Title: Message
www.srna.co.yu
Serbian Press Agency
SRNA, Republika Srpska
April 23, 2004
Strbac: European Commission has
a short memory
BANJA LUKA - The head of the Veritas Center for
Documentation and
Information Savo Strbac said he was surprised by the
positive opinion of
the European Commission with regard to the candidature of
Croatia for
ascension to the European Union, taking into account the fact
that no
one is mentioning the preconditions Croatia must first fulfill
anymore,
including Serb returns, the reform of the justice system and
the
extradition of Hague indictee Ante Gotovina.
"Instead of
fulfillment of previous European Commission conditions, it
appears that the
international community is satisfied with the
declarative promises of the
Croatian authorities, which have not been of
any benefit to Serbs from
Croatia in the past," emphasized Strbac at a
press conference in Banja
Luka.
He emphasized that the Croatian authorities are continuing to
arrest
Serb returnees, those who remained in Croatia or who are
transiting
through the territory of that country with the goal of preventing
Serb
returns and the restoration of their property.
"In order to
effectively protect themselves from Serb returns, Croatian
officials have
tried 4,600 Serbs in absentia indicted for supposedly
committing war crimes
and, in Veritas' estimate, this has directly
prevented the return of more
than 100,000 Serbs, primarily younger
people, to Croatia," claimed
Strbac.
He said that 15 Serbs were arrested outside the territory of the
former
Yugoslavia on the basis of Interpol warrants but fortunately
such
arrests seem to have stopped lately because many foreign states
are
aware that they are based on fabrications by the Croatian
justice
system.
Strbac said that in the current year there have been
12 Serbs arrested
in Croatia while there are still 500 wanted by Interpol for
war crimes
in Croatia.
In the Croatian prison of Lepoglava there are
53 persons of Serb
nationality, 40 of whom were sentenced for war crimes,
while the
remainder were sentenced for other crimes.
Strbac emphasized
that since January of this year, the Croatian justice
ministry has failed to
respond and is obstructing requests by
appropriate Serbia-Montenegro
officials and Serb prisoners in Lepoglava
to allow them to be transferred to
Serbia-Montenegro to serve the
remainder of their prison sentence in
accordance with European
conventions.
According to Strbac, Croatian
authorities are also obstructing and
delaying the process of exhuming the
bodies of approximately 1,000 Serbs
killed during Operations Flash and Storm
in Krajina.
He expressed the hope that concrete plans in this regard will
be agreed
upon at the beginning of May at a meeting of the Croatian office
for the
search for the missing and the Serbia-Montenegro commission
for
humanitarian issues and missing persons.
According to official
Croatian statistics, Strbac said that so far in
Zagreb 15,000 Serbs have been
forced to accept Croatian nationality,
while 20,000 Serb children primarily
of pre-school and elementary school
age have been forcibly converted to Roman
Catholicism.
He said that according to the Croatian census of 1991, there
were
formerly 582,000 Serbs or 12.2 percent of the total population with
Serb
statistics indicating that the figure was actually over 600,000 Serbs
or
17 percent.
"After Operations Flash and Storm, more than 400,000
Serbs were expelled
from Croatia and the former Republic of Serb Krajina, and
approximately
7,000 Serbs went missing or were killed in those operations,"
said
Strbac.
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