The Chetniks not only intended to perform genocide, they carried out
several forms of genocidal crimes against Croatians 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 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. 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 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 represent the crime of genocide against Croatians.
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. Through these
organizations, the Greater Serbian political goal attempted to be
realized. They battled against and suffocated every Croatian 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 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 (Ban's dominions) (guaranteeing
Serbians power within these provinces), Croatia lost its historical
identity and statehood which it had preserved for centuries. Bosnia and
Herzegovina 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 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
Herzegovina 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 Muslim side, the majority of the
Muslim political leadership wanted Bosnia and Herzegovina 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 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.
THE BASIS OF THE PROGRAM OF THE
CHETNIK MOVEMENT SERVED AS THE BASIS OF THE CRIMES AGAINST CROATIANS
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 Herzegovina and Croatia.
Chetniks emphasized that the twelve-day war, their military defeat, as
well as the occupation and breaking of Yugoslavia by the Axis 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. They were particularly displeased with
the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) which included
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 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 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 "Muslim question" in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(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 Herzegovina 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 Muslims 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 non-Serbian 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
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 25 Croatians 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.6
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 Herzegovina 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, 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 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 Herzegovina 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 Herzegovina 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 Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, and Banija, and
to overthrow the NDH government in those territories.
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 Herzegovina and
Croatia.
In July and the beginning of August 1941, a general Serbian rebellion
occurred in almost all of the 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 and
Herzegovina 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.
At that time and in those regions, it was the Serbian population which
almost exclusively participated in the rebellion. There were only some
individuals and smaller groups of other nationalities, primarily
members of KPJ and SKOJ (League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia), who
were involved in the rebellion. The crimes of the Ustasa Regime against
the Serbian people were stressed as the main reasons for the rebellion
with the goal of overthrowing the NDH and the re-establishment of
Yugoslavia. While the communists endeavored to give the rebellion an
anti-fascist and national liberational character, including all peoples
and national minorities on Yugoslavian territories and to establish
their communist power during the war, the Chetniks gave the rebellion a
principally nationalist and expansionist character, including almost
exclusively Serbians and endeavoring to uphold the old pre-war Greater
Serbian system of government with the King at its head.
This soon resulted in a division into two movements, one headed by the
communists in NOP (National Liberation Movement) and the other by the
Chetniks. This soon led to armed battles which lasted until the end of
the war. From the beginning until the end of the war, members of the
Chetnik movement intentionally equated the entire Croatian
people with the Ustasa Regime by accusing them of the Ustasa crimes
against Serbians in the NDH with an attempt to justify their own crimes
using these formal reasons. In fact, throughout the war, the Chetnik
movement had distinct genocidal, anti-Croatian characteristics.
In Chetnik documents, it is suggested that the reasons they began the
rebellion in the NDH were only formal while the real reasons lie in the
aspiration for the establishment of an ethnically cleansed Greater
Serbia at the expense of historical and national territories of Croats,
Muslims and others. This was to be the basic motive for Chetnik terror
and genocidal crimes against Croatians. The Chetnik movement was
comprised of armed and political organizations which appeared on NDH
territory shortly after the capitulation of Yugoslavia and the
proclamation of the NDH and was active until the end of the war. By the
end of 1941, the entire Chetnik movement was under the command of Draza
Mihailovic.
It is necessary to stress that the USA and Great Britain accepted the
exiled government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as a legitimate
government in June 1941. In July, the other great force of the
anti-fascist coalition, the USSR did the same. Since the Atlantic
Charter of August 14, 1941 stipulated the war aims of the anti-fascist
coalition, including the re-establishment of all occupied states after
the war, including Yugoslavia, its re-establishment was assured. It was
precisely at that time, on Yugoslavian territory, especially on the NDH
territory, that the civil war began between the Communist and the
Chetnik movements to decide what the re-established Yugoslavia would be
like. Throughout the entire war, the Chetnik movement was assisted by
the government in exile and King Peter II situated in London.
At the same time, the Chetnik movement received support and assistance
from Western allies, especially Great Britain until 1944, and
afterwards the USA. In the program of the Chetnik movement during and
after the war, which was delivered by its leader, Draza Mihailovic, to
the Yugoslavian King's government on September 1941 and accepted,
Moljevic's plan was supplemented and the following was stated:
"... prepare yourself so that in the days of the collapse, the following actions may be executed....
b) define the "defakto" Serbian lands and allow only Serbian populace to remain in them.
v) especially plan the rapid and radical cleansing of cities and fill them with fresh Serbian elements.
g) develop a plan for cleansing or displacing the peasant population with the goal of a homogeneous Serbian national community.
d) consider the Muslim question in the Serbian unit as an especially difficult problem and possibly solve it in this phase...."
In the "Instructions" of
December 20, 1941, regarding the organization, goals and employment of
the Chetnik units, Draza Mihailovic, who was promoted to General and
soon became the minister for the army in the emigrant government,
removed all doubts. According to him, the goal of the battle of the
Chetnik movement under the leadership of King Peter was:
"... To create a Great Yugoslavia and
in it a Greater Serbia, ethnically cleansed, within the borders of
pre-war Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srem, Banat and
Backa..."
"... To cleanse the state territory of all national minorities and national elements..."
"... To immediately create
mutual borders between Serbia and Montenegro, as well as between Serbia
and Slovenia, cleansing Sandzak of Muslim inhabitants, and Bosnia and
Herzegovina of Muslim and Catholic inhabitants..."
"...All Catholics who sinned against
our people in our tragic days, as well as all intellectuals and those
well off, will be destroyed without mercy. We will spare the peasant
people as well as the low working class and make real Serbians of them.
We will convert them into Orthodox by hook or by crook.
There, those are the goals of our great battle and when the crucial
moment arrives, they will be achieved. We have already achieved them in
some parts of our homeland...."
This document directly shows the sources of Chetnik genocidal crimes
against Croatians and Muslims which originated from the creation of the
Serbian national state and its expansionist politics. Draza went
further than Moljevic regarding territory, asking for more than 90% of
NDH territory for Greater Serbia in which more than 2,500,000 Catholics
and over 800,000 Muslims lived, making up 70% of the entire population
on that territory, while Serbians comprised almost 30% of the
population. From Draza's "Instructions", all Croatians, Muslims, and
other non-Serbians would have to disappear from this territory, either
during the war or immediately after it. Croatians were given only about
10% of their territory at that time from Karlovac across Zagreb to
Varazdin and approximately 1/5 of the NDH population.
Accusations and allegations against Croatians for all the
evil and sufferings caused to the Serbians during the war existed for
the purpose of constantly motivating Chetniks to execute punishments,
that is, crimes of genocide against them. This is clearly stated in
Draza's "Instructions". With respect to this, and with the same goal,
is the exaggeration of Serbian victims caused by the Ustasa or,
according to the Chetniks, by the "Croatians" i.e. the entire Croatian
and Muslim peoples, starting with the number of 382,000 at the end of
1941, coming to over 518,000 at the end of February 1942, then 600,000
in October 1942, with 800,000 at the end of 1943 and finally, at the
end of the war, arriving at the number of one million Serbians killed
on NDH territory.
This is absurd to any objective researcher and is shown in the work
of
the Serb, Dr. B Kocovic. Draza's threats of revenge against Croats as a
prerequisite for life and rights in a future state had the
same aim. Also, in other program documents of individual Chetnik
leaders and units similar arguments and goals are expressed. The
"Elaborat" of the Dinara Chetnik division of March 1942, which was
established precisely at that time and encompassed northern Dalmatia,
Lika, and the southwestern part of Bosanska Krajina, also presented its
aims and arguments. The principle goal was the creation of a "Serbian national state" where "Serbians lived and which Serbians aspire to...", that is, a "Greater Serbia" which would include Bosnia and Herzegovina, a part of Dalmatia, Lika, and other territories with a pure national system and "King Peter at the head" in which "exclusively the Orthodox populace would live" The rest was to disappear so that on March 25, 1943, the Dinara division gave an order to its units to "cleanse the Croatians" from their territory. At the same time, "the establishment of a national corridor along the Dinara Mountain to link Herzegovina with northern Dalmatia and Lika",
was assigned as one of the primary tasks of this division and the
Chetnik movement, which they attempted to achieve, particularly in 1942
and 1943, through the cleansing of the local Croatian and Muslim
population.
Vukasin Marcetic, the commander of the Chetnik unit "Manjaca", stated
the following at a conference of the Chetnik units on June 7, 1942: "I
believe that Bosnia and Serbia are one nation and I hope that
everything that is not Serbian will be cleansed from Bosnia."
Milan
Santic, a Chetnik leader, was even more direct. In his speech, in
Trebinje at the end of July 1942, he stated that the goal of the
Chetnik movement was to "establish a Greater Serbia" as stipulated by
Draza and then said: "Serbian lands must be cleansed of Catholics and
Muslims. Only Serbians will live in those lands. The cleansing will be
thoroughly executed. We will drive out and destroy them all, without
exception and without compassion. This will be the starting point of
our liberation". He further stresses that all of this "must be executed
quickly and in one revolutionary momentum" and because of this Chetniks
will "never formally recognize" the NDH. All of these documents illustrate that Chetnik crimes of genocide
against Croatians were deliberate and planned.
The Chetnik military units were founded on NDH territory (south of the
Sava River extending to the Adriatic Sea) with direct support from
Italian occupying forces. On the basis of contracts, these
forces provided Chetnik military units not only with weapons,
ammunition, provisions, and salaries but were also often initiators and
protectors of a great number of mass Chetnik crimes against Croatians.
According to Chetnik documents on their military formations during the
war years from 1941 to 1945, there were 14 corps, 76 brigades and 2
regiments on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina while on Croatian
territory, there were 4 corps, 1 division, 32 brigades and 2 regiments.
Apart from the military formations there existed numerous authorities
on the territories under Chetnik control. The exact number of Chetniks
has not yet been established, but according to some indexes, some
100,000 individuals in the army and in the field passed through their
ranks in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia of whom 98% were Serbian.
At this point, it is necessary to stress the assistance the Chetnik
leadership directed to these regions from Serbia and Montenegro.
All
Chetnik units committed crimes, special units, however, existed to whom
this was the main task. These ranged from Chetnik three-man groups to
troops and brigades.
Program documents, undoubtedly, suggest that Chetnik genocidal crimes
were directed against the Croatian people as a whole on the
territory of their imaginary "Greater Serbia." Nevertheless, it must be
stated that Chetnik terror and crimes were also directed towards the
participants of the anti-fascist movement or NOP, as it was called, and
against their families, regardless of nationality, although the
Chetniks endeavored occasionally to spare the lives of individual
captured partisans and members of NOP who happened to be Serbian.
Crimes were also directed against the Serbians who displayed various
forms of loyalty towards the NDH leadership. There were two main
methods of Chetnik genocidal crimes against Croatians. The
first was the direct, physical destruction of people. The second method was indirect,
using various threats, physical and psychological violence, the rape of
women and young girls, and robbery. Physical destruction took the form
of massacres, hangings, decapitation, burning, throwing victims into
pits and killing them with various objects. Victims were in most cases
tortured before being killed.
Indirect methods included Chetnik threats
of massacring Croatians in pamphlets, songs, or speeches;
various forms of physical violence ranging from stoning, beating,
mutilation to rape of Croatian women and girls so as to
nationally degrade them. There were two especially
significant forms of indirect Chetnik crimes. These were robbery and
forced conversion of Catholics into the Serbian Orthodox
faith. Robbery and plundering were carried out on an enormous scale and
were often the main motives for setting Chetniks into action. They were
practiced mostly during military operations but were also carried out
whenever possible. This caused hunger and death in territories through
which the Chetniks passed and the massive exodus of the population
which was in fact the main Chetnik goal. The forced conversion to the
Serbian Orthodox faith aimed at further degrading the victims and
destroying that deepest of ties to the Croatian nationality.
THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CHETNIK CRIMES OF GENOCIDE AGAINST CROATIANS FROM 1941 TO 1945
The actualization of genocidal crimes against Croatians,
according to the proposed plan by the Chetnik leaders and commanders,
began immediately after the plans were drawn up and lasted to the end
of the war. Their scope depended primarily on their military
capabilities, their deployment and the strength of their opponents.
From the documents we notice three periods which, according to the
number of victims of genocide, were the most massive. The first was the
commencement of the rebellion, from the end of July 1941 to February
1942. The second was from August to October 1942 and the third was from
January to March 1943. These were the strongest military periods for
the Chetnik movement. It was also the time when the movement had the most intensive
support of Chetniks from Serbia and Montenegro and the support of the
Italian occupiers.
We will mention
several distinguishing examples from these periods.
1.) The first period (the end of July 1941 - February 1942.)
This period consists of two parts: the first, from the eruption of the
rebellion until the autumn of 1941, when Chetniks and guerrillas
participated in the rebellion together; and the second, which began at
the same time as the division of the Chetnik and national liberation
movement, namely, the division of the military into Chetniks and
Partisans and crimes of Chetnik units may be observed.
In the first part, after the eruption of the revolt, in actions carried
out jointly by the Chetniks and communists, the first massive crimes
against Croatians and Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia
were carried out. In this way, on July 27, 1941 and several days
afterwards, in Bosansko Grahovo and the surrounding area, 62 Croatians,
among whom were five women, nine children, and parish rector Ante
Gospodnetic were killed by the rebels while their houses and five
villages were burned after being looted. On July 2, in Krenjus and its
surrounds, as well as in Vrtoci, several hundred Croatians, the
majority being older individuals, women and children and the parish
rector Kresimir Baric were massacred. They looted and burned houses and
the Roman Catholic Church. Then followed the arrival of 2,500 Croatians
from Boricevac and the surrounding area into Bihac. Boricevac itself
was looted and completely burned and never rebuilt after the war. As a
result, 19 Roman Catholic parishes on the right side of the Una River
and ten on the left shore ceased to exist since there was no
congregation left. Subsequently, on September 5, 1941, in Kulen Vakuf,
3,000 Muslims and a hundred Croatians were slaughtered and the area was
looted and burnt. Also, 44 Muslims and 12 Croatians were killed in
Varcar Vakuf and the surrounding areas. In Glamoc and its surrounds, 45
Muslims and two Croatians were killed. In Sanski Most the rebels
"killed Muslims and Croatian peasants and even their families"
It was the same in other areas. In this way, the "liberated
territories"
were soon liberated from Croatians who were
forced to leave so as not be slaughtered and killed. Their houses and
villages were looted and burned. Soon, a river of 50,000 refugees began
to flow into Bihac, Jajce, Knin, Sanski Most, Prijedor, Livno, and
other towns. The share the Chetniks and their supporters took in
executing these crimes was dominant. In eastern Herzegovina, massacres
of civilians were carried by out rebels with assistance from
Montenegro. According to the documents of NDH authorities, the number
is
considerably greater. Some Croatians were killed, while from the entire
eastern Herzegovina region, colonies of refugees, flowed into
neighbouring towns, predominantly Capce the beginning of the revolt,
that
the first massacres of Muslims were recorded and this in Medjedja and
Koraj in October and November 1941. Several hundred people were
slaughtered.
After being looted, many houses and villages were burned. It was in
eastern Bosnia, where Chetnik units, established and assisted by
Chetniks in Serbia, and active sints spreading, Italian and German occupying forces intervened. The
Italians occupied Zones I and II and the Germans brought in new forces.
The Italians enabled the organization and supplies for the Chetnik
units and their close links from Serbia to Slovenia, who in turn
organized, planned, and commenced the genocidal crimes against
Croatians and Muslims. In this way, Chetniks around Knin and at the
three border point started the terror against the Croatian population.
On October 7 and 8, 1941, they slaughtered seven Croatians in Donji
Ervenik. On July 3, 1941, they ordered "that all Catholics in the
village of Stikova be converted to the Orthodox faith." In an attack 16
days later, 11 local Croatians and 1 gendarme were killed. On December
11, in the village of Velika Plana, by Lovinac, six Croatians were
massacred and before that, on September 29, 1941, 44 Croatians of
Brotinja by D. Lapac were captured and then slaughtered. The majority
were women and children. This resulted in a new wave of Croatian
refugees. The arrival of Partisans in this territory
temporarily hindered further Chetnik crimes, but made possible the
transition of many Chetniks into Partisans, without punishment for the
crimes committed.
2.) The second period (August - October 1941).
In this period, the majority of Chetnik crimes were again carried out
in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Chetniks captured Foca on August
19,1942 in which 8,000 Muslims, both native inhabitants and some
refugees, lived. Approximately 5,000 Muslims succeeded in escaping
towards Sarajevo. Some smaller groups of Muslims went into hiding while
the others were captured and killed. One of the survivors stated:"...
As soon as the Chetniks occupied Foca, they captured and killed all the
Muslim men, as well as a great number of women and children, whilst
almost all the girls and young women were raped. Altogether, 11 men in
hiding survived. Shops and houses were completely looted and some of
them were burned". The same source also claimed that there had been
"about 2,000 innocent victims." On September 5, 1942, P. Bacovic
reported to D. Mihailovic that in Foca: "...1,200 Ustasa in uniforms
and approximately 1,000 Muslims who had compromised themselves have
been killed, while we had four dead and five wounded.... We had an
enormous booty. Our goal was to secure links with Serbia and this we
achieved."
From August 29 until September 4, 1942, during the Italian military
operation "Albia" against the Partisans on Biokovo, a group of 1,000
Chetniks from eastern Herzegovia carried out massive looting, arson,
and crimes against the local Croatian civilian population. It was on
the territory of the Cetina parish alone (in Rascani, Zupa biokovska,
Kozica, and Dragljani) that 160 Croatians were slaughtered, shot, or
burned. Among them were three priests, Ivan Condic, Josip Braenovic who
was decapitated, and Ladislav Ivankovic. On September 5, 1942, Bacovic
reported on the "punitive expedition" to D. Mihailovic, stating that
the Chetniks had killed over "1,000 Ustasa", and that they themselves
had "not one dead or wounded". He went on to state that en route from
Ljubuski to Vrgorac, they had "skinned three Catholic priests alive",
killed "all the men 15 years of age and older" and that "17 villages
had been completely destroyed", after which, with songs and the Serbian
flag, they "came to the shores of our Adriatic" to the south of
Makarska "and positioned our flag". From May until September 1942, on
the basis of an agreement with the Italians, the Chetniks took over
power in eastern Herzegovina with the exception of the towns.
Subsequently, they killed several hundred Croatians and a
massive exodus of the Croatian population from the left
shores of the Neretva River followed. During this period, the exodus
was primarily from the Stolac region, in which "from approximately
28,000 Catholics and Muslims" (with the exception of a few families in
Stolac itself) not a single Croatian or Muslim remained according to
Chetnik documents. During the Italian military operation against
Partisans on the territory of Prozor in October 1942, the Chetniks
first killed around 200 Croatians and Muslims in the Mostar area and
then in the Prozor area, they killed, slaughtered, and threw into pits
or water 1,716 people (340 Muslims and the rest Croatian civilians).
Upon their return, they killed twenty Croatians, in the Konjic
district, looted their homes and villages, and burned many of them as
well. Bacovic sent the following telegram to D. Mihailovic on October
23, 1942: "In the Prozor operations, over 2,000 Croats and Muslims
slaughtered. Soldiers returned."
Meanwhile, in northern and central Dalmatia, Chetniks carried out more
genocidal crimes against Croatians under directions from the Italians
and under their auspices. In this way, at the beginning of October
1942, on the territory of the Cetina parish, Chetniks, under the
command of commander M. Rokvic, killed 200 Croatians, looted and burned
down houses in the villages of Gata, Naglice, Cisla, Ostrvica,
Zvecanji, Dugopolje, Kolenice, Srijani and Dolac Gornji.
The Italians
reported: "Most of the people killed were the elderly, women and
children, who had no ties with the Partisans". Every one was
slaughtered when captured. During the killings, the Chetniks would
sing: " Petar from London writes us, Oh Croatians, you are no more". On
October 21, 1942, in Bitelic, near Sinj, Djujic's Chetniks, under
directions from the Italians, killed 29 Croats and 6 more in Otisic and
then burned down 220 Croatian houses. According to the report of the
Italian General Berardi from Knin, "every Catholic was tortured and
slaughtered and afterwards most of the corpses were mutilated in the
most horrible manner", but he did not react. Djujic sent a telegram to
D. Mihailovic reporting: "My people killed all those we came upon" On
October 3, 1942, Chetniks from Medak killed five Croatians from Ribnik.
All documents illustrate that the victims in these massacres were
civilians which may be seen by the number of Chetnik casualties. The
consequence was a new wave of Croatian refugees from these territories
towards the sea and deeper into NDH territories.
3.) The third period (January - March 1943)
Chetnik genocidal crimes against Croatians and Muslims in this period
correspond with German and Italian operations against NOP forces which
began on January 20, 1943, throughout the NDH territory (headquarters
in Bihac). Chetniks from the NDH territory, Montenegro and Serbia
participated in these operations. They used this for the pre-planned
cleansing of the Croatian and Muslim population. According to German verified data from the territory within their zone,
in six east Bosnian and four central Bosnian districts, 8,400 Croatians
and 24,400 Muslims were killed, making a total of 32,800 people. The
small remaining groups of Muslims were forced by the Chetniks to
convert from the Islamic to the Serbian Orthodox faith as was the case
in the villages of Potpece and Vikoc near Foca.26
At the same time, at the end of January 1943, the Chetniks in Dalmatia,
taking advantage of the absence of stronger Partisan forces, engaged in
an action, killing over 100 Croatians in the villages of Kijevo,
Kosori, Maovice, Vrlika, Ruzic, Otavice, Gradac and Kricke, and raping
women and girls, all under the slogan, "burn and slaughter everything
Catholic".
At that time, they impaled 68 year-old Niko Blazevic and
roasted until he died. In Otavice, they threw 86 year-old Ilija
Mestrovic, the uncle of the famous Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic,
into his burning house. Already on February 1, 1943, D. Mihailovic was
informed: "In Kijevo and Vrlica, Bacovic shot 55 Ustasa and in Maovice
and Otavice, Djujic killed 48 Ustasa".
