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.

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