FASCIST "BLACKSHIRT" COMMANDOS TERRORISE CIVILIAN POPULATION IN SPLIT
Fascist commandos bearing uniforms of the Croatian army are terrorising civilians in Croatia. According to AIM, an alternative information network set up by independent journalists from all parts of the former Yugoslavia, about 200 families have been brutally evicted from their homes by the commandos in December 1993 alone. The evictees can not expect any help from the police or the judiciary.
In recent months the eviction raids seem to have been concentrated in the area of Split (Dalmatia). The commandos, formed of up to 15 armed men, break into flats in residential settlements earlier owned by the former Yugoslavian People's Army (YPA). The commandos usually claim that the flats are the property of the Croatian army and that they must be given to to the "invalids and fighters of the war for the homeland". Many of the tenants have obtained exclusive tenancy rights to their flat after the departure of the former YPA and, as a general rule, evictions without a legal procedure are illegal. Nonetheless, the civil police regularly confines itself to drawing up a report following complaints of evictees and stresses that the matter lies in the competence of the military police. Yet, military policemen are often standing by the scene, when the raids occur.
Thus, on 2 February, the president of the Dalmatian Committee for Human Rights, Tonci Majic was brutally beaten by an eviction squad of 9 men introducing themselves as members of the Croatian Armed Forces (HOS), when he tried to prevent them from physically abusing a women tenant and her two daughters. Civil and military policemen passively watched the incident. Together with the women tenant, he was then interrogated for three hours by the military police. An officer told Mr. Majic that he could not provide any help, because he had "instructions" not to intervene against the eviction.
Shortly after, however, the woman was told that she could return to her flat and would be helped by the military police, if necessary.
When she came to the flat in the company of Mr. Majic, the door was opened by a woman wearing a black uniform who started shouting that this was now an "Ustashi flat". Several HOS-members making death threats than drove the two out of the building.
Mr. Majic and the evicted women went to the military police for help. While they were waiting for an officer outside the barracks, the man who had led the eviction squad came out of the barracks and hit Mr. Majic's head with a gun.
Mr. Majic suffered a broken nose, mild brain concussion, and severe bruises and cuts in the incident.
The eviction squads generally use brutal terror. In one incident, the seven-year old daughter of a tenant family was driven out in her night gown, with a knife held against her throat. In another incident, a gun was pointed and cocked at the head of a two-year old child. According to figures presented by human rights organisations on the occasion of the visit to Croatia of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission for the Observance of Human Rights in the territory of former Yugoslavia, in December, about 5000 people had been evicted from their flats by force in Croatia.
The ethnic affiliation of the victims seems no longer to be important to the eviction squads, as the growing number of Croatians among the evictees shows.
Moreover, recent statistics indicate that the vacated flats are not given to Croatian war invalids as the eviction squads claim. This is why some observers believe that the evictions are the work of a mafia within the military engaging in war profiteering and making money by taking advantage of the reigning patriotic hysteria and a non-functional state - the Croatian blend of fascist terror and organised crime.
Source: AIM (Alternative Information Network), Message no.56, 1.2.94, and no.61, 3.2.94.AIM is a network of independent journalists from all republics of former Yugoslavia linked together by an E-mail system. It was created in October 1992 and has three aims: to exchange articles and information among the republics of ex-Yugoslavia; to prepare the ground for the creation of independent media; and to provide an information service for the media, institutions and NGO's outside former Yugoslavia. For further information contact: AIM, 13, rue Gazan, F-75014 Paris, Tel: +33/1 45898949, Fax:+33/1 45809940.