Some of the messages that came from Saturday’s protest in Vukovar over unprosecuted war crimes cause concern among Serbs in Croatia, the leader of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SSDS) told N1 on Sunday.
The protest was initiated by Vukovar Mayor Ivan Penava over the state’s inefficiency in prosecuting war crimes.
After Croatia declared in 1991 independence from Yugoslavia, the Serb minority rebelled against the decision. The conflict erupted into a war in which the Serb-led Yugoslav army destroyed the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar while committing war crimes that were processed by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague as well as by Serbian courts.
But for the Croatian protesters, the prosecutions and the trials are too slow, so they gathered on Saturday to mount pressure on the Croatian government to do something about it.
“Nobody can stay unaffected by the renewed memories of people who suffered in Vukovar, especially not me, as I have been listening to these testimonies as well as similar testimonies from Serbs,” SDSS leader Milorad Pupovac said.
“However, certain messages from people who abused this suffering could be a cause for concern,” he added.
He said that the need for punishing the perpetrators of war crimes against Serbs and Croats cannot become an issue for political manipulation and detrimental to peaceful reintegration.
“Nobody can claim the right to decide on who will be the state prosecutor and what kind of political relations we will have in the country,” he said.
He then touched upon Operation Storm, the last major battle of the Croatian War of Independence in which the Croatian Army crushed a self-proclaimed Serb autonomous region called Srpska Krajina in 1995.
“When they spoke about how a new Operation Storm should be conducted in the east a few years ago, and when they are now saying that there can be no coexistence (between Serbs and Croats), that is very concerning,” he said.
The politician said that anyone who has any knowledge about war crimes should provide this information to the competent bodies and that institutions prosecuting war crimes should be trusted.
“People mostly don’t even know what happened, but institutions do,” he said, adding that cooperation should be established with Serbian institutions “and what happened yesterday was not a call for cooperation.”
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