Plitvice Lakes incident

The Plitvice Lakes incident of March 1991 (known in Croatian as "Plitvice Bloody Easter", "Krvavi Uskrs na Plitvicama / Plitvički Krvavi Uskrs") was a clash between contrasting separatists: the forces aiming to create the independent Republic of Croatia who were viewed as rebels by Belgrade, and armed local Serbs of Croatia - with the primary intention of remaining within Yugoslavia, and a secondary desire for their own independence in the eventuality of Croatia's secession - who in turn were viewed as rebels by Zagreb. It resulted in two deaths – one on each side – and contributed significantly to the worsening ethnic tensions that were to be at the heart of the subsequent Croatian War of Independence.

Background

In May 1990 the HDZ party led by Franjo Tuđman won Croatia's first post-communist multi-party elections. Tuđman pursued a strongly Croatian nationalist course, advocating independence from Yugoslavia. Much of Croatia's large Serb minority was opposed to Tuđman's policies, regarding him as anti-Serb, and sought to remain within Yugoslavia. Following Tuđman's election, Croatian Serb nationalists in the Krajina region of Croatia (bordering western Bosnia and Herzegovina) launched an armed uprisingFact|date=November 2007 in which Croatian government officials were forcibly expelled or excluded from a wide area of the Krajina. Croatian government property was seized throughout the region and handed over to the control of local Krajina Serb municipalities or the newly established "Serbian National Council" led by Milan Babić (later to become the government of the breakaway Republic of Serbian Krajina). The process did not happen overnight but took a considerable amount of time – well over a year – to complete.

The Plitvice Lakes are a scenic area and national park of Croatia, located in the Croatian Krajina near the Bosnian border, about 150 km south of the Croatian capital Zagreb. Prior to 1995, the surrounding area was primarily Serb-populated and the lakes were on the edge of the area controlled by the Krajina Serbs. The national park was, however, principally under the control of Croatians loyal to the Zagreb government.

Conflict at Plitvice

On 29 March 1991, the Plitvice Lakes management was expelled by rebel Krajina Serb police [Ian Jeffries, "Socialist Economies and the Transition to the Market: A Guide", p. 465. Routledge, 1993. ISBN 0415075807] under the control of Milan Martić, [International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, " [http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mar-2ai030909e.htm The Prosecutor against Milan MARTIC: Amended Indictment] ", 14 July 2003] supported by paramilitary volunteers from Serbia proper under the command of Vojislav Šešelj. [International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, " [http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/ses-ii030115e.htm The Prosecutor against Vojislav SESELJ: Indictment] ", 15 January 2003] The region itself is relatively sparsely populated and there was no obvious threat to local Serbs. It has been suggested that, instead, the Serb seizure of the park may have been motivated by a desire to control the strategic road that ran north-south through the park, linking the Serb communities in the Lika and Banija regions. Tim Judah, "The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia", p. 175-76, 244. (Yale University Press, 2001)] The loss of the national park was a serious blow to Croatian national pride and the government's strategic position in the Krajina. Tuđman's government decided to retake the park by force.

On Easter Sunday, 31 March 1991, Croatian police from the Croatian Ministry of the Interior (MUP) entered the national park to expel the rebel Serb forces. Serb paramilitaries ambushed a bus carrying Croatian police into the national park on the road north of Korenica, sparking a day-long gun battle between the two sides. During the fighting, two people – one Croatian and one Serb policeman – were killed. Twenty other people were injured and twenty-nine Krajina Serb paramilitaries and policemen were taken prisoner by Croatian forces. Ivo Goldstein, "Croatia: A History", p. 220. (C. Hurst & Co, 2000)] [Mihailo Crnobrnja, "The Yugoslav Drama", p. 157. (McGill-Queens University Press, 1996)] Among the prisoners was Goran Hadžić, later to become the President of the Republic of Serbian Krajina.

The violence was greeted with alarm by Yugoslavia's collective Presidency, which met on the night of 31 March to discuss the situation at Plitvice. At the insistence of Serbia's representative on the Presidency, Borisav Jović, but against the wishes of Slovenia and Croatia, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) was ordered to intervene to create a buffer zone between the two sides and end the clashes. The JNA units – commanded, ironically, by a Croatian colonel – moved in the following day. [Christopher Bennett, "Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse", p. 150. (C. Hurst & Co, 1995)] The Serbian parliament also met in emergency session, treating the clashes as a virtual "casus belli" and voting to offer the Krajina Serbs "all necessary help" in their conflict with Zagreb.

On 2 April, the JNA ordered the Croatian government's special police units to leave the national park, which they did. [Viktor Meier, "Yugoslavia: A History of Its Demise", p. 171. (Routledge, 1999)] General Andrija Rešeta, in overall command of the operation, told the media that his men were "protecting neither side" and were there only to prevent "ethnic confrontations" for as long as was necessary. However, the Croatian government reacted with fury to the JNA move. Tuđman's senior aide Mario Nobilo claimed that the JNA had "told us quite literally that if we do not evacuate Plitvice they will liquidate our police" and Tuđman himself gave a warning on Croatian radio that if the army continued its activities it would be regarded as a hostile army of occupation.

Although the JNA's intervention successfully brought an end to the fighting, it had the effect of consolidating the front lines in the region and preventing any further Croatian operations against the rebel Serbs. A few months later, the outbreak of full-scale war resulted in the national park falling firmly into Krajina Serb hands, this time fully and overtly supported by the JNA. Government control of the Plitvice Lakes was not finally restored until after Operation Storm in August 1995.

Consequences

The Plitvice Lakes incident had important consequences for both Serbs and Croats. The fatalities were among the first in the Serb-Croatian conflict and contributed to radicalisation on both sides. Nationalist hard-liners and extremists cited the clash as indicating the need to adopt radical solutions, while moderate politicians arguing for negotiations and non-violent solutions lost influence. [Hannes Grandits & Carolin Leutloff, "Discourses, actors, violence: the organisation of war-escalation in the Krajina region of Croatia 1990-91", p. 36, in Jan Koehler, "Potentials of Disorder: Explaining Conflict and Stability in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslavia". (Manchester University Press, 2003]

The dead on both sides were treated as martyrs by their respective populations. Josip Jović, the Croatian policeman killed at Plitvice, was feted by the Croatian media as the "first victim of the Croatian Homeland War", while his dead Serb counterpart Rajko Vukadinović was similarly feted by the Croatian Serbs and the Serbian media as having died to defend Serbian land from the Croatian "Ustashas".

The incident had wider political and military consequences as well. On 1 April 1991, partly in response to the events at Plitvice, the Krajina Serb authorities unilaterally declared the self-declared "Serbian Autonomous District of Krajina" to be independent of Croatia and announced that it would join (or, more precisely, not leave) Yugoslavia. In other Serb communities around Croatia, barricades were erected to block any Croatian attempts to reassert government control. In eastern Slavonia, this led to a series of events that was to culminate in the notorious Borovo Selo killings two months later.

References

ee also

*Croatian War of Independence
*Plitvice National Park
*Human rights in Croatia