Borovo Selo killings

The Borovo Selo killings of 2 May 1991 (known in Croatia as the Borovo Selo massacre, Croatian:"Pokolj u Borovom Selu" and in Serbia as the Borovo Selo incident, Serbian: Инцидент у Боровом Селу) were one of the bloodiest incidents in the early stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia. 12 Croatian policemen and three Serbs were killed during a bloody gunbattle in Borovo Selo, in the largely Serb-populated village of Borovo Selo near Vukovar in eastern Croatia. The incident set the stage for – and helped to accelerate – the subsequent outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars.

Background

During the first half of 1991, two of Yugoslavia's six constituent republics – Croatia and Slovenia – sought to break away from the Yugoslav federation. Following the two republics' declarations of independence, wars broke out between the republics' security forces, the Yugoslav army and (in Croatia) Serb militias who opposed the Croatian government. ("See Ten-Day War (Slovenia) and Croatian War of Independence for more on the wider conflicts.")

Much of Croatia's large Serb minority was opposed to Croatian independence. The Serb population was concentrated in three regions within Croatia; along the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina from Knin to Banovina; Western Slavonia, to the north of Bosnia; and Eastern Slavonia, along the border with Serbia. In all three regions, local Serbs opposed Croatian independence and sought to remain within Yugoslavia.

In 1990, the Croatian Serbs established political and military structures which eventually became the basis of the Republic of Serbian Krajina. The areas inhabited by rebel Serbs declared independence from Croatia on 1 April 1991ICTY, " [http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/ses-ii030115e.htm Prosecutor against Vojislav Šešelj] ", 15 January 2003] , six weeks before Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, and were soon joined by the Serb communities of Slavonia. The government of Serbian president Slobodan Milošević's provided the Croatian Serbs with substantial financial and logistical assistance. [" [http://www.janes.com/defence/news/kosovo/misc990301_02_n.shtml History of Yugoslavia 1948-1998] ", "Jane's Sentinel", 1 March 1999] His purpose in doing this, according to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecutors, was to support a "joint criminal enterprise" to create a new Serb-dominated state from which the non-Serb population had been forcibly removed." [ICTY, " [http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-2ai020728e.htm Prosecutor against Slobodan Milošević: Second Amended Indictment] ", 23 October 2002] The Croatian Serb rebellion was also supported by a variety of nationalist groups and political parties in Serbia (in addition to Milošević's own Socialist Party of Serbia).

The events in Borovo Selo followed the Plitvice Lakes incident, an earlier clash between Croatian security forces and local Serb rebels in the region of Plitvice.

The situation at Borovo Selo

Borovo Selo was at the time part of the Vukovar municipality, bordering Serbia on the west side of the Danube river. In the municipality, which included the town of Vukovar and a dozen surrounding villages, the 1991 census recorded 84,189 inhabitants of which 36,910 were Croats ( 43.8%), 31,445 Serbs (37.4%), 1,375 Hungarians (1.6%), 6,124 Yugoslavs (7.3%), and 8,335 (9.9%) others or undeclared. ICTY, " [http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mrk-2ai1971202e.pdf Prosecutor against Mile Mrkšić et al] ", 2 December 1997] Vukovar itself had a small majority of Croats, with most of the Serb population living in outlying suburbs and villages. Borovo Selo is a mainly Serb-inhabited community just north of Vukovar, dominated by a large industrial plant in which much of the village's population was employed before 1991.

