An association of wartime internees from Stolac, a town in southern Herzegovina, on Tuesday expressed disappointment that Croatian President Zoran Milanovic would decorate members of two units of the Bosnian Croat Defence Council (HVO), holding them responsible for crimes against Bosniaks.  

According to media reports in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with members of Croatian Army units, Milanovic will decorate, on the occasion of Victory Day, members of the HVO Military Police and the “Ludvig Pavlovic” special purposes unit, who participated in operations to liberate Western Bosnia and Croatia in 1994 and 1995.

The association of Bosniak wartime internees said the units in question carried out ethnic cleansing against and interned Bosniaks in Stolac, noting that thousands of Bosniaks from that town and central Bosnia ended up in prison camps.

Hundreds of them were killed and Bosniak houses and other property were burned, the association said.

A former commander of the HVO Military Police, Valentin Coric, was sentenced by the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to 16 years in prison for crimes against Bosniaks, including those in Stolac, in a trial of six Bosnian Croat officials.

None of the commanders of the special operations unit “Ludvig Pavlovic” has been prosecuted for the alleged war crimes.

Some Bosniak wartime internees and politicians accuse this unit of persecution and internment of Bosniaks in 1993.

In 2020, too, Bosniak associations and officials protested against Milanovic’s decision to decorate several HVO units.