Croatia


The editor of the Split weekly "Feral Tribune," Heni Erceg, writes in the June 22, 1998 of this magazine on the political implications of the extradition of the former Jasenovac WWII camp commander, Dinko Sakic to Croatia.

It is quite probable that Dinko Sakic is arriving as a perfect fit for Franjo Tudjman's policies, even though the state media have been stating for months that "uncovering" of the head of the Jasenovac camp "exactly at this moment" is just one more pressure of the world on Croatia to finally resolve its historical dilemmas.

The overture to the trial speaks about an attempt to streamline the Croats on the division line fascists - anti-fascists. It is probably with this goal that an unusual Commesariat for the Research of the Victims of History has been set up, headed by hobby historian Nikica Valentic, who takes as inheritance years long digging of holes and uncovering of bones of killed Ustashis and Domobran's, so that by rubbing the nose with Bleiburg, Jazovka and similar, the crime in Jsenovac could be lessened, and in that respect the role of Dinko Sakic in it.

The fact is that a trial of a war criminal is to occur in a state whose judiciary has easily amnestied numerous crimes against civilians from a much more recent war that the one in which Sakic participated, accepting the regime thesis that the Croats could not commit crimes in a defensive war. Will the trial of Dinko Sakic also start off from a similar thesis, but with much more deep ambitions, who also, could not have committed crimes in a defensive war of Croats against Partizan evil ?

There should be no doubt that Sakic's defence will be based on the defence of the NDH /the WWI independent state of Croatia/, as a "historical yearning of the Croatian people for their own state," and in that respect lessening of the crimes committed in Jasenovac - from the number of victims (Nikica Valentic has already blundered by saying that some 30 to 50 thousand people were murdered there, almost completely ignoring scientific data of Zerjavic and Kocovic of 80 thousand victims of this camp) to statements by Nedeljko Mihanovic concerning the conditions of life of the internees, who said that they even enjoyed opera sessions there.

So to whom could Sakic trial bring dividends, since to Croatian people - who by its larger part belonged to the anti-fascist movement - Sakic does not mean anything ?

It is not logical that a war criminal wants to be tried in a state where the number of his living witnesses of his crimes is the largest. But Sakic is not an ordinary war criminal, he is "our" criminal, who has, from the foundation of Tudjman's Croatia, been well aware of the weakness of this regime towards the NDH and lessening of all that has been done during the existence of that state, including the crimes.



Source: Split weekly "Feral Tribune," June 22, 1998