2005.12.12. – Mario Profaca

Some 70,000 people took
part in a rally on Sunday
to show their support for top war crimes suspect
Ante Gotovina, indicted in 2001 by the U.N. war
crimes tribunal in connection with atrocities
against minority Serbs in 1995, was captured
Wednesday at a hotel in Tenerife on Spain’s Canary
Islands.

Gotovina’s former war
comrades are waging a legal
battle to clear his name. Most of the masses were
clad in black, waving national flags and portraits
of Gotovina. "A hero, not a war criminal," was the
message on several posters.

The August 1995 operation
over which he is
accused practically ended Croatia’s 1991-95 war
of independence from the former Yugoslavia, and he
is seen as a national hero by many Croats.

The veterans demanded
his trial be transferred from
the Netherlands to Croatia and that the government
fight for his provisional release from U.N. custody
as well as aid his legal defense.

Gotovina’s arrest has
triggered enraged protests
across the country over the past few days.
Police reported minor incidents.

Thousands of demonstrators
gathered in the coastal
city of Zadar, Ante Gotovina’s home town, on Saturday
to proclaim Gotovina’s innocence and demand that
the government stop at nothing to help build his
defense before the U.N. tribunal.

"We are gathered
here in this difficult time to
muster up maximum support for our innocent general,"
Ante Martinac, the head of a veterans group, said in
the coastal city of Zadar, near Gotovina’s hometown.
"Our general is in The Hague on the basis of false
documents and fake transcripts."

No violence was reported
at the protest after a series
of incidents including roadblocks and burning of tires
– notably around the central coastal town of Zadar
where Gotovina was born – since his arrest.

Nevertheless, according
to some wire reports, in the
Austrian capital of Vienna "another 300 nationalist
protesters shouted slogans of Croatia’s pro-Nazi World
War II regime and called for the murder of Croatian
President Stipe Mesic" (AFP).

Thousands of people gathered
at pro-Gotovina rallies
in Zadar and the southern Adriatic town of Dubrovnik
on Saturday. Some media usually seeking after any
possible pro-Nazi propaganda sign that could fit to
their needs when covering Gotovina case or Croatia
at all, also reported that "at least one protest on
Friday included extreme nationalists displaying pro-Nazi
paraphernalia" (AFP).

Referring to the "Ustasha
incident" in Zadar it wasn’t
a spontaneous manifestation of some group of nostalgic
Ustasha veterans. It must have been a anti-Croatian
propaganda PSYOP very precisely planed and performed
by some members of so called underground intelligence
groups including former members and activists of ex
Yugoslav Secret police UDBA and ax Yugoslav KOS
(Military counter-intelligence Service) still yet
very active in Croatia. Last night I talked to the
friend of mine Croatian American Mate Mihaljevic in
Chicago and he agree hundred per cent with me about
this very old and well known anti-Croatian propaganda
methods. You could ask any other Croatian emigrant
in the U.S.A. or in Western Europe and they would
immediately recognize the well known UDBA modus
operandi and recognizable "signature" in this event
in Zadar.

This time they organized
a group of teenagers,
practically children, dressed them up in "ustasha’s
uniforms" and told them to salute that fascist way
when focused by photographers and TV cameras. They
knew it will be in all mainstream media and TV news
worldwide immediately. Interestingly, instead to
trigger all state agencies and institutions to probe
this evident children’s (human) rights abuse, it gave
the good opportunity to Croatian President Stjepan
Mesic for his stereotypic off topic lecturing on
ustashas and thereby totally unnecessary comments
about the WWII.
Of course it wasn’t the end of this PSYOP propaganda.
Now just wait to see more commentaries, op-ed or
"letters to the editor", as well as talk show if not
even a panel on several TV in Croatia and abroad –
all of them talking about "ustashas in Croatia".
You bet, just in case, photos and video clips of
that poor children’s masquerade will be always handy
enough to many media editors.

As usually, it is carefully
orchestrated to obscure
the truth and enhance fiction not only about the
Croatian homeland war but also about today’s Croatia
at all, and depicting a Croatia seething with fascism.

Of course it has nothing
to do neither with Croatian
General Ante Gotovina nor with the victorious
Operation Storm (Oluja) and the final liberation of
so called "Serbian Krajina" occupied by Serbian
paramilitary gangs and so called Yugoslav National
Army during recent aggression on the Republic of
Croatia. But the main purpose of this propaganda
operation with would-be "Ustasha youth" in Zadar was
to switch the attention of mainstream media and public
opinion world wide from the righteous case of the
Croatian homeland war hero General Ante Gotovina to
Serbian propaganda evergreen about Croats as "genocidal
nation".
The organizers of this PSYOP in Zadar knew very well
how it could be very convenient for ICTY’s Carla Del
Ponte indictment against General Ante Gotovina and all
political and military leaders of the Republic of Croatia
for "ethnic cleansing" of Serbs in Croatia as alleged

goal of their "joint criminal enterprise" (?!).

It reminded me on CNN and its Christian Amanpour who
didn’t come to Croatia during the recent war for
unbiased reporting about the Serb-Yugoslav aggression
on the independent and internationally recognized
Republic of Croatia, but she did her best to put the
Croatia’s homeland war in context with certain skinhead
creatures and swastika graffiti (waiting for her in
Zagreb, Croatia), although she could find such neo-Nazi
signs anywhere in New York underground or bus stations
or on the wall of some public toilet anywhere in the
U.S.A.

So on July 11, 1999 talking
to Slavenka Drakulic
Christian Amanpour said (on camera): "Would it surprise
you to learn that during our shoot we found a lot of
fascist, Ustasha symbols painted in various places,
public places in Croatia, including on war memorials?"

"Oh, no, no, no,
no, of course not" answered Slavenka
Drakulic "But this is a well-known fact. You can see,
for example, a slogan, a graffiti split "That’s the
Jews." Or you can see the swastika painted around.
And then you can see this Ustasha "U" as a symbol
everywhere now. You can see also the pictures of Pavelic,
the posters of Pavelic next to Tudjman in many taverns
in small places, even in Zagreb. And they are selling
these kind of symbols at the market, as well. So it’s
not surprising at all."

Of course, paraphrasing
Slavenka Drakulic and Christian
Amanpour, this way of depicting Croats as pro-Nazi fascists
should not be surprising at all, but, just avoiding some
of these English dirty words I learned watching American
movies, I think that the best word to explain this manner
of reporting about events in Croatia is nothing else but
a synonym for a human activity usually predestined to the
toilet, not media.

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