The growth of political and ethnic tensions produced an increasingly difficult security situation in the area. Local militias were established on both sides and paramilitary groups established a high-profile presence in the region. At the end of April 1991, armed local Serbs assisted by volunteers from the Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Šešelj and other Serbian nationalist groups erected barricades in the village of Borovo Selo, according to the later ICTY indictment against Šešelj.ICTY, " [http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/ses-ii030115e.htm Prosecutor against Vojislav Šešelj] ", 15 January 2003] They had the self-declared intention of keeping Croatian militias out of the village, though in reality this also meant the exclusion of Croatian police and civil administrators – in effect, setting up enclaves in which the writ of the Zagreb government no longer ran. According to Šešelj, his intervention had come at the request of Vukašin Šoškočanin, the president of the Borovo commune and commander of the local Territorial Defence militia. In 1994 Šešelj claimed that his volunteers had been equipped by the Serbian police, presumably at the behest of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior, [Brendan O'Shea, "Perception And Reality In The Modern Yugoslav Conflict: Myth, Falsehood and Deceit 1991-1995", p. 10. (Routledge, 2005)] [Robert Thomas, "Serbia Under Milosevic: Politics in the 1990s", p. 97. (C. Hurst & Co., 1999)] though he later retracted this statement with the claim that it had been a propaganda ploy to damage the reputation of Milošević during a period when Šešelj's party was in opposition. [Šešelj, [http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/050914IT.htm Testimony to the ICTY] , 14 September 2005]

Similar events happened elsewhere in eastern Slavonia. In an effort to defuse the situation, the area's moderate police chief, Josip Reihl-Kir, agreed that the Croatian police would not try to enter Serb villages without the explicit permission of the local Serb authorities; in return, the Serbs agreed to dismantle barricades.Ejub Štitkovac, "Croatia: The First War", pp. 157-159, in "Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia", ed. Jasminka Udovicki & James Ridgeway. (Duke University Press, 2000)] "Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia", ed. John B. Allcock, p. 20. (ABC-Clio Inc, 1998)] However, as he later complained, his efforts were seriously undermined by the actions of Croatian nationalists who stoked the tension. One particularly notorious incident occurred at Borovo Selo in April 1991. Several members of Croatia's ruling HDZ party, possibly including Gojko Šušak, who later became Croatia's defence minister, fired three Armbrust anti-tank guided missiles into the village. The attack caused no casualties, but became a "cause célèbre" in relations between the two republics. One missile failed to detonate and was shown on Serbian television to support claims of unprovoked Croatian aggression.Paul Hockenos, "Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars", p. 58-59. (Cornell University Press, 2003)] This incident further worsened tensions in the Vukovar area and elsewhere in eastern Slavonia.

The Borovo Selo killings

During the early hours of 1 May 1991, four Croatian policemen entered Borovo Selo and attempted to change the Yugoslav flag flying in the village for a Croatian flag. The incident appears to have been a spontaneous decision made in the wake of festivities (and presumably the consumption of alcohol) to celebrate a national holiday. They were intercepted by local Serbs and in the subsequent gunfight, two of the policemen were wounded and taken prisoner. R. Craig Nation, " [http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/00117.pdf War in the Balkans, 1991-2002] ". (Strategic Studies Institute, August 2003)]

On 2 May the Croatian authorities in nearby Osijek sent around 150 policemen to Borovo Selo to free the captives. The police, travelling in a convoy of buses and police vehicles, reached the village but became embroiled in a firefight with armed Serb militiamen. In the ensuing chaos, twelve Croatian policemen were killed and another twenty injured. A number of Serbs were also killed, though it was unclear how many; figures from three to twenty were reported. [Robert J. Donia, "Bosnia-Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed", p. 224. (C. Hurst & Co., 1994)] [Mihailo Crnobrnja, "The Yugoslav Drama", p. 157. (McGill-Queens University Press, 1996)] It was widely reported that Serbian paramilitaries subsequently mutilated the bodies of the dead Croatian policemen. The Croats, as well as some outside observers, thought of this as a calculated atrocity meant to inflame ethnic hatredRobert J. Donia, John V.A. Fine, Jr., "Bosnia and Hercegovina: a tradition betrayed", p. 223. (Columbia University Press, 1994)] . While the Second World War was at this point long past, the atrocities committed at that time could still be used by nationalist politicians as a talking point. In fact, this one was deemed a "symbolic re-enactment of [Serbian] Chetnik reprisals against Croats during WWII".

