Operation Storm – forgotten pogrom

Today 13 years has went since the massive ethnic cleansing of more than 250,000 Serbs from Krajina in Croatia. Thirteen years ago, on August 4 1995, 200,000 Croat army and police troops from Croatia and the Croat Defense Council from Bosnia-Herzegovina, under the command of Franjo Tudjman, attacked the United Nations protected zones (safe havens) with Serbian population in northern Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun and Banija. They were helped on the Bosnian side by the Bosnian Muslim fighters and had the operation backed, coordinated and logistically supported by the leading Western powers.

A day later, on August 5, Croat troops have entered the ethnically cleansed town of Knin which was under the heavy missile barrage earlier where, prior to the “Storm”, more than 90 percent of the population were Serbs.  In a few days, the complete Serbian population from Krajina in Croatia was forced to flee towards Serbia and Republic of Srpska. Columns with over 250,000 expelled Croatia Serbs were under constant assault of Croat artillery and under fire from the fighter jets which followed them on their collective exodus from Croatia.

According to the data of the Documentation-information Center Veritas, in the pogrom by the Croat army close to 2,000 people were killed, while the Croat Helsinki board claims that during the “Operation Storm” 670 Serbian civilians were killed.

After the “Storm” which, according to Croat president, successfully finalized the ethnic cleansing of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, Tudjman cynically described the pogrom of Croatia Serbs at the opening of the Military school Ban Josip Jelacic in Zagreb, on December 14 1998: “We have, therefore, resolved the Serbian question! There will no longer be 12 percent of Serbs, nor 9 percent of Yugoslavs [mostly Serbs who were declaring themselves as “Yugoslavs” during the censuses], as before.

There are many stories about ethnic cleansing in Balkans. The (western) mainstream media has mostly described how Serbs have tried to cleanse their neighbor regions. This one sided picture is regrettable common even today. people are forgetting, that one explanation to brutalities made by Serbs is their response to brutality others made against them. Also one should remember that Serbia has today more refugees than any other country in western Balkans and international community does not have a slightest attempt to help them return back to their original homes.

As source describing Storm background I have used article published in  http://www.byzantinesacredart.com/blog/