Afterwards, on February 3 and 4,
1943, Herzegovinian Chetniks, in the Imotski region, slaughtered and
killed 32 Croatians, looted and destroyed their property, set their
houses on fire and raped the young girls and women. In these actions,
the only victims were Croatian civilians, who were all considered
Ustasa by the Chetniks. Not one victim was Serbian and not one Serbian
village was destroyed. Again, the consequence was the departure of
3,000 Croatians from Sinj alone. Outside of these periods and until the end of the war, the Chetniks
continued to loot, violate and kill Croatians and Muslims, whenever
they had the opportunity. We will only mention a few of these crimes. In February
1944, Dalmatian Chetniks, in the villages of Dubrava, Danilo, Radonici
and Goris killed 30 Croats. On April 4, they killed 10 in the Promin
village of Necmen, 27 in the Skradin region on September 12, 1944, and
32 in December 1944 in Bribir, Grizani, and Tribalje near Crikvenica,
burning 70 houses and the Bribir Church. In May 1944, Chetniks in
Gorazde slaughtered about 50 Muslims, burning 2 mosques. In
northeastern Bosnia, on October 8, 1944, the Trebavska Chetniks killed
25 Croatians in the villages of Tramosnica, Turic, Liporasce and
Srednja Slatina. On January 3, 1945, Chetniks "captured, raped, and
shot 27 women and children" (Croatians) in the villages of Kladari and
Carevac, and ten days later massacred Croatians in the village Pecnik.
On December 21, 1944, the Chetniks of Rogatic killed 23 Muslims in the
village of Vinograd. Up to June 1944, on the territory of the Rogatic
district alone, 3,677 homes were burned and 4,635 were Muslims killed
(among whom were a small number of Croatians) by the Chetniks.30
At the end of the war, the Chetniks were militarily defeated but many
of them were given the opportunity during the war, most often after
being imprisoned, to "voluntarily" join the Partisans. More than 80%
took advantage of this opportunity and, almost as a rule, gained legal
amnesty from their crimes. Only a few were convicted for their crimes.
In this way, they were given the opportunity to plan the revenge which
they had constantly stressed during the war, most frequently in the
song: "Oh Croatians, are we ever going to slaughter you, when Pero
returns from London", even though their King did not return. This was
especially revealed during the final operations after the surrender at
Bleiburg, with murders and firing squads during "Death Marches", in
camps and in places of execution for members of the Croatian defense
forces and NDH authorities, as well as civilians throughout the
territory of the former Yugoslavia, namely Croatians and Muslims.
The number of Chetnik victims of genocide among Croatians and Muslims
during the war from 1941 to 1945 has not yet been confirmed. The newest
demographic research suggests that the possible exact number of
casualties on NDH territory is 200,000 Croats and 100,000 Muslims.
These numbers refer to those killed. According to V. Zerjavic, of this
number, 32,000 Croatians (20,000 in Croatia and 12,000 in Bosnia and
Herzegovina) and 33,000 Muslims were victims of the Chetniks.31 To
many, Zerjavic's number appears too small, especially due to larger
estimates in some sources and literature. I believe that this is
possible, until future research, which is now being conducted,
establishes concrete numerical data for these Chetnik genocidal crimes.
CONCLUSION
Chetnik crimes of genocide against Croatians during the Second World War (1941-1945) were not
incidental, rather they were planned and an integral component of the
military and political goals of the Chetnik movement. Their origins are
in the comprehension of Greater Serbian nationalists and expansionists,
of which the Chetnik movement was the most extreme, most organized and
most operative part during the war. According to this comprehension,
national and historical territories outside of Serbia are also Serbian
because Serbians live there, regardless of their number. Areas in which
there are no Serbians may also be considered Serbian if geostrategic or
other reasons exist. In this respect, they considered Bosnia and
Herzegovina and the greater part of today's Republic of Croatia to be
Serbian and endeavored to "cleanse" them, through crimes of genocide,
of Croatians who formed the majority of the population and
then annex them to the ethnically pure "Greater Serbia". It is
precisely this constant effort of the Chetnik movement to establish
this "Greater Serbia," on the mentioned territories, which is the real
reason for the Chetnik terror and genocidal crimes and not religious
and national differences, nor terror or counter-terror, as some would
have us believe. The Chetniks displayed their genocidal comprehension
at all opportunities in numerous documents, maps, speeches, statements
and actions before, during and unfortunately even after the Second
World War. During this war, they attempted to achieve their genocidal
plans with the support of and under the protection of first the Italian
occupiers and then the German occupiers, as well as the support of the
exiled government of Yugoslavia, Great Britain, and the United States.
This is why, along with the Chetniks, the above mentioned participants
carry their share of the responsibility for these crimes. In this
respect, as we have partially shown, Muslims and Croatians in many
territories in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Serbia,
Montenegro to Slovenia were "cleansed".
Wherever Chetnik units arrived,
horrific crimes were committed, depending only on the relation of
forces and the circumstances in a given territory and throughout NDH,
Europe, and the world. 52 Catholic priests, and several nuns of whom the most
well-known are the so called Drina martyrs, five nuns who were taken by
the Chetniks just before Christmas 1941 from the Pale convent to
Gorazde where they were tortured, slaughtered, and thrown into the
Drina River.
The Chetnik movement did not fulfill its genocidal intentions because
it did not possess enough military units. Yet the main reason was the self-organized defense and armed
opposition of the Croatian and Muslim people, which protected them from
even more tragic Chetnik crimes in many places and brought about their
military defeat.
Following the war in 1945, all Chetnik criminals were
given the opportunity to answer for their crimes of genocide against
the Croatians and their historical, sacred and cultural
monuments in court. Many were even given the chance to continue with
these crimes under a different symbol (the communist red star?) For
this reason, it is not coincidental that such genocidal crimes of
greater Serbian nationalists and Chetniks occurred in even more
appalling forms, with respect to the number of those killed, the number
of refugees, and the destruction, against the Croatians in
the greater Serbian aggression upon the Republic of Croatia in 1991,
and then, against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina until today.
Historical experience shows that the military defeat of the Chetniks
renders possible the return of the majority of the surviving Croatian
population to their homes, but that is not sufficient. It is
necessary to punish all the criminals, because until this is done,
there will be no peace on these territories, and the threat of danger,
new conflicts and new Chetnik crimes will always exist, which is
something all international factors must be conscious of, if they truly
want peace and if they do not wish to bear their share of the
responsibility for Chetnik genocidal crimes.
Source: An International Symposium "Southeastern Europe 1918-1995"
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
MASSIVE AND SYSTEMATICAL LIQUIDATION OF CROATIANS IN MONARCHIST YUGOSLAVIA (1918.-1939.)
Miroslav Krleza, a Croatian writer of European format, wrote about Croatian
history and politics from 1914 in a book called Ten Bloody Years. We
will call the era of the State of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes up to
1929 and the Monarchy in Yugoslavia. As it was renamed in 1929 until
1939 the period of twenty truly bloody years in which the lives of
non-Serbian people had no value; the spilled blood of Croatians,
Albanians, Macedonians, Bosniaks, and the opposition Montenegrins could
not even receive employment promotions.
The establishment of a new state in 1918 was made possible by Croatian politician, Ante Pavelic (the dentist) with his speach in Belgrade in 1941. He was overthrown by another younger Ante Pavelic (the advocate), the President of the Independent State of Croatia. The state was being created in 1918 and 1919 through blood and violence and in the same way disappeared in 1941.
Everything began with the massacres on December 5, 1918, four days after the proclamation of the unified Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1.12.1918) on Jelacic Square in Zagreb - the December victims. The Croatian soldiers from the former Austro-Hungarian army came here and cheered the Croatian Republic. They were awaited by the military and the police who opened fire with machine guns from the windows surrounding the houses, immediately, killing 13 people, nine were soldiers and 17 additional innocent citizens and soldiers were wounded.45 This was the official report but many old citizens of Zagreb claimed that about a hundred people were wounded and killed. In this way the new government, illustrated the means it would use to maintain its power. It had remained faithful to this for almost twenty years of its existence. The Serbian army that entered into Croatia acted as if it were on enemy territo With every protest, resistance, and demonstration, they reacted with force.
In 1920, a rebellion broke out against the Serbian tradition of branding of livestock.46 Around Cazma, Bjelovar, Kriz, Dugo Selo, Zelina, and Kutina, ten Croatian peasants were killed and more than ten beaten and arrested. In Kriz alone, beside Ivanic-Grad in the so called Krz Republic ten peasants were killed or wounded. Similar events occurred in Petrijevci (Slavonia) and elsewhere.
Banishment and murders of Croatian members of Radic's Croatian Peasant Party were a usual occurrence. The imprisonment of highly respected politicians (Radic, Macek, Suflay, Predavec and others) were common. Persecution of Croatians was organized by ORJUNA (Organization of Yugoslavian nationalists) which was aided and protected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs led by Svetozar Pribicevic.
In the entire Yugoslavia, especially in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, Chetnik organizations were at work. Without any sanctions, the Chetniks killed people, beat them, threatened them, and burned their houses.
Terror, threats, and pressure in Lika were usual actions during the elections. In Stajnica in 1925, five Croatian peasants were killed; many murderers were never uncovered. Nevertheless, the greatest murder of a well-respected Croatian occurred at the Parliament of the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs in Belgrade in June, 1928. These were the so called June victims which illustrated that the Greater-Serbian regime flinched at nothing.
Punisa Racic, a Serbian representative and Chetnik leader who practiced shooting at live targets in Southern Serbia, killed Stjepan's nephew Pavao Radic and Djuro Basaracek and wounded Stjepan Radic, Ivan Pernar and Ivan Grandja, all representatives of the Croatian Peasant Party. Shortly afterwards, the wounded Stjepan Radic died in Zagreb and his burial was transformed into a nation-wide demonstration against Greater Serbian politics in Croatia and Yugoslavia. This action, which was condemned by the entire world, was a turning-point in the history of the first Yugoslavia. From that day, Croatians wished to exit the state and grew increasingly to organize themselves and to establish an opposition to the crude forces of Belgrade. The consequences of these crimes was the announcement of the King's dictatorship in 1929, the prohibition of all political parties, especially non-Serbian, and the renaming of the state to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In 1931, a great trial was led against Croatian nationalists (Stipe Javor, Matija Soldin, Marko Hranilovic and others).
The same year, a notable Croatian historian, Dr. Milan Sufflay was killed and numerous other Croatian youths were liquidated or succumbed to tortures in jails.
During 1932, Serbian Chetniks, gendarmes, and police killed forty people in Croatia from Zagorje to Dalmatia. For example, in Benkovac, Nin, Polaca, Lisani, and in Brusani in Lika, a so called Licki Rebellion broke out and was not successful. The punishment against the Croatians was drastic fifty Croatian houses on Velebit were burned).
In 1933, Ivo Pilar, pseudonym Sudland, who wrote a book in German about the southslav question and revealed all Greater Serbian intentions until 1917, was killed under strange circumstances.
That same year, scores of Croatian peasants from Srijem to Lika were killed. Those individuals who liquidated them received no punishment or investigation. For example Milivoj Cumic killed two Croatians near Nin and in return received Eminence in the Order of St. Sava. A Serbian gendarme killed a postman in the centre of Zagreb simply because he was apparently singing Croatian songs.
Hundreds of Croatians were imprisoned, tortured, and beaten, using the excuse that they were Ustashas. For Greater-Serbians, every Croatian is an Ustasa, and every song which talks about Croatia including the Croatian National Anthem is an Ustasha song.
In 1934, more Croatians are killed, several legal proceedings are led against Croatians, and hundreds of people are imprisoned. There was an increasing number of protests, explosions, displays of the Croatian flag, and attacks on gendarmes.
In October 1934, as an act of revenge, the creator of dictatorship, Serbian King Alexandar, Karadjordjevic, was killed in Marseilles. The people considered this justice because Stjepan Radic and his notable party associates were killed with the King's knowledge.
Considering that Croatians were under brigandage in many places and in February of 1925, the so called Sibinja victims "fell" besides Slavonski Brod and immediately afterwards, the Ruscic victims at the same place, 13 peasant Croatians were killed.55 Murders were occurring like an assembly line in all areas of Croatia. Peasants decided to extend opposition by gathering people in a so-called national defence.
