“Their leaders might not have ordered it, but they were aware of it and did not stop it - and Serb commanders have been convicted in such cases,” said Vukelic, 46, who fled Croatia with his family just before the operation and now lives in Serbia. “Most Croat soldiers didn’t commit crimes, but some did and Croatia knows it,” said Zeljko Vukelic, a Croatian Serb who fought with separatist forces, referring to several hundred Serb civilians allegedly killed by Croats during and after Operation Storm, when thousands of Serb homes were looted and burned. Less than a quarter of Serbs who fled Croatia in 1995 have returned to their former homes, and Serbia regards Operation Storm as an act of “ethnic cleansing” supported by the West and led by political and military chiefs who have never been punished. We wanted to stay, but we had no choice but to leave.” We didn’t have much time to prepare, and didn’t know where we were going, but we joined the huge lines of cars and trucks and tractors. ![]() “When we got there it was clear that something big was happening and that lots of Serbs were already on the move. 4 we heard bombs and shells exploding, and went out to a nearby village where my grandmother lived,” she said. Raskovic recalled how, at the age of eight, she had stuffed some things into a rucksack and set off with her parents into the unknown. Some Croats are uncomfortable with the militaristic, religious and jingoistic flavor of the events, but many will be united on this Victory Day holiday in celebrating the triumph over Milosevic’s Serbia and its proxies in Croatia.įor most Serbs, however, thoughts of August 1995 bring only sorrow. 5, 1995, Croatia’s troops surged back into Knin, putting Serb rebels to flight and securing the country’s territory and independence from a Belgrade gripped by Milosevic’s aim of a “Greater Serbia.” In the biggest military operation in Europe since World War Two, Croatia reclaimed almost 20 percent of its land from Serb separatists and helped force belligerent Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to the negotiating table that autumn, where he agreed to end five years of conflict that had destroyed Yugoslavia. Raskovic’s family was among some 200,000 ethnic Serbs who fled Knin and the surrounding area, as Croatian troops launched a blitzkrieg against Serb separatists who had seized what they called the Krajina region in summer 1990 and driven out its Croat population. Also, a new monument to wartime president Franjo Tudjman will be unveiled after being helicoptered into the hilltop fortress, and some 150,000 people are expected to attend a concert by nationalist singer Marko Perkovic Thompson. The day after a military parade full of pomp Tuesday in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, Knin will consecrate the country’s biggest Catholic church. Knin will be the focus for today’s events to mark 20 years since Operation Storm, a glorious military triumph for Croatia but a bloody calamity for this region’s Serb community, whose centuries-old presence here it almost ended. It is when they quietly mourn a historic episode that is celebrated with raucous pride in the town and across a deeply patriotic country - and this August is even harder than most for Croatia’s Serbs. ![]() KNIN, Croatia - August is the toughest month for Anja Raskovic and the Serbs of Knin, a dusty town of 10,000 people in Croatia’s southeast.
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