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Posted July 4, 2001
The Grb
I read with interest [Nebojsa Malic's] essay entitled "The Croatian Conundrum" and, although the usual amount of falsehoods, omissions and fabricated Serbian propaganda did not surprise me, I was surprised at [his] calling Franjo Tudjman the "father of the nation". Anyone doing serious academic study into this issue would note that Tudjman is not regarded by any institution or persons in Croatia as "father of the nation". Ante Starcevic holds this title (Otac Domovine) and has held it for as long as this term has existed.
You also mention the Croatian checkerboard flag, with some misconception. It is ironic that those who repeated this myth did not mention or did not know that the government of Serbia from 1945 onward continued to use the same coat-of-arms used by the Nazi government of General Milan Nedic during World War II. The Serbian arms, a form of which appeared so prominently on the world's most viciously anti-Semitic postage stamps during the Second World War, continued to be proudly displayed by the communist Serbian regime in Serbia and in Serbian occupied Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s.
[The] Croatian shield is one of the oldest national symbols in Europe. The true origins of the Grb have been lost to antiquity. The design of the Grb, red and white alternating fields, may have been related to the ancient Persian system linking colours with direction which resulted in such terms as the Red Sea and the Black Sea. The terms White Croatia and Red Croatia for western and southern Croatia were still in use well into the eleventh century.
…I can't comprehend the notion that [Nebojsa Malic] seriously believes the falsifications which [he is] content to print: …the theory of Croatian aggression, Croatian ethnic cleansing, fascist currency, [and] Nazi checkerboard – they are …too numerous to address.
~ I. Vego
Nebojsa Malic replies:
Mr. Vego, while I do acknowledge that your background in ancient Croatian history is more extensive than mine, there are three major points you overlooked. One: Ante Starcevic's ideology of Croatian nationhood was built around rabid Serbophobia. Two: Croatia (NDH) voluntarily fought on the side of the Reich in World War Two; Serbia was occupied, and its "government" acted under duress. Three: while in Serbia, Germans shot 50-100 Serbs for every German casualty, the Croatian state conducted a genocide of almost 1 million Serbs, Jews and Roma, the brutality of which shocked even the Germans. The supposedly "anti-Semitic" people of Serbia, meanwhile, protected their Jewish compatriots with their lives.
As he resurrected the symbols of NDH in the early 1990s, Tudjman did not speak of Red Croatia or White Croatia; he said he was glad his wife was "neither Serb nor Jewish." These are all undisputed historical facts, and your inclination to discount them as "Serbian propaganda" is, therefore, rather disturbing.
High on Fervor
Reading the Balkan Express one comes away with the impression, that the Serbs are the only decent nation on earth and up against a world of hostile criminals. The same type of nationalistic polemics brought evil doers and crackpots like Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic (amongst many others) into a position where they could perpetrate their crimes and in their wake bring down the Yugoslav Republic and the Serb nation. The only ones to feel sorry for are those that were not previously getting high on irrational nationalistic, ethnic and religious fervor. All those that did, deserve exactly what they brought upon themselves.
~ D. Weiss, San Francisco
Nebojsa Malic replies:
I wish readers like Mr. Weiss could substantiate their criticism with something more than loaded epithets and smear-by-association. It should be obvious from my not-so-subtle expostulations of libertarian beliefs that I definitely oppose "irrational" fervor of any sort - whether it advocates territorial expansion, greater oil profits, falsely professed human rights or any other invention of statist demagogues.
Everyone reads Balkan Express through the lens of their own beliefs and experiences. I don't regard the Serbs as more decent than, say, the Romanians. But since the mainstream press has for over a decade carried a message that Serbs are evil incarnate, my guess is that any deviation from that line is likely to create an impression of favorable bias towards the Serbs.
Tainted Courts
The courts in Serbia are still tainted with the old system and judges appointed by it. …Slobo would not be treated for his deeds in Serbia, sorry to say. No one reacted when he changed the constitution, against the knowledge and will of Montenegro and Serbian opposition -- the courts kept their mouth. It will still take a long time before the system in courts and judges will be an open case as demanded in most of the west. Not always the best, but still better than an old system of political straw men and power-servers.
~ J. Blaha, Bergen, Norway
HRW & Macedonia
…Why doesn't [Human Rights Watch] support democratic, peaceful, and legal change of the Macedonian Constitution? Has HRW even heard of something called the democratic, political process? Is the invasion and occupation of Macedonian towns and the massacre and mutilation of Macedonian police and soldiers the appropriate procedure to obtain "greater rights"?
HRW is conducting a propaganda/information war on behalf of what NATO itself called "murderous thugs" and "terrorists", the KLA/NLA/LAPMB. HRW is sanctioning terrorism and murder to achieve greater political rights? But isn't this absurd and ludicrous? We need to find out who runs Human Rights Watch, who controls it, what its agenda is. Human Rights Watch has nothing to do with "human rights". Indeed, HRW shows a profound contempt for human rights and dignity. HRW is pro-war not antiwar. We need to find out why.
~ Carl K. Savich