Relative to this, after the murder of the well-known Croatian, Karlo Brkljacic in Lika (April 1936), exasperation became predominant. When one Chetnik gang left Zagreb for a mission in Kerestinec (April 16), they were awaited by peasants who killed six chetniks in a battle around the castle. And then three more in a house which had the inscription "Chetnik association Samobor". This was one of the few responses to numerous violent acts and massive killings of Croatians.
That same year in 1936, the Croatian martyr Stipe Javor died in prison in Mitrovica because of a hunger strike in protest of the Serbian torture's in prison.
Death found Svetozar Pribicevc in Prag, one of the greatest criminals to the Croatian nation, who until he was rejected by the King in 1927, systematically destroyed everything that was Croatian for almost thirty years. Only in the past ten years changed his position and wrote a book "The Dictatorship of King Aleksandar", and a letter to the Serbs in which he condemns the monarchy, the King, and Serbians for violence against Croatians.
Finally, among the great crimes against the Croatians were the so-called Senj victims of May 9,1937. Singers from the Croatian singing society of "Trebevic" from Sarajevo and Croatian citizens from Gospic were guests in Senj. They were awaited by 25 gendarmes, who as if crazy, began to shoot at the Gospic truck only because a Croatian flag was waving from it. They were shooting with illegal bullets (dumdum) and killed six men and one girl (no one was older than 24). The funeral in Gospic became a Croatian-wide mourning but there was no investigation nor punishment. The majority of Croatian Serbians approved these crimes. At the same time of the June Victims, numerous new-born children were named Punisa in Belgrade, Serbia, after Punisa Racic - the killer of Stjepan Radic.
During 1938 and 1939, political conditions in Yugoslavia and the world changed. The Croatian Peasant Party grew stronger and even the Serbian side realized that with violence nothing could be achieved except hate, so they began to yield. Due to this, the number of Croatian victims were less. In a short time, negotiations for the renewal of Croatian political autonomy began and the union of Croatian historical territories which meant transforming the Sava and Primorje Dominions and some other territories in central and northern Bosnian around Dubrovnik into the Dominion of Croatia. This was the renewal of Croatian statehood and the assembly of Croatian historical territories which the authority of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia intentionally shattered in 1918. Again, Zagreb became a national centre for all Croatians and the Croatian Peasant Party became the national party for the entire Croatian nation.
However, in Europe the Second World War began which in 1941 caught hold of Yugoslavia and rendered impossible Croatian aspirations for a national state. The proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia, after the overthrow of the Greater Serbian, Yugoslavian army in April 1941, was awaited by the Serbians in Croatia and Bosnia literally "with knives." In Herzegovina, Dalmatian Zagora, Lika, and elsewhere real revolts and the Chetniks executed liquidations a great number of Croatians before the new Croatian state gained control. Greater Serbians with Chetniks as their leaders displayed that they were against any kind of Croatia no matter what internal order it had. After all, it was similar to 1990 and 1991 when they began to rebel and become very aggressive, well before the consolidation of the Croatian state.
Terror and liquidation did not begin in 1941 and was not first started by the Croatians in the Second World War. Rather, it was the Serbians and forty years earlier. Croatians acted, in all of this, a defensive role which is shown by the fact that the Chetniks began an organized extermination of Croatians and other non-Serbian nations in 1903. They founded the Black Hand and Chetnikism while the Ustasha Organization did not begin until 1929 after the murder of Stjepan Radic and other Croatians at the Belgrade National Assembly.
Croatians were victims on their own land from 1903 to 1941. They were victims of grandomania and mythologized Serbian consciousness of creating a Greater-Serbia on Croatian, Bosnian-Herzegovian, Montenegrin, and Hungarian territory. Serbians were in fact the "Trojan horse" in these lands through the conquering politics that manipulated them. Because of this, as in the war from 1941 to 1945, in the homeland war of 1991 to 1995, they had to pay a high price.
Source
The establishment of a new state in 1918 was made possible by Croatian politician, Ante Pavelic (the dentist) with his speach in Belgrade in 1941. He was overthrown by another younger Ante Pavelic (the advocate), the President of the Independent State of Croatia. The state was being created in 1918 and 1919 through blood and violence and in the same way disappeared in 1941.
Everything began with the massacres on December 5, 1918, four days after the proclamation of the unified Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1.12.1918) on Jelacic Square in Zagreb - the December victims. The Croatian soldiers from the former Austro-Hungarian army came here and cheered the Croatian Republic. They were awaited by the military and the police who opened fire with machine guns from the windows surrounding the houses, immediately, killing 13 people, nine were soldiers and 17 additional innocent citizens and soldiers were wounded.45 This was the official report but many old citizens of Zagreb claimed that about a hundred people were wounded and killed. In this way the new government, illustrated the means it would use to maintain its power. It had remained faithful to this for almost twenty years of its existence. The Serbian army that entered into Croatia acted as if it were on enemy territo With every protest, resistance, and demonstration, they reacted with force.
In 1920, a rebellion broke out against the Serbian tradition of branding of livestock.46 Around Cazma, Bjelovar, Kriz, Dugo Selo, Zelina, and Kutina, ten Croatian peasants were killed and more than ten beaten and arrested. In Kriz alone, beside Ivanic-Grad in the so called Krz Republic ten peasants were killed or wounded. Similar events occurred in Petrijevci (Slavonia) and elsewhere.
Banishment and murders of Croatian members of Radic's Croatian Peasant Party were a usual occurrence. The imprisonment of highly respected politicians (Radic, Macek, Suflay, Predavec and others) were common. Persecution of Croatians was organized by ORJUNA (Organization of Yugoslavian nationalists) which was aided and protected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs led by Svetozar Pribicevic.
In the entire Yugoslavia, especially in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, Chetnik organizations were at work. Without any sanctions, the Chetniks killed people, beat them, threatened them, and burned their houses.
Terror, threats, and pressure in Lika were usual actions during the elections. In Stajnica in 1925, five Croatian peasants were killed; many murderers were never uncovered. Nevertheless, the greatest murder of a well-respected Croatian occurred at the Parliament of the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs in Belgrade in June, 1928. These were the so called June victims which illustrated that the Greater-Serbian regime flinched at nothing.
Punisa Racic, a Serbian representative and Chetnik leader who practiced shooting at live targets in Southern Serbia, killed Stjepan's nephew Pavao Radic and Djuro Basaracek and wounded Stjepan Radic, Ivan Pernar and Ivan Grandja, all representatives of the Croatian Peasant Party. Shortly afterwards, the wounded Stjepan Radic died in Zagreb and his burial was transformed into a nation-wide demonstration against Greater Serbian politics in Croatia and Yugoslavia. This action, which was condemned by the entire world, was a turning-point in the history of the first Yugoslavia. From that day, Croatians wished to exit the state and grew increasingly to organize themselves and to establish an opposition to the crude forces of Belgrade. The consequences of these crimes was the announcement of the King's dictatorship in 1929, the prohibition of all political parties, especially non-Serbian, and the renaming of the state to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In 1931, a great trial was led against Croatian nationalists (Stipe Javor, Matija Soldin, Marko Hranilovic and others).
The same year, a notable Croatian historian, Dr. Milan Sufflay was killed and numerous other Croatian youths were liquidated or succumbed to tortures in jails.
During 1932, Serbian Chetniks, gendarmes, and police killed forty people in Croatia from Zagorje to Dalmatia. For example, in Benkovac, Nin, Polaca, Lisani, and in Brusani in Lika, a so called Licki Rebellion broke out and was not successful. The punishment against the Croatians was drastic fifty Croatian houses on Velebit were burned).
In 1933, Ivo Pilar, pseudonym Sudland, who wrote a book in German about the southslav question and revealed all Greater Serbian intentions until 1917, was killed under strange circumstances.
That same year, scores of Croatian peasants from Srijem to Lika were killed. Those individuals who liquidated them received no punishment or investigation. For example Milivoj Cumic killed two Croatians near Nin and in return received Eminence in the Order of St. Sava. A Serbian gendarme killed a postman in the centre of Zagreb simply because he was apparently singing Croatian songs.
Hundreds of Croatians were imprisoned, tortured, and beaten, using the excuse that they were Ustashas. For Greater-Serbians, every Croatian is an Ustasa, and every song which talks about Croatia including the Croatian National Anthem is an Ustasha song.
In 1934, more Croatians are killed, several legal proceedings are led against Croatians, and hundreds of people are imprisoned. There was an increasing number of protests, explosions, displays of the Croatian flag, and attacks on gendarmes.
In October 1934, as an act of revenge, the creator of dictatorship, Serbian King Alexandar, Karadjordjevic, was killed in Marseilles. The people considered this justice because Stjepan Radic and his notable party associates were killed with the King's knowledge.
Considering that Croatians were under brigandage in many places and in February of 1925, the so called Sibinja victims "fell" besides Slavonski Brod and immediately afterwards, the Ruscic victims at the same place, 13 peasant Croatians were killed.55 Murders were occurring like an assembly line in all areas of Croatia. Peasants decided to extend opposition by gathering people in a so-called national defence.
Relative to this, after the murder of the well-known Croatian, Karlo Brkljacic in Lika (April 1936), exasperation became predominant. When one Chetnik gang left Zagreb for a mission in Kerestinec (April 16), they were awaited by peasants who killed six chetniks in a battle around the castle. And then three more in a house which had the inscription "Chetnik association Samobor". This was one of the few responses to numerous violent acts and massive killings of Croatians.
That same year in 1936, the Croatian martyr Stipe Javor died in prison in Mitrovica because of a hunger strike in protest of the Serbian torture's in prison.
Death found Svetozar Pribicevc in Prag, one of the greatest criminals to the Croatian nation, who until he was rejected by the King in 1927, systematically destroyed everything that was Croatian for almost thirty years. Only in the past ten years changed his position and wrote a book "The Dictatorship of King Aleksandar", and a letter to the Serbs in which he condemns the monarchy, the King, and Serbians for violence against Croatians.
Finally, among the great crimes against the Croatians were the so-called Senj victims of May 9,1937. Singers from the Croatian singing society of "Trebevic" from Sarajevo and Croatian citizens from Gospic were guests in Senj. They were awaited by 25 gendarmes, who as if crazy, began to shoot at the Gospic truck only because a Croatian flag was waving from it. They were shooting with illegal bullets (dumdum) and killed six men and one girl (no one was older than 24). The funeral in Gospic became a Croatian-wide mourning but there was no investigation nor punishment. The majority of Croatian Serbians approved these crimes. At the same time of the June Victims, numerous new-born children were named Punisa in Belgrade, Serbia, after Punisa Racic - the killer of Stjepan Radic.
During 1938 and 1939, political conditions in Yugoslavia and the world changed. The Croatian Peasant Party grew stronger and even the Serbian side realized that with violence nothing could be achieved except hate, so they began to yield. Due to this, the number of Croatian victims were less. In a short time, negotiations for the renewal of Croatian political autonomy began and the union of Croatian historical territories which meant transforming the Sava and Primorje Dominions and some other territories in central and northern Bosnian around Dubrovnik into the Dominion of Croatia. This was the renewal of Croatian statehood and the assembly of Croatian historical territories which the authority of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia intentionally shattered in 1918. Again, Zagreb became a national centre for all Croatians and the Croatian Peasant Party became the national party for the entire Croatian nation.