At least three different – and conflicting – explanations were given of the events at Borovo Selo.
* The Croatian authorities claimed that the policemen sent to the village had been invited to a meeting agreed to by both sides and had travelled under white truce flags, but had been ambushed by local militants and "terrorists" from Serbia (meaning Šešelj's paramilitaries).
* Journalists pieced together a different version from accounts given by local residents, who claimed that the police had entered the village and began shooting at anything that moved. According to this version, the police took Serb women and children as hostages but were expelled by local residents, who freed the hostages without any outside help.
* Finally, Šešelj himself gave an account to Belgrade TV accompanied by video footage recorded by his men. He claimed that fourteen of his men, plus six local men and two other Serbian volunteers, had been responsible for fighting the "Ustashe". They had supposedly killed one hundred Croatian policemen, with one civilian also being killed, although in his later war crimes trial he reduced his claim to thirty fatalities on the Croatian side and claimed that these included Kurdish mercenaries. [Šešelj, [http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/050824IT.htm Testimony to the ICTY] , 24 August 2005]

Aftermath of the killings

Following a meeting of the Yugoslav presidency on 4 May, which condemned the Borovo Selo killings, the Yugoslav defence ministry ordered the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) to take up positions in the area to act as a buffer between the two sides. The federal prime minister Ante Marković travelled to Borovo Selo to negotiate the release of the captured Croatian policemen.

Croatia's government, in turn, agreed to the increased presence of the JNA in the area, which would have important consequences during the subsequent war. The government faced political difficulties in the aftermath of the incident, which had plainly exposed a serious tactical miscalculation on the part of the Croatian authorities. It was reported that news of the killings and mutiliations had caused "panic" among senior Croatian government figures, who were concerned at the likely political consequences for Zagreb.Allan Little, Laura Silber, "The Death of Yugoslavia", p.155 (Penguin Books, 1996)] Osijek's mayor, Zlatko Kramarić, was strongly critical of a lack of Croatian preparedness in his later memoirs. Osijek's police chief Josip Reihl-Kir also complained openly that Croatian extremists had hijacked the local situation and were obstructing efforts to broker peace; two months later he was assassinated by a Croatian police reserve officer with links to the ruling HDZ.

The incident served to radicalise both sides. Croatian nationalists portrayed the killings as part of Milošević's supposedly "Bolshevik" strategy to import Serbian ultranationalism and paramilitarism into Croatia. One Croatian newspaper described the Serbian paramilitaries as "beasts in human form", "bearded animals on two legs" and "bloodsuckers" and presenters on state-run TV began to refer to the Serb rebels generically as "Chetniks", bringing the Second World War term back into everyday use. [Jonathan Glover, "Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century", p. 130. (Yale University Press, 2001)] The day after the Borovo Selo incident, President Tuđman appeared on Croatian television to warn that "open war" had begun and that "if the need arises" the Croatian people should take up arms to "defend the freedom and sovereignty of the Republic of Croatia." On the same day, anti-Serb riots took place in the southern Croatian cities of Zadar and Šibenik, on the other side of Croatia, in which Tuđman's HDZ was accused of complicity. The incident thus produced what some have described as a "sea change" in Croatian views, with the Serbian minority throughout Croatia – not just in the separatist areas – being denounced and in some cases physically attacked for supposedly being "the enemy within."

For their part, the Serbian media claimed that the incident had been prompted by a "genocidal" Croatian attempt to repress its Serb minority, drawing explicit parallels with the Croatian genocide of Serbs during World War II. Each side interpreted the incident as a sign that its continued existence was threatened by the other side, and that secession – from Yugoslavia or from Croatia – was therefore the only course if national survival was to be ensured. As one commentator puts it, in the aftermath of the incident "the chances for initiatives to reach some kind of non-violent compromise were enormously diminished." [Hannes Grandits and Carolin Leutloff, "Discourses, actors, violence: the organisations of war-escalation in the Krajina region of Croatia 1990-91", p. 37, in "Potentials of Disorder: Explaining Conflict and Stability in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslavia", ed. Jan Koehler, Christoph Zurcher. (Manchester University Press, 2003)] Only a few months later, Borovo Selo found itself on the front lines of the Battle of Vukovar, the biggest single battle of the Croatian war.

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