As this year’s anniversary of 1995’s Operation Storm approaches, the issue of unpunished war crimes still troubles relations between Croatia and Serbia, as well as causing controversy within Croatian society.
The entire Croatian political elite and massive crowds will attend the main state anniversary ceremony in the town of Knin on August 5, but victims’ associations and rights campaigners will again raise the issue of continuing impunity for war crimes committed 23 years ago during and after the operation which saw Zagreb’s forces defeat rebel Croatian Serbs and retake most of the territory they held.
Although over 2,000 people have been convicted of committing crimes – mostly theft, destruction of property and arson – during the operation, so far only one member of the Croatian armed forces has been convicted of committing a war crime in his own country. Serbia meanwhile has failed to convict anyone.
In the absence of any credible and comprehensive state data on the number of Serb civilians killed during the operation, a somewhat disputed report by the Croatian Helsinki Committee stands out.
The report, first published in 1999 and turned into a book in 2001, named 677 victims of war crimes, predominantly elderly Serbs, but this statistic has often been rejected by politicians and media in Croatia.
The Croatian state considers Operation Storm, which ran from August 4 to 7, 1995, to be its most important military offensive of the war. Although it admits that individual crimes were committed, it rejects suggestions that they were planned by the country’s leadership.
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