However, in Europe the Second World War began which in 1941 caught hold of Yugoslavia and rendered impossible Croatian aspirations for a national state. The proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia, after the overthrow of the Greater Serbian, Yugoslavian army in April 1941, was awaited by the Serbians in Croatia and Bosnia literally "with knives." In Herzegovina, Dalmatian Zagora, Lika, and elsewhere real revolts and the Chetniks executed liquidations a great number of Croatians before the new Croatian state gained control. Greater Serbians with Chetniks as their leaders displayed that they were against any kind of Croatia no matter what internal order it had. After all, it was similar to 1990 and 1991 when they began to rebel and become very aggressive, well before the consolidation of the Croatian state.
Terror and liquidation did not begin in 1941 and was not first started by the Croatians in the Second World War. Rather, it was the Serbians and forty years earlier. Croatians acted, in all of this, a defensive role which is shown by the fact that the Chetniks began an organized extermination of Croatians and other non-Serbian nations in 1903. They founded the Black Hand and Chetnikism while the Ustasha Organization did not begin until 1929 after the murder of Stjepan Radic and other Croatians at the Belgrade National Assembly.
Croatians were victims on their own land from 1903 to 1941. They were victims of grandomania and mythologized Serbian consciousness of creating a Greater-Serbia on Croatian, Bosnian-Herzegovian, Montenegrin, and Hungarian territory. Serbians were in fact the "Trojan horse" in these lands through the conquering politics that manipulated them. Because of this, as in the war from 1941 to 1945, in the homeland war of 1991 to 1995, they had to pay a high price.
Source
Persecution And Liquidation Of Croats On Croatian Territory From 1903 To 1941
When the Serbian-Yugoslav Army launched an attack on Slovenia in 1991, the state of war on the former Yugoslavian territories, subsequently led to an aggressive war against Croatia. In 1992, with the aid of the Bosnian Serbs, the Yugoslavian Army attempted as well to conquer Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is a Serbian and Montenegrin war against the three former separate and independent republicsstill in effect today. This aggressive war was another attempt to preserve Yugoslavia in which Serbia with the help of Montenegro would retain its domination over the other republics and people. This is the final act; the finale of Greater Serbia politics which has been executed by all possible means for almost two complete centuries in an extremely organized form since 1903.
TWO CENTURIES OF GREATER SERBIAN EXPANSION TOWARDS THE WEST
The first Serbian state originated in the Turkish whirlpool in 1459. The new second Serbia began to take shape from the First and Second Rebellions against Turkey in 1804 and 1815. However, the Serbian Orthodox Church preserved the idea of the revival of the Serbian State (a re-establishment of a Greater Serbia from the 14th century during Emperor Dusan's era with its expansion towards the West asfar as the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchal jurisdiction stretched with its centre in Pec in Kosovo). Hence, it is not surprising that the thesis stating, that all nations who speak similar languages as the Serbian language are Serbian, was proposed primarily by leaders of the Serbian church. For example, The Monk writer Dositej Obradovic in 1783 and Monah and historian Jovan Rajic in 1794, counted Bosnia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, thus parts of Croatia, as Serbian land.
In 1806, the first map, published by Sava Tekelija (Popovic), of expanded Serbia consisted of Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Croatian lands of Dalmatia and Dubrovnik. In 1806, Montenegrins with the aid of the Russians, who sailed into the Adriatic Sea in a battle against France, violently attacked and looted Konavle, a part of the Croatian-Dubrovnik Republic. This was repeated in 1991 by their great grandchildren from Montenegro with the help of the Serbian Army which at the time was called the Yugoslavian Army. Along with the looting and the tyranny, they violently bombed the museum city of Dubrovnik which they have long wanted to Serbianize or destroy for well over a century and a half.
One of the characteristics of the Eastern or Orthodox Church is religious exclusivism. These distinctions relate to the Serbian Orthodox Church. From the 12th century, since the founder St. Sava, its first and last ideologist, persecutes and endeavors to destroy other faiths, principally the Catholic faith and Islam from the 19th century. The fundamental characteristics of the teachings of St. Sava, include: equalization and a narrow tie between the Serbian State and Church, national and religious exclusivism, destruction of all members of other nations and faiths, the stealing of pocessions and conquering of territories all resulting in religious, national, and political exclusivism and intolerance. The Serbian Orthodox Church utilized such politics by transferring Catholic Montenegro into Orthodoxism and by settling Bosnia, Herzegovina and part of Croatia with Orthodox Vlachs (cattle-ranchers with non Slavic roots or Roman or Illyrian origin and later transforming them into Serbians as a nation in the 19th and 20th centuries).
The Vlachs, as servants to the Turkish Ottomans, aided in conquering Bosnia, Herzegovina, parts of Croatia, and southern Hungary. When the Turks grew weaker at the end of the 15th century, they crossed over to serve Austria demanding special rights, religious freedom, land, and the right to loot and persecute surrounding nations. Thus, it is mentioned already in 1630 that the Orthodox Vlachs took advantage of the privileges of the Austrian authority in Croatia and began to banish native Catholics, claiming that the King gave land only to the Vlachs. This was the first example of what today we callethnic cleansing. In this manner, Serbians ethnically and religiously cleansed territory which they captured in 1878, then in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, and similarly again, somewhat calmer and calculating after 1918 and 1945. At the sametime, they occupied territories in Kosovo, Macedonia, Sandzak, Bosnia and bordering territories in Croatia through the colonization of Serbians.
Quickly, Serbian politicians, journalists, and scholars joined the battle to Serbianize other neighboring Slavic nations. In respect to this, even in 1818, one hundred years before the foundation of the Kingdom of Serbians, Croats and Slovenes, Serbians announced in a Serbian newspaper from Vienna that even the people of Zagreb were Serbians. While Croatians during the Croatian national rennaissance, struggled to win over all Southern Slav people over a neutral Ilyrian name, Serbian scholar V.S. Karadzic, wrote how all Catholics (meaning Croatians) and Muslims were Serbians in spite of their faith. The Croatian Assembly in 1861, and throughout the 19th century, endeavored by the supernational Yugoslavian name to assemble all Southern Slavs, had a Serbian-Orthodox patriarch, Josif Rajacic, stress how Croatians and Serbians were two different nations with their own separate history, church, script and culture. Serbians, he says will not renounce their Serbian name "neither for love of Illyrianism,Yugoslavianism or Croatism".
SYSTEMATIC GREATER-SERBIAN POLITICS TOWARDS THE END OF THE 19th CENTURY AND AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE 20th CENTURY
In the second half of the 19th century, there existed the calculated and organized politics of the Serbian government and Orthodox Church to transform the non-Slav, Orthodox Vlachs into aggressive, national, conscious Serbs. The Vlachs were peaceful peasant cattle-farmers who had considered Croatia their homeland and called themselves Orthodox Croatians. In Pakrac, in Slavonia, an area settled by a great number of Vlachs, called "Little Vlaska", in 1876 there existed a Serbian conspiracy to liquidate all Croatian Catholics.
When Serbia and Montenegro gained independence at the Berlin Congress in 1878, they were forced to disclaim Bosnia and Herzegovina which was occupied by Austria-Hungary. The territory of the former Croatian Military Border, part of Croatia until Austria occupied it with Vlachs, was returned to Croatia in 1881. Given that quite a number of Vlachs resided in these lands and began to consider themselves Serbians, Serbia began a specific task of Serbianizing the surrounding non-Serbian lands and then by joining the lands with the expanded Serbian state. The orientation of Serbia towards the West and the South began in 1885 when Serbia was defeated in a provoked war against Bulgaria.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the Greater Serbian political ideologies and cultural-educational preparations began in Serbia and in neighbouring lands. Books were written in which the Serbian past is mythologized, the cult of St. Sava is exaggerated, the Kosovo battle of 1389 is celebrated, the needs in creating a Great Dusan Empire is stresssed, and is requested access to the sea. It is systematically written about the expansion of Serbia and its transformation to a Greater Serbia which would be hegemonic on the Balkans and with the help of Slavic Russia, would liberate South or Old Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia from the Turks and so prevent the Austro-Hungarian empire of taking Turkish positions in that terriitory.10 In Zagreb in 1884, with the help of Serbia, a newsletter called Srbobran, spread Greater Serbian propagand. Zastava also did this in Novi Sad and other pro-Serbian newsletters in Sarajevo, Zadar, and elsewhere.
The first anti-Croatian demonstration took place in Belgrade in 1892. The following year in Knin, once a city of Croatian kings, in which, at that time, the Serbians did not make up the majority, Croatian scholars who had opened a Croatian Archeological Museum, were beaten up. Serbian state flags were systematically raised in Croatia even though they were distinctly forbidden in 1895 when the Habsburg Emperor Franjo Josip I, then the King of Croatia, visited Zagreb. Intentional provocation was achieved by the Greater Serbian newsletter in Zagreb, Srbobran, which conveyed Nikola Stojanovic's article. It stated Croatians are directly informed of the battle of destruction in which the Croatian nation, language, history and culture are denied and proclaimed Serbian. The response were massive anti-Serbian demonstrations in Zagreb in 1902. When officers of the Serbian Army and members of secret conspiracy organizations liquidated the last Serbian King in the Obrenovic Dynasty and brought Peter from the Karadjordjevic Dynasty to the throne in 1903, propaganda was organized and paid by the government using all means to create a Greater Serbia.
To prevent foreign countries from accusing the Kingdom of Serbia as being a subversive state, with war preparations and revolutions among Southern Slavs, King Peter and his government organized several groups, associations, and organizations to spread GreaterSerbian propaganda on Austro-Hungarian and Turkish territories, in particular the Southern Slav territories of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Vojvodina, but without renouncing Bulgaria nor Slovenia. A secret officers organization was founded called the "Black Hand" in May 1903 (causing unrest, rebellions, and assassinations and consisting of secret agents and propagandists).
Because the organization acted illegally, its political and public work proceeded through the club "Slovenian South" which was led by people close to King Peter.16 In Kosovo and particularly in Macedonia, in the second half of the 19th century, a volunteer Serbian terrorist organization called Chetniks was in operation. They fought and rebelled against supporters of Bulgaria and those who supported Greece and a liberated Macedonia. Also in 1903, in Belgrade, a main council for the Chetnik actions were chosen and in 1905 an association Serbian Defense was founded with the goal to strengthen the battle "for Serbian interests"
From 1908, the National Defense was working on the same task that directly prepared political and sabotage actions in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia. All these organizations and associations were supporters and trainers of the terrorists who assassinated the heir to the Habsburg throne, Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, provoking the First World War. They planned (with Peter Karadjordjevic's knowledge) the liquidation of his grandfather, the Prince and King of Montenegro Nikola Petrovic (the bomb and the Kolasin affairs of 1907/8).18 Members of these terrorist organizations stood behind a number of actions and liquidations in Croatia. Some Serbians from Croatia were volunteers in Chetnik units in Macedonia and their leaders often travelled as informers in Croatia and Bosnia.
At the same time, while these revolutionary-terrorist organizations in Belgrade were being formed, at the end of 1903, a weekly newspaper Slovenski Jug which had the task of "popularizing the idea of South Slavs" and work for "its establishment" was being circulated. Periodically, until 1912, the newsletter had as its contributors Bulgarians, Croatians, Slovenians, and naturally Serbians. The newsletter Pijemont which was named after the small Italian state that unified Italy, had a similar task. The message stated as the Piedmontese unified Italy, Serbia and Belgrade will unify Southern Slavs. However, the difference was that Pedmont unified Italy and embodied itself and "drowned" itself in it; but Serbia under Karadjordjevic wished to create a Greater or at least an expanded Serbia transforming all Southern Slavs into Serbians.20 In this question lies the reason for the Serbian-Bulgarian animosity as well as the conflict between Serbia and Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia, Serbians and Macedonians, and Serbians and Albanians.
