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CHETNIK GENOCIDAL CRIMES AGAINST BOSNIAKS AND CROATIANS IN BOSNIA AND CROATIA DURING WORLD WAR II (1941-1945)
I. Genocide represents the most serious international crime. Its concept and goal is to totally or partially destroy the national, ethnic, racial or religious identity of a group of people. Recently, this notion has been complimented with new international documents. All signatory countries are obliged to work on preventing genocide. If, however, genocide is committed, the parties are obliged to punish the perpetrators no matter when the crime was committed because the statute of limitations does not apply to such a crime.
The Chetniks not only intended to perform genocide, they carried out several forms of genocidal crimes against Croatians and Bosniaks in Bosnia and Croatians in Croatia during World War II from 1941 - 1945. Until recently, however, this topic was considered taboo and was not allowed to be written about in the former SFRJ (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). It was either kept a secret or incidentally mentioned without any concrete facts or numerical indexes. Contrary to this, the sufferings of the Serbians and the crimes and genocide committed against them in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia by the Ustasa Regime in 1941, were basically the only topics written and spoken about during this time. This served a political purpose with incorrect and malicious claims against the alleged genocidal Croatian people.2 Until now, a more orderly and complete investigation of this problem has been absent. In 1989, with the democratic changes implemented, the genocide against the Croatians and the Bosniaks began being written about along with the correct statistics concerning human casualties in the former Yugoslavian territory from 1941-1945.3 A scientifically based study is required in order to entirely investigate the problem. With this opportunity, I hope to present some of the most significant elements of Chetnik plans and activities during World War II which, according to all characteristics outlined by the international community, represent the crime of genocide against Croatians and Bosniaks.
II. Since its establishment, the Chetnik organization has almost exclusively served as an instrument of nationalistic and expansionist Serbian politics. This was also the case in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941). Through force and terror, the Chetnik organization, together with the army and the police represented a means of getting even with their political rivals and preserving the centralist, Greater Serbian political system headed by the King. For this reason, by the beginning of the war in 1941, some 300 Chetnik and similar organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and about 200 in Croatia were established which were recognized for their terror and barbarity along with the murders of a great number of Croatians and Bosniaks. Through these organizations, the Greater Serbian political goal attempted to be realized. They battled against and suffocated every Croatian and Bosniak aspiration for recognition of their own national values and at the same time, Serbian national values were often emphasized and there were attempts to spread Serbian national consciousness among Bosniaks and some Croatians. After the unification in 1918, with the abolition of the parliament and government, the Croatian guardsmen and police, along with the division of territory into six banovinas (guaranteeing Serbians power within these provinces), Croatia lost its historical identity and statehood which it had preserved for centuries. Bosnia was also divided into four banovinas through administrative means but in such a manner that the Serbs were guaranteed predominance in three of the banovinas. All of this resulted in corresponding counter-actions from the Croatian and Bosniak side. One way was the establishment of the illegal Ustasa movement (1929) whose goal was to create an autonomous and independent Croatian state outside Yugoslavia.. There were also the elections of 1938 which demonstrated the unstoppable strengthening of the Croatian national movement led by the Croatian Peasant Party. The party demanded a solution with respect to Croatia in the framework of Yugoslavia which the Greater Serbian monarchist regime needed to take into consideration due to the intensification of international conditions in Europe where war was drawing close and to save the nation from collapse. Consequently, an agreement on August 26, 1939 allowed the establishment of a separate Croatian Banovina within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with its own government, parliament, legislative, administrative and judicial autonomy, which could not be taken away or decreased without the permission of the Banovina itself. Thirteen districts from Bosnia and the district of Sid in Vojvodina in which the Croatian population was the majority, were annexed to the Banovina but without the Croatian historical territories of eastern Srijem, Boka Kotorska, Budva and Spic. The Banovina had an