Ina Vukic, prof. Responds to Julia Gorin
28 January 2007
To the Editor of
The Baltimore Sun
Dear Editor,
I refer to the article “When will world confront the undead of Croatia” written by Julia Gorin and published in your newspaper on January 16, 2007. It is most disturbing to read when a journalist (Julia Gorin) vilifies a whole nation through the regurgitation of war crimes and alleged war crimes perpetrated by a sector or by individuals of that nation (Croats), while minimising or not mentioning at all the war crimes perpetrated or allegedly perpetrated by members of other nations
(Serb).
This is not the first time the whole of the Croatian nation has been vilified in the way Julia Gorin has done recently. Of course, this does not surprise me at all, for Julia Gorin and those similar to her need to maintain in the world’s attention the horrors of the Holocaust in order to bring the perpetrators to justice, or need to justify the unjustifiable, i.e. the horrendous attacks by Serbs to attempt stopping the process of Croatian independence from Communism and Serb-dominated Yugoslav federation in order to serve their personal interests. Sadly though, it seems, Ms Gorin believes that the Croatian people do not deserve freedom from oppression they’ve suffered for centuries because sixty-years ago the Ustashi movement in Croatia proclaimed a Croatian Independent State and became allies of the Axis, and it is this that makes her credibility non-existent and places her views in the same pot as Hitler’s, Stalin’s, Tito’s … of those that exterminated millions of innocent people. In the world’s democracies a husband cannot be blamed for his wife’s deed’s, a child for parents’, a whole nation cannot be blamed for the deeds of some groups, etc, etc, but in Julia Gorin’s world it seems these fundamental rules of justice and democracy such rules do not apply. It would seem that 100% must be punished and must suffer because of the deeds and beliefs of say 25%!
Conveniently, Ms Gorin omits to write that Croatians also perished in the Concentration Camps during World War II, she writes only of Serbs and Jews. How pathetic and biased can a Journalist get! To further demonstrate her purposefully biased ignorance in her reply to Mr Josip Babic’s
(press attaché for Croatia’s embassy to the USA) response letter (published in your Newspaper 20th January 2007) Ms Gorin asks “Tell us how many ethnic Croats were imprisoned by the Germans during WWII. You ever hear of any? Can you name any? …” Well, all Ms Gorin needed to do is to extend
her research on victims of Jasenovac presented by sources such as the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise and other non-Croatian sources to get her facts right (she obviously does not give any credibility to Croatian sources even if they may be factual). Again, she may well have researched these non-Croatian sources, discovered that in fact thousands of Croatian ethnics perished in these camps in Croatia but, like many other anti-Croatian writers, decided to omit these facts in order to vilify the whole of the Croatian nation? Furthermore, it is an evil lie when Ms Gorin states that “Croatians were only too happy to finally get an independent state and fight as a member of the Axis powers”. With this poison-pen of hers Ms Gorin has just completely and single-handedly erased the existence and the fight against that WWII Independent State of Croatia by Croatians themselves who belonged to the anti-fascist movement during WWII. How dare she! Sadly for the Croatian nation though, many of those who had belonged to the anti-fascist movement during WWII, who did not want any kind of an independent Croatia, who wanted a Communist Yugoslavia or a Royalist one, continue even to this day to paint every single person who fought for an Independent State of Croatia during WWII as fascist and criminal, and yet, all that the majority wanted was a free and independent state – free from foreign rule and oppression, committed no crimes whatsoever nor were they aware of criminal activities that were being perpetrated by others associated with their cause. Perhaps, Ms Gorin would not have written her article had she completed research for it and delved into the mass murders of innocent Croatian nationals (over one million,including women and children) after WWII had ended, at Bleiburg Austria,and within Tito’s Communist Yugoslavia?
She states that during early 1990’s “Serbs weren’t angels … they weren’t just fighting their enemies; they were fighting ours.” How crazy and ignorant can a Journalist get? Ms Gorin has conveniently omitted to mention that the 1990’s war in Croatia occurred because Serbs opposed independence of Croatia (and other states of former Yugoslavia) even though vast majority of people in these states voted for independence and democracy. It seems that Ms Gorin believes that Croats should have “put up and shut up” in the face of Serbian-led oppression and murder in Yugoslavia. She conveniently omits to mention how the war had started and omits to say that the Croatian people (who voted for independence) had every right of defending themselves from Serbian brutality and aggression. I ask: what would you have done if you were a Croatian craving freedom, independence and democracy after the Serbian troops had destroyed a city of yours (Vukovar), murdered hundreds of your innocent people and forced thousands of your inhabitants into horrific exile, singing:
“Slobo, Slobo (meaning Slobodan Milosevic), send us some salads, there’ll be meat, we’ll slaughter the Croats” (BBC video report from Vukovar, 18 November 1991). Would you have embarked upon defending yourself, or would you have sat down and waited to be murdered? It would have been really nice if Ms Gorin counted the number of Croatians murdered by Serbs during 1990’s war, it would have been really nice if she counted the numbers of Croatians who were forced to flee their homes in the face of threatened death, it would have been really nice if Ms Gorin said that while the Croatians fled their homes in fear, taking nothing with them but their bare lives, the Krajina Serbs left their homes in 1995 peacefully, taking with them most of their household contents in trucks and cars; it would have been nice of Ms Gorin to say that many refugees, including Croatian nationals have not yet been able to return to their former homes, instead of referring only to Serbian nationals.
It would have been really nice if Ms Gorin used her poison-pen to help bring the Serbian war criminals Mladic and Kardazic to the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.
I guess Ms Gorin would justify the Serbs when they claim that Kosovo is theirs, not Albanians’ because Albanians came to Kosovo only in the 14th Century. On the other hand and in contradiction to this principle of theirs, I guess she would also justify the Serbs when they say that the Krajina part of Croatia, which they had brutally occupied during the first half of 1990’s, is theirs because they settled there in their minority in the 16th Century. I guess Ms Gorin also justifies the Serbian aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1991/1992 because the Western powers (Great Britain, USA & France) decided in 1919 to bless the newly concocted unnatural kingdom/state (Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – later Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and endow the Serbian King (otherwise a cousin of the then King of Great Britain…) with lands (Croatia, Slovenia…) he had no right to and hand him a card blanch to do with the people as he pleased (which was mainly brutal dictatorship against Croatians…) and therefore, according, to Serbs, Croatia had no right to independence!
But then, Julia Gorin serves as an advisor on the American Council on Kosovo, which promotes the Serbian cause in that region. Clearly, one cannot expect her to write anti-Serbian articles even if facts would dictate that.
Ina Vukic, prof.
Sydney – Australia
(In her voluntary role as Secretary of the Croatian Democratic Union Sydney she served as Co-ordinator of Australian and New Zealand arm of the Croatian humanitarian organisation “Save the Children of Croatia” – 1992 – 1994, which raised charitable and humanitarian aid for war orphans of
Croatia. Born in 1949 in Croatia, immigrated to Australia in 1962 where she has lived since.