The former Montenegrin Minister Sekula Drljevic wrote about this: "All conflicts we speak about, in which there are conflicts between the lands of Southern Slavs, are provoked by Serbia (...) It is necessary to look at the moral, ethnical and political shape of Belgrade in order to comprehend why Yugoslavia became what it became, lived as it did and disappeared as it did."
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuryes in Serbia and with the Serbians in Croatia, the idea began to spread about the so called Serbian lands. All three Croatian province-lands were included (Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia) and so were Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, parts of Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and in some political maps, Slovenia as well. At the same time school textbooks extol Serbian history, language, and culture while Croatian and Montenegrian literary works were being passed as Serbian.
The Serbs particularly usure Dubrovnik, its culture and literature, and all the language excluzively Serbian. All Serbian schools and even the religious Orthodox schools in Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Vojvodina and elsewhere had distinct nationalistic programs in the style of Karadzic's message-motto: Serbians all and everywhere!
Mythologisized Serbian histories were announced in which they were the greatest and most significant nation in the world with roots from Alexander of Macedonia. Thus, it was a general mythology of Serbians and their past.
All these became the ideal preparations for the wars which Serbia was intensely planning with the help of Russia that also had its interests in the Balkans. Serbia also had close relations with France that mainly educated Serbian officers since King Peter's time. The first goal for Serbia, with the aid of the above-mentioned superrowers, was to destroy Turkey and Austro-Hungary and to drive them from this territory and to prevent German-Austrian Advance to the east. It was only with the signing and the breakdown of the Turkish and Austrian empires that the Serbs could realise their greater Serbian pland and occupation or as they called it "liberation" of "Serbian lands".
The first of the Serbian raids towards the west, east and south were directed toward the Bulgarians and the Croatians, was had their own integrational national program. For example, Croatians wanted to unify all Croatian lands: Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Istria, Rijeka, Medjimurje, Boka Kotorska, and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina where Croatians resided (Western Bosnia called Turkish Croatia at the time).
SERBIAN LAND REFORM AND COLONIZATION IN 1918
It is a rare occurrence in the world that in the last 150 years one nation should succeed in expanding its state territory and in banishing all non-Serbian peoples. This has been achieved by Serbia. It is interesting to note that their success is not based on their victories in the field, but rather at the negotiating table, achieved with the support of their war allies.
Serbian proper, which encompassed the Belgrade pasha jurisdiction, expanded territorially to include Kosovo, a part of Sandzak and the so called Yugoslavian Macedonia, after the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. During the first Balkan War, Serbian forces began to execute crimes of genocide against Albanians, Bosniacs and Macedonians in these territories. They set entire villages on fire, killing civilians in the most barbaric fashion using knives, axes and dull wooden mallets. Such crimes have never been recorded in Europe since the times of the Great Migrations.
The persecution of non-Serbian citizens continued after Serbians gained power and led to massive exile, causing a change in the demographic structure and making Serbian colonization possible on the confiscated properties of those banished. The above mentioned expansion of Serbian territory, on which colonization was implemented, marks the beginning of the actualization of the political program, defined in Ilija Garasanin's "Nacertanije" from 1844.
THE SERBIAN CONQUERING IDEOLOGY
The Serbian national program outlined in "Nacertanije" of 1844, originated from the re-establishment of Dusan's Empire in the XIV century, with certain changes which were a consequence of political events from the middle of the previous century. In effect, "Nacertanije" became a synonym for Greater Serbian hegemony with respect to the neighboring nations. This national program sets forth the fact that Serbians cannot be satisfied with their gains from the First and Second Serbian Rebellions and that they will continue their battle to gain power on the Balkans. "Nacertanije" defines the territories in which Serbia must organize propaganda and intelligence activities, as preparation for the annexation of these territories to their state. For this reason, the program was not published until 1906. The national program foresees that Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, northern Albania, Srijem, Banat and Backa join Serbia. For the first time, the territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Vojvodina, which were not encompassed by Dusan's Empire, are included as Serbian national territory. Later "Nacertanije" was to become the Serbian ideology for the Obrenovic and Karadjordjevic dynasties, and all Greater Serbian programs including Stevan Moljevic's and Draza Mihailovic's genocidal Chetnik programs and the SANU Memorandum of 1986.
In this respect, Greater Serbian hegemonistic politics in the last 150 years, has, in essence, not changed because its basic aims have been the conquering of territory, penetration towards the West over the Drina River, persecution and destruction of non-Serbian nations to create a Greater Serbia and ensuring that "all Serbians live in one state". For this reason, the ethnic structure was altered through colonization of conquered territory. Wars were waged in order to set the program's politics into motion, and land reform on the conquered territories was conducted due to the colonization of Serbian population.
CHANGES IN LAND OWNERSHIP IN 1918
In order to gain a better insight into the situation concerning land ownership before the agrarian reform in 1918 and 1919 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it was most drastically performed, we will make use of the final census of land ownership and population according to religious affiliation, conducted in 1910 in Austro-Hungary. According to that census, Bosnian - Muslims owned 91.1%, Orthodox Serbians owned 6.0% , Croatian Catholics owned 2.6% and others, 0.3% of the property. Following the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes, the Bosniac nation was in an inferior position, because it gained the status of a religious minority, so it lost its political and cultural autonomy. With the first agrarian reform of 1918 and 1919, genocide against Bosniacs was deceitfully performed, by the taking away of property with only symbolic reimbursement which was never paid in its entirety. Many wealthy families and landowners became homeless overnight, without any means of survival. Some families even had their farm buildings and private lots taken away from them. The process to massively impoverish the Bosniac nation and their exodus to Turkey had begun. Serbian families from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian Krajina, Serbia and Montenegro were given the lands taken away from the Bosniac families. They were recorded in land registers as owners who did not pay a cent for the properties they had received. This was their reward for belonging to the privileged nation. The main goal was to forcefully alter the demographic structure, using Serbian colonization, in accordance with the "Nacertanije" program. That is to say, Bosnia and Herzegovina was to be considered Serbian land which was to join Greater Serbia at the right moment in history, at any expense. The degree of genocide against Bosniacs can be illustrated in indexes regarding the change of the structure of ownership of land, which was taken away in the first agrarian reform in 1918 and 1919. Bosnian Muslims had a total of 1,175,305 hectares of agricultural and forest land taken away from them. 110,922 hectares of land were taken away from stock corporations, banks and other institutions. Thus, a total of 1,286,227 hectares of agricultural and forest land was seized. The total amount of land taken away by the first agrarian reform in 1918 and 1919 was divided among 249,518 Serbian families, among whom were settlers, colonists outside Bosnia and Herzegovina and especially volunteers of the Salonika front. If we consider that every family, on average had four members, we can infer that almost one million Serbian inhabitants became land owners and so became significantly wealthy. The agrarian reform of 1918 and 1919 was primarily aimed against members of the Islamic faith, due to the revival of the St. Sava ideology "One nation, one religion in one state." For this reason, the agrarian reform was conducted in a genocidal manner against Muslim land owners in Macedonia, Kosovo and Metohija, Sandzak and Montenegro. A total of 231,098 hectares of land was taken away from them and divided amongst 48,267 Serbian families. If we apply the above methodology that the average family had four members, it can be deduced that almost 200 thousand members of Serbian families received land. In this way, the proprietary and ethnic structure of the population was significantly altered. The process of emigration of citizens from this territory and immigration into Turkey was parallel with the colonization of Serbian citizens from Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Lika, Banija and Kordun.
Within the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes, the agrarian reform in 1918 and 1919 in Croatia and Slovenia, was performed in a notably milder manner, compared to Bosnia. The agrarian reform was practiced on owners of large estates and relatively less land was taken away, which according to statistical indexes represented 1/4 of the total land taken away in the state. This came to 406,981 hectares of land, which was divided among 316,762 Serbian families who were primarily colonized from passive areas. In this way, almost 1,200,000 family members received land and property. The agrarian reform of 1918 and 1919 was in effect carried out everywhere except for Serbia, within the borders of the former Belgrade pasha jurisdiction up to 1912. This proves that the Serbian owners of large estates were privileged among those in the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes. In the above mentioned analysis, we can see that 1,924,307 hectares of land were taken away from former land owners in the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes and divided amongst 614, 603 families, primarily Serbian. If we apply the adopted methodology, that every family consists of an average of four members, we can infer that approximately 2,450,000 family members received possession and ownership of land, without paying anything for it. From a historical perspective, the agrarian reform resulted in the largest colonization of the Serbian people onto territory across the Drina River in the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians, and Slovenes. This was a political conceived plan for Serbian territorial expansion under post war conditions. Those who were most afflicted were Bosnian members of the Islamic faith, Albanians and Macedonians because 3/4 of the entire land confiscated in the agrarian reform belonged to them.
HISTORICALLY, BANJA LUKA IS NOT A SERBIAN CITY
Towards the end of the agrarian reform of 1918 and 1919, when land was taken away from Bosniacs, based on a discriminatory law, terrorist methods were implemented such as the infamous "death march" in 1919 on Bosniacs from Lijevce polje near Banjaluka. 50,000 Bosniacs resided on the fertile plains of the Lijevce polje, of whom over a thousand land owners were killed by Serbian terrorists during the "death march" and the remaining civilian inhabitants were banished from their centuries-old home. A long colony of victims walked to numerous camps in Kosovo and Sandzak, where they were transported to Turkey and settled in Anatolia. At that point, Bosniacs lost their properties in the Banjaluka municipality in the most brutal manner, through genocide. Serbian families, those without land and Salonika volunteers settled in the houses and occupied the properties which had belonged to the banished Bosniacs. Drastic changes in the demographic and proprietary structure in the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes, occurred. To illustrate this, statistical indexes show that until 1878 not one Serbian family owned property in Lijevce polje by Banjaluka. It was not until after the agrarian reform of 1918 and 1919 that the settlement and colonization of Serbians into the municipality of Banjaluka intensified. According to the first population census in 1879 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bosnian Muslims made up the absolute majority in Banja Luka according to religious affiliation and comprised 67.71% of the population. From 1895 until 1991, this percentage constantly decreased and today it comes to 19.35%. In 1879, Catholic Croats totaled 10.52% of the population. This number gradually grew and in 1931 they made up 29.9% of the population. This remained so until 1953 at which time Catholic Croats represented 28.34% of the population. Afterwards, the number of Croats in the total population rapidly decreased to 10.97% in 1991. The Orthodox population, including Serbians and Montenegrins, represented 19.80% in the population census of 1879. From then on, their proportion increased to 30.53% in 1931 and continued to intensively increase until 1948 when this percentage reached 34.78%. Finally in 1991, the percentage totaled 49.3% . From the provided indexes, it can be concluded that Banjaluka is not historically a Serbian city, as the war criminal Radovan Karadzic claims, because the Serbian population in that city began to settle there in the XIX century. The rapid increase of the Serbian population began after the realization of the agrarian reform of 1918 and 1919, when Serbians occupied Bosniac properties and after the catastrophic earthquake of 1969, when they comprised the majority of those who gained employment and received newly built residences. In addition to this, the JNA corps, comprised of 25 thousand soldiers and 700 officers, from lieutenants to generals, who were primarily from Serbia and Montenegro, contributed to the increase in Serbian population. In a way, history repeats itself. During the Serbian aggression, from 1992 until today, the Serbian aggressor performed genocide against Croatians and Bosniacs in the city of Banjaluka. The population census of 1991 statistically provides us with the information that 12 villages in the Banjaluka area consisted of an ethnically pure majority of Croatians. However, the Serbian aggressor has banished almost all Croatians, and Serbian families have moved into their homes and taken their lands. The process of forced changes in the demographic structure and ownership has been performed systematically since the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes and has lasted for almost 80 years. Up until 1992, however, Serbians did not make up the absolute majority of the population in Banjaluka.
