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Celebrate, inflame, soothe? Reading reactions to the Gotovina verdict The ICTY appeals chamber to release Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač inspired a lot of passionate responses. By Eric Gordy, November 19, 2012

Vindication or travesty? Operation Storm’s Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac acquitted That atrocities were carried out by Croatian soldiers and civilians during and after Operation Storm has never credibly been disputed. But the attempt to paint it as an ethnic-cleansing operation – indeed as an ethnic-cleansing operation larger in scale than the Serbian assaults on Croatia and Bosnia in 1991-1992 – has always been rightly contested. The acquittal by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of Croatian commanders Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac for crimes against Serb civilians between July and September 1995, above all during ‘Operation Storm’, leaves the victims without justice, but represents a defeat for long-running attempts in the West to redistribute guilt fr om the aggressors to the victims. By Marko Hoare, November 19, 2012

How to apologise Croatia’s new president Ivo Josipovic has in recent weeks made a series of apologies and expressions of regret for crimes carried out by Croats during the 1940s and 1990s. By Marko Hoare, May 31, 2010

Reckoning: The 1991 Siege of Dubrovnik and the Consequences of the “War for Peace” The 1991 siege of the Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik, which lasted nine months and had devastating consequences for the city and the entire region, at the time re-focused the world’s attention on the war in the former Yugoslavia. The events surrounding the earlier destruction of Vukovar by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and various Serbian paramilitary groups, coupled with the long-lasting and seemingly absurd attack on Dubrovnik, helped redefine the perception of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. By Srdja Pavlovic, 2005

Croats Face the Past Following the electoral victories in January and February of the two center-left coalitions, many Croats have come to reexamine their country's history during World War II and in its most recent conflict. By Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, May 12, 2000

 

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