia’s Zagreb Cathedral, the Pope prayed at Stepinac’s tomb to the applause of monks and nuns!

To get events into perspective we must go back to 1914 when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Roman Catholic Austro-Hungary was assassinated by a Serbian activist in Sarajevo. Thereupon Jesuit Cardinal Merry del Val insisted that Serbia which for him represented Rome’s mortal enemy the Eastern Orthodox Church ‑ be firmly “chastised”. The instrument of that chastisement was to be Germany. But Germany and hence the Vatican lost the war.

So Roman Catholicism, which had spread so freely from Italy westwards through Savoy, France, Spain, Belgium, and northwards through Switzerland, Austro‑Hungary, Germany and Poland, was still insolently damned up at Italy’s North east border by a stubborn Eastern Orthodox wall of resistance.

This resistance now took the shape of a new, independent Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes created on 29th October 1918.

But the Vatican had a Trojan horse in the area, namely the Croats. If it could foment nationalism among the Croats, who were culturally Latin and had been devoted to the papacy for 1300 years, and if the Croats could dominate the area, Serb Orthodoxy would inevitably wither.

In 1929 Alexander became King of this new country, now named Yugoslavia, meaning Southern Slavs. He was a fair man who tried to unite his Slav people. But unfortunately this had the effect of bringing together disparate Croat nationalists into a Ustashe party committed to founding a Croatian State using violent methods similar to those of the IRA.

In 1934, exiled Ustashe Ante Pavelic was widely implicated in the assassination of King Alexander on a state visit to France, though it was carried out by a Macedonian. Pavelic was subsequently given safe haven in Italy by Mussolini. There Pavelic built up the Ustashe, in secret camps, from mere rebels with guns into a disciplined army in waiting, sporting the feared red and white chequer board flag which Tudjman was later insensitively to incorporate into the current Croatian flag on the basis of it having appeared on past Croatian flags.

The Vatican’s hour arrived in 1941. Yugoslavia was then ruled by a pro‑British regent, Prince Paul. It was offcially neutral but the Croats brought about a panicky political U turn away from the Allies, who just then looked likely to lose the war. Britain’s Serb friends acted quickly, organised a coup, and in two days overthrew the regent, putting Alexander’s son Peter on the throne at the head of a pro‑British government.

Hitler was furious and the Wehrmacht invaded, placing all of Yugoslavia under Nazi rule in 10 days. Belgrade was smashed but Zagreb was preserved for the Croats to hail their Nazi liberators.

Pavelic was brought in as head of a new puppet Independent Croatian State. He was supported by Archbishop Stepinac and his RC hierarchy and monks and nuns. Pavelic was soon to make even the Germans and Italians shudder with the ferocity of his racial cleansing. At least 500,000 and probably 700,000 (after allowing for 10% of all killed being Jews and Gypsies) of the country’s two million Serbs were slaughtered with horrific medieval brutality using hammers and knives, hatchets and saws, and even crucifixion. Much of the killing took place at the Croatian Concentration Complex of Jasenovac which consisted of five death camps run by Franciscan Monk Father Miroslav Filipovic, and his Franciscan assistants Frs Brekalo, Lipovac and Culina.

One night in 1942 the camp guards held a competition to see how many Serbs they could slaughter by hand. Catholic Crusader member Peter Brzica won the title King of Cut‑throats by slitting 1,360 throats with a special knife. During this period Plus XII twice received Pavelic in the Vatican.

Tito’s post war Yugoslavia was held together by his personal popularity and communist ideology. In the political vacuum that followed his death in 1980, rifts along ethnic fault lines slowly appeared.

The Serbs witnessed the rise of Franjo Tudjman in Croatia with a shudder. The minor politician Slobodan Milosevic who happened to be in the right place at the right time shot to power on a wave of Serb national consciousness.

The world media immediately turned against the Serbs. In an ongoing and increasingly successful campaign, the Serbs were styled evil aggressors. No allowance was made for their terrible memories of the fascist state of Croatia and what it had done to them in WWII. The Serbs just behaved as any threatened people would.

The emergence of the new Roman Catholic state of Croatia, created by the EU, the UN and the Vatican, had suddenly determined the future of the whole of former Yugoslavia. The new Croatia had an amazing 96% Croat population with over 90% claiming Roman Catholicism as their religion, while the Serb encalves shrunk to a mere 1%.

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic, formerly President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now Serbia Montenegro, at the Hague for war crimes, has portrayed him as the “Butcher of Belgrade” and “evil personified”. This is much to the delight of the Vatican whose prospects in the area have never been better.

Yet all Milosevic did was to lead the Serbs in their attempt to safeguard 1500 years of their heritage with the horrors and injustices of their World War II genocide ever before them. Philip Cunliffe of Kings College London has posted a well balanced article on the internet at www.spiked‑online.com/ Articles/0000000CAFC7.htm ”. He says:

“The dynamics of Yugoslav disintegration were set in motion, not by the expansionist instincts of the Serbian masses, but by the Western powers, who began competing with each other legally to recognise and give support to one ethnic group against another in the early 1990s. German and EU recognition of Croatia and Slovenia in 1991 was followed by US recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. Granting diplomatic recognition to secessionist groups arbitrarily elevated the wishes of one group of Yugoslavs over those, including the large Serbian minorities scattered throughout the former Yugoslavia, who wanted to remain part of the federation. Thus the stage was set for inter‑communal conflict. The bias against the Serbs encouraged the other ethnic groups to resist a negotiated settlement, and to precipitate further outside intervention on their behalf.”

The present writer has reviewed hours of old VHS newscasts, including those of the BBC, which he collected in the 1990s. The widespread anti‑Serb bias is obvious. It was therefore interesting to note that in a postscript to the Milosevic funeral the BBC’s Mark Mardell in his Europe Diary of 17th March reflected on whether Milosevic was a “War criminal or a defender of Yogoslavia singled out for persecution by the West?” He concludes, “I do not get the sense that many in Serbia will deeply mourn Milosevic but perhaps he has become a symbol for a feeling that the Serbs have been singled out as the international bad guys”.

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Crushing the Orthodox Church in Serbia - Part 1