area of 65,456 km, with a population of 4,025,601 (according to the 1931 census): 70.1% were Croatians, 19.1% were Serbians and 10.8% were listed as "others". There were many who were against the agreement: on the Croatian side these were the supporters of the Ustasa movement who claimed that the agreement did not solve the Croatian problem, nor did it create a Croatian independent state; on the Bosniak side, the majority of the Bosniaks political leadership wanted Bosnia to become a separate autonomous political territorial unit within its historical borders. Serbian counter measures followed, so that all Serbian parties, except the SDS, all nationalist and Greater Serbian organizations and associations, as well as the army and the Orthodox Church, opposed the establishment of the Croatian Banovina because they perceived it to be dangerous for Serbianism and the existence of the state. They often reacted as chauvinists (who hated Croatians and everything that was Croatian) and as advocates of their Greater Serbianism. The movement "Srbi na okup" was developed with the express purpose of joining the other six banovinas (Vrbaska, Drinska, Dunavska, Moravska, Vardarska and Zetska) into one administrative entity under the title "Serbian lands". All the parts of the Croatian Banovina in which Serbians were the majority, as well as those which Serbians considered of geostrategic and political importance, for resistance preparations (Knin, for example), were to be annexed to the "Serbian lands", all of which intensified international relations. The program to create a "Greater Serbia" at the expense of Croatian historical territories (and others) was to remain a constant orientation of the Greater Serbian and Chetnik political expansionist circle since that time, during the Second World War, up to today and was to remain the principle motive for their genocidal actions against Croatians,Bosniaks and other non-Serbians. For this reason we cannot ignore this pre-war period and the events during the war on the former Yugoslavian territory.
III. THE BASIS OF THE PROGRAM OF THE CHETNIK MOVEMENT SERVED AS THE BASIS OF THE CRIMES AGAINST CROATIANS AND BOSNIAKS WITH CHETNIK UNITS SERVING AS EXECUTORS OF THE CRIMES
The bloody events of the war on the territory of the shattered Kingdom of Yugoslavia during 1941 - 1945 were to a great extent the result and consequence of pre-war conditions and political relations in the new situation on the terrain. The events were expressed in conflicting concepts for the renewal of Yugoslavia on the one hand and the efforts of non-Serbian people, especially Croatians, on the other hand, to preserve the already existing state or endeavor to establish independent national states outside Yugoslavia. This was mainly displayed on the territory of Bosnia and Croatia. Chetniks emphasized that the twelve-day war, their military defeat, as well as the occupation and breaking of Yugoslavia by the fascist states had lost the Serbians their "state and freedom" (since they considered the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to be merely an extended version of Greater Serbia and often acted as if it was). They blamed all other non-Serbian nations primarily the Croatians and Bosniaks. They were particularly displeased with the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) which included Bosnia, eastern Srijem, but not Dalmatia from Zadar to Split, the eastern part of Konavle and Boka Kotorska, then almost all of the Adriatic islands, except Hvar, Brac and Pag and a considerable part of the coast of the Bay of Kvarner and Gorski Kotar which were all annexed by the Italians (zone I.). Medjimurje and Baranja were annexed by the Hungarians. The NDH encompassed an area of 102,725 km2, included a population of 6,640,000 and was administratively divided into 22 large counties with 141 districts, 19 district offices, 31 towns, 1, 005 municipalities, and the city of Zagreb as a separate administrative headquarters. Serbians made up 30% of the entire population. The NDH was divided by a demarcation line to the south of Samobor, Glina, Dvor, Jajce, Fojnica and Visegrad. To the north of this line was German and to the south Italian-occupied territory. The occupied Italian territory in the NDH was divided into zones II and III. Civilian, police and military state authorities were established on NDH territory. The only political organizations allowed to operate in the NDH were Ustasa organizations and separate Ustasa units were formed as well.
The Ustasa regime implemented nationally and racially exclusive politics. The existence and activities of the NDH government were dependent on the concrete situation on a given territory, especially Partisan activities, the activities of Chetnik forces on some territories following the rebellion in 1941, as well as the interests and will of the occupier. The so called "Bosniak question" in Bosnia(i.e. NDH) did not pose a problem to the Ustasa leadership with Ante Pavelic at its head as it adopted Dr. Ante Starcevic`s theory of "Muslims as the purest part of the Croatian people", in which "religious differences do not and should not matter".