Considering that Banjaluka is historically a Bosnian city, which is now occupied by the Serbian aggressor, the legal government in Sarajevo is justly requesting its demilitarization and that it be placed under the control of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, using peaceful means. For this reason, the international community has accepted the proposition for the suspension of military activity and by way of negotiations, the peaceful solution to the status of the city of Banjaluka.
TOKEN REWARDS FOR SEIZED PROPERTIES
Dr. Stjepan Radic, a member of parliament - of the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes, in his speeches and articles opposing hegemony, criticized, among other things, the manner in which the agrarian reform of 1918 and 1919 was conducted, in which Muslim properties were seized by force (from agas to beys). Because of this, the radical representative, Punisa Racic, shot at the Croatian members of parliament, killing Pavle Radic and Djuro Basaricek and wounding Stjepan Radic, Ivan Pernar and Ivan Grandja. On August 6, 1928, Stjepan Radic died due to the severity of his injuries. It was decided, afterwards, that the Bosnian Muslims be compensated for the properties taken away from them, and the state admitted that there had been "irregularities" in the realization of the agrarian reform. Laws regarding the financial settlements for the compensation for territory seized after 1928 were passed, by which the payment of the properties was to be regulated. The value of the land was appraised at 60% less than market value, and payment was conducted in cash and bonds in a 50 year period including 4% interest per annum. The payments were made twice annually, beginning in 1923 and were to continue until 1971. Bosnian Muslims were reimbursed for land which had belonged to agas (under serfs contract) and for land which had belonging to beys (under leasehold). Until the beginning of the Second World War, the former owners were paid 49%, that is, 125 million dinars in cash and 36% in bonds, amounting to 46.8 million dinars, for agas lands.. The total amount paid was 171 million dinars or 67.4%. 83.2 million dinars or 32.6% remained unpaid. As opposed to the compensation to the owners of the agas land, the reimbursements for the land taken away from the beys was planned exclusively in bonds, with a 50 year payment period. From the total foreseen 650 million dinar reimbursement in 36 semi-annual installments, only four installments amounting to 139.5 million dinars were paid, or 1/4, that is 21.5%. Therefore, 510.5 million dinars or 78.5% remained unpaid. The above indexes clearly illustrate that the seized property of the former owners (agas and beys) was never fully paid for, and thus could never have become the property of Serbians, nor could it justly or appropriately be given to their descendants. According to the opinions of legal experts, there is no date limit in regards to unpaid for land and realty documents with respect to the agrarian reform have been preserved in the archives in Sarajevo and Vienna.
SUMMARY
Following the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, the "Nacertanije" national program of Greater Serbian dominance began to take effect in the colonization of the Serbian population onto the captured territories of Kosovo, parts of Sandzak and the so-called Yugoslav Macedonia. This process of colonization of the Serbian populace onto the other side of the Drina River intensified after World War I, when the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes was created in 1918. The Agrarian reform of 1918 was among the first legal actions of the new state, for the purpose of colonization and the alteration of the demographic and proprietary structure of the population. It was most drastically enforced in Bosnia and Herzegovina upon the Bosnian Muslim land owners, from whom 1,286,227 hectares of agricultural and forest land were taken and later divided amongst 249,518 Serbian families. This was similarly executed upon Muslim land owners in the remaining parts of the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes as well as those who resided in Macedonia, Kosovo and Metohija, Sandzak and Montenegro. 3/4 of the land belonged to members of the Islamic faith and this was confiscated during the agrarian reform of 1918 and 1919. The difficult economic situation this placed them in, forced them to move to Turkey. Our presented discussion illustrates that the agrarian reform affected larger estates in Croatia (Dalmatia and Slavonia) Vojvodina and Slovenia, where 406,981 hectares of land amounting to less than a 1/4 of the total land was seized and distributed to 316,762 Serbian families. In total, the agrarian reform resulted in 1,924,307 hectares of land being taken away and divided amongst 614,603 families, primarily Serbian. According to the methodology employed in our analysis, nearly 2,450,000 family members became owners of agricultural and forest land. In so doing, the first colonization of Serbian populace was completed, by which the demographic and proprietary structure of land in the first Yugoslavia was altered.
The vidovdan hydra: the ideology of Greater Serbia
ILIJA GARASANIN (1812-1874)
Ilija Garasanin was one of the most active Serbian politicians in the 19th century. He was a minister in several ministries of the Obrenovic dynasty and the Karadjordjevic dynasty, thus just this fact shows his political ingenuity. He became famous for his "Nacertanije" which originated in 1844, but was published at a much later date. In his "Nacertanije" he outlined a plan for the creation of Greater Serbia which was to include not only the territories that once belonged to Serbia, but also the lands he thought should belong to Serbia. Garasanin knew that Serbia would need the aid of neighbouring countries for the realization of these plans and he counted on the weakening of the Balkan states by the fall of the Turkish Empire, thus enabling Serbia to grab certain territories more easily.
VUK STEFANOVIC KARADZIC (1787-1864)
Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic was a linguist and writer who traveled throughout the Balkan lands studying and collecting folk songs. He wrote widely on linguistic subjects and problems, and published a grammar book and dictionary of what he considered to be the Serbian language. The Serbs consider him to be the founder of the Serbian language reform and Serbian culture in general. One of the main themes of his work is that all those speaking the Stokavian dialect are Serbian (even though most Croatians speak a form of this dialect as well). This line of thinking is evident quite frequently in Karadzic's work, and it influenced Serbian attitudes toward other Balkan nations.
Karadzic's article "Serbs All and Everywhere" was published for the first time in the book "Treasure Box for the History, Language and Customs of Serbians of All Three Faiths" in 1849. This work is a typical example of Karadzic's views on the language and ethnicity of Serbia's neighbours. He also attempted to negate the existence of any significant number of Croatians, distorting historic and linguistic facts to prove his theories.
While Garasanin in his "Nacertanije" from 1844 outlines ideas how to Serbianize other nations, Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic had already in 1836 integrated all neighbouring nations into the Serbian nation. This can be concluded from his text written in 1836.:
"It is known for certain that Serbs now live in present-day Serbia (between the Drina and Timok rivers, and between the Danube and Sar mountains), in Metohija (from Kosovo over the Sar mountains, where Dusan's capital Prizren, the Serbian patriarchate of Pec, and the Decani monastery are located), in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Zeta, Montenegro, Banat, Backa, Srijem, the western Danube region from Osijek to Sentandrija, Slavonia, Croatia (Turkish and Austrian), Dalmatia, and in the entire Adriatic littoral from Trieste to Bojana. I said at the start that it is known for certain that Serbs live in these regions, while it is still not known how many Serbs are Albania and Macedonia. Along the Cetina river (in Montenegro) I was talking with two men from Dibra, who were telling me that in those places there are many Serbian villages, in which Serbian is spoken the way they speak it, that is, a cross between Serbian and Bulgarian, but always closer to Serbian than Bulgarian. In the aforementioned places there are at least five million people who speak the same language, but by religion they can be split into three groups: it can be estimated roughly that about three million are Greek Orthodox, and of this one million in Serbia (with Metohija), one million in the Austrian provinces (Banat, Backa, Srijem, western Danube, Slavonia, Croatia, Dalmatia and Boka), and one million in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Zeta and Montenegro; of the remaining two million it can be said that about two-thirds are Muslim (in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Zeta etc.) and one-third are Roman Catholic (in the Austrian provinces, and in Bosnia, Herzegovina and the Bar nahija). Only the first three million call themselves Serbs, the rest will not accept the name. Those of the Islam faith think that they are real Turks, and call themselves that, although only one in a hundred can even speak Turkish. Those of the Catholic faith use the name of the place in which they live: for example Slavonian, Bosnian (or Bosniak), Dalmatian, Dubrovnian, etc., or, as is common among writers they use ancient names such as Illyrian or Illyrianist. However, in Backa they are called Bunjevacs, in Srijem, Slavonia and Croatia they are called Sokacs, and around Dubrovnik and in Boka they are called Latins. Bunjevacs possibly get their name from the Herzegovinian river Buna, from where these people, as it is told, migrated some time ago..."
"All of the wiser people among the Orthodox and Catholic Serbs recognize that they are one people and strive to totally uproot or at least lessen the hatred because of different religions as much as they can. Even so, those of the Catholic faith still have a hard time calling themselves Serbians, but they will adjust to this in their own time, because if they do not want to be Serbs, then they have no national name at all. To say that one is Slavonian, another Dalmatian, still another Dubrovnian is useless, because all these are place names and do not describe any nation. To say that they are Slavs is too general, as Russians, Poles, Czechs and all other Slavic peoples fall under that name. To say that they are Croats, I would say that in truth only the Cakavian speakers could use this name. They are the descendants of Constantine Porfirogenitus? Croats whose language is a little different from Serbian, but still closer to Serbian than any other Slavic dialect. Today's Croatians in the Zagreb, Varazdin and Krizevci districts, whose land was called Croatia after the Battle of Mohacs in 1526 (and was until then called upper Slavonia), speak a language which is a cross-over from Slovenian into Serbian. I do not know how the name Croatian can be used for our Catholic brothers who live in Banat, Backa, Srijem, Slavonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina or in Dubrovnik, who speak the same language as the Serbs."
NIKOLA STOJANOVIC (1880-1964)
Nikola Stojanovic, a lawyer and politician, was born in Mostar. Before World War I, he was a prominent opponent of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the founder of an opposition paper called "Narod" (Nation). During the World War I he was a member of the Yugoslav Committee, which worked on the unification of the South Slavs. He was considered an expert on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was an adviser for that region during the Peace Conference of 1918-1919.
He wrote an article that was first published in "Srbobran" (a Serbian periodical based in Zagreb), number 168/169, in 1902. In the article titled "To Extermination: Ours or Yours", he judges the Serbians and the Croatians as though it were merely a matter of two different parties, and not as if it were a matter of different nations, one of which had to win and eliminate the other (Croatia, in reality).
He said the following:
"... Serbs and Croats are, according to some, two tribes of the same nation; the others, two separate nations (nationalities); still to others, one nation, one tribe."
"A tribe originates in the time before the formation of a state, a nation emerges in a state at the initiative of one tribe. In our history, this role was filled by the tribe of Stevan Nemanja, but after this we have many examples showing that Serbian leaders did not want or did not comprehend the union of interests of all religions, without which there can be no talk of a political union. The Serbs were politically united during the defense of Kosovo and by the subsequent shared fate of slavery under the same authority. Cultural unity, founded by Saint Sava, was at its best in this magnificent defense and in the later amalgamation of the Serbian aristocracy with democracy into one indivisible, wonderful whole-democracy with aristocratic pride. In this lies the importance of the Battle of Kosovo, in this sense the Serbian defeat in Kosovo meant one great victory."
It is a fact that the Serbs turned many defeats in history into victory. He continued to say:
"The Croatians have neither a separate language, nor unified customs, nor a firmly unified lifestyle, nor, most importantly, a sense of mutual affiliation, and because of this cannot be a distinct or separate nation."
