Croatia and Kosovo

Last night Clinton stated:

"In 1989 Serbia's leader Slobodan Milosevic, the same leader who started
the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, and moved against Slovenia in the last
decade, stripped Kosovo of the constitutional autonomy it's people enjoyed,
thus denying them their right to speak their language, run their schools,
shape their daily lives."

In actuality, the very same excuse Clinton is using to bomb Serbia could
have been used to go to war against the Croatian government 10 years ago,
as indicated by this article from 1990. A left-liberal friend of mine who
endorses NATO bombing of Serbia with some discomfort argues that it should
be seen as a effort to stop a riot by some tarnished city police
department, like Los Angeles's or New York's. Granted, he continues, these
cops are thugs, but if they are the only ones around who can stop a rape or
a lynching, so be it. The only problem with this line of thinking is that
it doesn't take into account that cops only enforce the law by arresting
people. It is up to the jury to decide the guilt or innocence of somebody
accused of a crime and then turn them over to the prison system if found
guilty. The problem with NYC cops is that they often act as jury and
executioner, which is what NATO is doing at this moment.

=============

 The Financial Times, October 1, 1990, Monday 

Violence continues in Croatia amid crackdown on Serbs 

JUDY DEMPSEY, East European Correspondent 

YUGOSLAVIA'S peaceful road to the multi-party system received another
setback at the weekend following more ethnic violence in the western
republic of Croatia. 

Tanjug, the Yugoslav news agency, reported that police arrested more than
90 people after Serbs broke into a police station in Dvor na Uni and seized
weapons. Scores of people were injured after the Croatian authorities
called in a special police unit to break up the second bloody confrontation
in less than two months. 

The violence in Croatia stems from calls by the Serbian minority, who make
up 600,000 of the 4.5m-strong population, for its own (albeit vague)
autonomy. This issue was never raised until Croatia become one of the first
republics to hold free and democratic elections last April. 

Although Mr Franjo Tudjman, the president, based his election campaign on a
nationalist platform which tended to provoke the Serbian minority, he has
since mellowed the rhetoric and is now concentrating on moving Croatia
economically closer to its west European neighbours. 

Despite this more pragmatic stance, the Serbian minority has continued to
use violence to attain autonomy. It is supported by Mr Slobodan Milosevic,
the president of Serbia. 

The irony is that as the Serbian authorities support the calls by the
Serbian minority in Croatia for autonomy, they have refused to acknowledge
similar demands by the ethnic Albanians in the southern province of Kosovo. 

The political, cultural and social rights of the ethnic Albanians, who make
up more than 90 per cent of the 2m population, have been systematically
eroded by the Serbians. 

The late Marshal Josip Tito granted autonomy to the province in 1973 to
contain the influence of Serbia. But last Friday, the last vestiges of that
autonomy were wiped away after Serbia proclaimed a new constitution which
now gives it almost total control over Kosovo.  


Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)