Serbian nationalists and expansionists of which the Chetniks, as a military and political organization, were the most well-known and prominent, could never resign themselves to the creation of any kind of Croatian state (NDH included). The reason is fairly simple, namely, they believed that almost 90% of NDH territory (in its maximum program) represented the territory of the so-called "Serbian lands" (including the entire territory of today`s Bosnia and most of the territory belonging to today`s Republic of Croatia), regardless of the fact that these territories had never been a part of the Serbian state, and that Croatians and Bosniaks represented a majority in them. For this reason they believed that the territories of the NDH could only enter into the so-called "Homogeneous or Greater Serbia", as referred to in documents. The principle prerequisite for this was the destruction of the NDH and cleansing of the Croatian and Bosniak population from these territories in order to annex them to Greater Serbia.
This is one of the reasons why immediately following the proclamation of the NDH, we come upon the first massive killings of Croatian and Bosniak citizens by Chetniks and also the burning of a great number of houses and entire villages in some regions of the NDH. In this way, Chetnik units, which were part of the regular army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and were designated for "special actions", and individual Chetnik commanders, during the Derventa retreat, killed 17 Croatian civilians, five women among them on April 11-13, 1941; killed three Croatian women, a young girl among them on April 11 in Siveric; on April 9, 28-29, killed three Croatian civilians and wounded one near Bjelovar; from April 13-15, killed 20 Croatians, 5 Bosniaks and burned 40 houses near Capljina; on April 15, killed 5 Croatian civilians, one woman among them near Mostar, and burned down the Croatian villages of Cim and Ilici. Such murders occurred in other places indicating what was to soon follow.
After the first shock, as a consequence of the occupation and break down of Yugoslavia, as well as the creation of the NDH, Chetniks in Bosnia and Croatia, often in co-operation with the communists, began to organize a Serbian armed rebellion against the Croatian State, in this case, the Ustasa NDH (communists were against the occupying force), calling on past Serbian traditions. At the same time, they worked on establishing ties with other Chetnik and nationalistic forces on the territory of former Yugoslavia (primarily with those in Serbia). Similarly, they worked towards creating a basis for the movement program in which the genocidal intentions against Croatians and Bosniaks were clearly emphasized. With respect to this, on June 30, 1941, Stevan Moljevic, one of the main Chetnik ideologists and national leaders, formed the project, "Homogeneous Serbia", in which the Chetnik program regarding borders, the social system and foreign policy of Greater Serbia in the re-established Yugoslavia were outlined months before the establishment of the Jasenovac camp. The project proposes that "... today the first and fundamental responsibility is imposed upon Serbians: to create and organize a homogeneous Serbia which will encompass the entire ethnic territory in which Serbians live...." This meant annexing Bosnia and a greater part of Croatia to Serbia through "migration and transfer of inhabitants" and cleansing. All this was expressed cartographically in a special propaganda leaflet together with a corresponding text.
At the same time, a group of Serbian nationalists who had escaped from Bosnia and Croatia into the annexed part of Dalmatia and linked itself with the Italian government, sent the Italian government in Rome a petition asking for the Italian army to occupy and annex Bosnia,and regions of Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, and Banija, and to overthrow the NDH government there. The Italian government used this for its expansionist pretensions and pressures on NDH in negotiations upon the outbreak of the rebellion, as well as for negotiations, cooperation and organization of Chetniks on its annexed and occupied territory in Bosnia and Croatia.
In July and the beginning of August 1941, a general Serbian rebellion occurred in almost all of the Bosnian and Croatian territory where the population was predominantly Serbian. The chief initiators and leaders of the rebellion were leaders of the Communist Party, and this the CK KP (Central Committee of the Communist Party) in Croatia and the Regional Committee of the KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) for Bosnia as parts of the CK KPJ, even though there were places where the rebellion occurred spontaneously, and some places where Chetniks themselves headed the rebellion.
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