"The Croatians are thus neither a tribe nor a separate nationality. They are now something between a tribe and a nationality, but without hope of ever becoming a separate nationality."
"Their wandering in the 19th century from Gaj's Illyrianism to Strossmayer's Yugoslavism to Starcevic's Croatianism proves this quite well. Their leaders, who wanted to create a nationality to fit the needs of others, forgot that a nation as a product of history is not created overnight, and that various myths cannot destroy the Serbian pride in their past, expressed in the epic poetry, and be replaced by pride in the 'shining Croatian past?'"
"Croatians often assert that they have some sort of cultural advantage over the Serbians. Those who do not have a distinct view of the world (in religion, customs, education etc.), no national art nor literature, dare to speak of Croatian culture."
"Croatians, therefore, are not and cannot be a separate nationality, but they are on the way of becoming part of the Serbian nationality. Taking on Serbian as their literaty language."
"The process of blending is unstoppable, as these are masses speaking the same language, and by the same token we must reject without any declamation of unity a battle between the intelligentsia and the middle class; as the Serbs and Croats in today's form are two political parties. The struggle going on between liberalism and ultramontane cosmopolitanism is personified in the struggle between the Serbs and the Croats. The contrast between the historical state right, which serves as the basis for the programmes of all Croatian parties, not one of which is liberal (certainly unique in Europe), and the natural rights expressed in the Serbian national thought, which is the basis for Serbian political party programmes, none of which show any trace of clericalism or conservatism, is the best proof of this."
"The proud people of Dubrovnik decided on Serbianism, although the other Dalmatian cities, which were under the influence of the same Italian culture, decided on Croatianism. Dubrovnik was a free republic, but the remaining cities were under the domination of the Republic of Saint Mark (Venice). The liberated people decided to go with the liberated and progressive Serbian nation, the subjugated people chose subservient and regressive Croatia. This is the best proof that only concepts of freedom separate us, that we are simply two political parties. In the struggle between these parties there can be no talk of unity, as their principles come from a separate foundation, and because the Croatians are somebody else's avant-garde, whereas the Serbians represent the principle of 'the Balkans for the Balkan people'. On the basis of this principle the Serbs must unite with other Balkan nations, leaving internal Balkan questions for another time. Croatians, as the representatives of foreign expansionist desires, are totally excluded from this, not because of their national characteristics, but rather because this nation allowed its fate to be managed by a few cliques who were obviously serving the interests of foreign governments. This struggle must lead to an extermination of 'ours or yours'. One side must submit. That this will be the Croats is assured by their small size, geographic location, surroundings (as they are mixed in with Serbs everywhere) and the general process of evolution, where the Serbian ideal means progress. Through the education of the masses and their participation in politics, the reactionary clericalist idea will finally subside. The fall of clericalism in our nation means the fall of Croatianism."
JOVAN CVIJIC (1865-1927)
Jovan Cvijic is an eminent ideologist of the Greater Serbian idea. He is considered the founder of modern geographic science in Serbia. He researched and wrote extensively about Balkan geography. He had a great knowledge not only of the geography of Serbia and the surrounding regions but also of the history and current events in those areas. He was also interested in Serbia's political advancement and because of this he often lost his scientific impartiality when writing about Serbia or the Balkans in a geographic context. Much of his work was and is used as a 'scientific justification' for Greater Serbian politics. All of these statements reflect the assertions of present Greater Serbian ideologists, and it is evident that Cvijic's work, since he was a reputable geographer, is used as 'scientific proof' of their territorial claims:
"The Serbian problem must be resolved through violent means. Both Serbian states must chiefly prepare themselves militarily and educationally, sustain their national energy in the military portions of the Serbian population, and use the first possible opportunity to debate Serbian questions with Austro-Hungary."
"Outside of the Morava-Vardar depression (South Serbia and Macedonia) there are no territories in the western half of the Balkan Peninsula suitable for forming a permanent state able to live an economic and political life."
He goes on to say:
"The economic and trading interests of certain Dinaric regions (the following are listed by name: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dalmatia and the 'Dinaric' Croatia) even now aim for the Morava-Vardar depression; these lands cannot acquire life and importance unless they join with the Morava-Vardar state..."
"... it is widely known that Bosnia and Herzegovina are lands settled entirely by people who are purely Serbian in race..."
"... as an unassailable minimum for the principle of nationality it must stand that one cannot relinquish that central dominion and the heartland of the nation to another country, a foreign state; this is what Bosnia and Herzegovina represent to the Serbian people."
"... for economic independence, Serbia must acquire access to the Adriatic Sea and one part of the Albanian coastline: through the occupation of the territory or by acquiring economic and transportation rights to this region. Therefore, this implies occupying an ethnographically foreign territory, but one that must be occupied due to particularly important economic interests and vital needs. Such occupation might be called an anti-ethnographic necessity and in such a form it is not against the principle of nationality. In this case it is all the more justified because the Albanians of northern Albania came about through a merging of the Albanians and Serbs."
This is what Cvijic says about Dubrovnik and Dubrovnians:
"It seems that the Slavs who settled in these lands in the 6th and 7th centuries first settled on the steep cliffs above where the town is located today, on the cliffs that used to be wooded with an oak forest, known then as 'dubrava'. This, then, is the origin of the Serbian name for the city of Dubrovnik which replaced the earlier Greek-Roman name (Ragusa)."
STEVAN MOLJEVIC (1888-1946)
Stefan Moljevic was the chief advisers to the chetnik leader, Draza Mihajlovic. The ideas advocated by him and the kind of Greater Serbia he hoped for, are best shown in his memorandum called "The Homgenous Serbia" which was released in Niksic on 30th June 1941. He wrote the following in this manifesto:
"The sense and love of nation and independence can only be reached in a homogeneous Serbia."
"In this regard, the Serbs today have a primary and basic duty to create and organize a homogeneous Serbia which must consist of the entire ethnic territory on which Serbs live, and to ensure the necessary strategic and transportation lines and centres, as well a economic areas which would enable and secure free economic, political and cultural life and development for all times."
The continuation of the manifesto Stevan Moljevic elaborated the question of the borders of GREATER SERBIA, and he wrote the following:
"The basic mistake of our state administration was that in 1918 the boundaries of Serbia were not firmly set up. This mistake must be corrected immediately, for tomorrow it will be too late. These borders must be struck now, and they must include the entire ethnic territory on which Serbs live with unhindered access to the sea for all Serbian districts that are in the vicinity of the coast.
1) In the east and southeast (Serbia and South Serbia), the Serbian borders are the result of wars of liberation, and it is only necessary to reinforce them by adding Vidin and Custendil. In the south (Montenegro and Herzegovina), the Southwest Serbian province should include not only the Zeta Banovina (Royal Province) but:
a) all of eastern Herzegovina with a railroad tie from Konjic to Ploce, including a land belt that would protect this line, so that in this area the entire Konjic district would be included; from the Mostar district the following municipalities: Mostar, Bijelo Polje, Blagaj and Zitomislici; the entire Stolac district; from the Metkovic district Ploce and all the areas south of Ploce, as well as Dubrovnik, which would have a special status
b) the northern part of Albania, that is in case Albania does not acquire autonomy.
3) In the west, the Western Serbian province should include, apart from the Vrbas Banovina, Northern Dalmatia, the Serbian part of Lika, Kordun and Banija and a part of Slavonia, so that the railroad from Plaski to Sibenik and the northern rail connection from Okucani over Sunja to Kostajnica belong to this region. This province would include one part of the Bugojno district except for Gornji Vakuf, and from the Livno district: Livno and Donje Polje, and on the other side from the Sibenik district: the municipalities of Sibenik and Skradin; from the Knin district: the city of Knin and the Serbian part of the Drnis municipality with its territory through which the Knin-Sibenik railroad passes, and eventually the Serbian part of Vrlika in the Sinj district; the entire Benkovac district; the entire Biograd district; the entire Preko district; so that the borders of the Western Serbian province go along the Velebit Channel and include Zadar with all the islands around it; from the Gospic district: Gospic, Licki Osik and Medak; the eastern part of the Perusic district through which the railroad passes; from the Otocac district: Dabar, Skare and Vrhovine; from the Ogulin district: Dreznica, Gomirje, Gornja Dubrava and Plaski; the Vojnic district except the municipality of Barilovic; the entire Vrginmost district; the Glina district except the municipalities of Bucice and Stankovac; from the Petrinja district: the municipalities of Blinja, Gradusa, Jabukovac and Sunja; the Kostajnica district without Bobovac; from the Novska district: Jasenovac and Vanjska Novska, but these places should be abolished so that the railroad stays on the territory of these two municipalities; the entire Okucani district; the Pakrac district without: Antunovac, Gaj and Poljana; Velic Selo from the Pozega district; the districts of Daruvar, Grubisno Polje and Slatina; then the Bosnian districts of Derventa and Gradacac. It is understood that all other districts within these borders will be included in this region. For this Western Serbian province, which would have 46 districts and nearly 1.5 million inhabitants, on which the entire Sipad enterprise falls, as well as the iron mine at Ljubija, and over which the Adriatic railway Valjevo-Banja Luka-Sibenik runs, it will be necessary to secure the Zadar area and the surrounding islands to ensure its outlet to the sea.
4) The Northern Serbian province should get, in addition to the territory of the Danube Banovina, the dispossessed Serbian districts of Vukovar, Sid and Ilok, and from the Vinkovci district: the municipalities of Vinkovci, Laze, Mirkovci and Novi Jankovci; the entire district and city of Osijek. This district should be secured with Baranja with Pecuj and eastern Banat with Temisvar and Resice.
5) The Central Serbian province - the Drina Banovina - should have the following dispossessed Bosnian districts returned to it: Brcko, Travnik and Fojnica. Dalmatia, which would include the Adriatic coast from Ploce up to Sibenik, as well as the Bosnian-Herzegovinian districts: Prozor, Ljubuski, Duvno; the western parts of the Mostar and Livno districts, and the northern parts of the Knin and Sibenik districts, must become part of Serbia but has to be granted a special autonomous position. The Roman Catholic church in Dalmatia will be recognized and receive state aid, but the work of the church and the Catholic clergy among the people must be favourable to the state and under its control."
In chapter II "Relations with other Yugoslav and Balkan States", Moljevic wrote:
"With the conviction of its past and its mission in the Balkans, Serbia must also in the future be the bearer of the Yugoslav idea as well as the first defender of Balkan solidarity and Gladstone's principle of 'the Balkans for the Balkan people'. Time demands that smaller states must combine in larger communities, unions and blocks, and Serbia's friends will expect this of her. Serbia will gladly respond to these expectations, for this is at the heart of her historical mission in the Balkans. The Serbs already started on this path when they created Yugoslavia, and they will continue on this path. However, the first step on this path was taken incorrectly in that the Serbs and the Montenegrins allowed themselves to be immediately melted into Yugoslavia, while the Croatians, Slovenes and Muslims took a different course and take all they can from Yugoslavia without giving anything in return. This mistake must be corrected and it can only be done if the Serbs, with the resurrected Yugoslavia, immediately and unhesitatingly create a homogeneous Serbia within the borders previously outlined. Only after this has been achieved will we approach all other questions relating to the Slovenes and Croats. Yugoslavia would thus be arranged on a federal basis with three federal units: the Serbian, Croatian and Slovene units (Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, my own remark). Only when this state of affairs is settled, when all Serbian regions are united in a homogeneous Serbia, can a limited rapprochement with Bulgaria be conceived... The Serbs must exercise hegemony in the Balkans, therefore they must previously gain hegemony in Yugoslavia."
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