Amnesty International Report 1998 - Croatia

(This report covers the period January-December 1997)

Critics of the government were prosecuted on criminal charges. At least 12 trials in national courts for war crimes appeared to be unfair. There were reports of ill-treatment by police. Attacks on Croatian Serbs, particularly in the Krajina territory, continued with impunity and the authorities deliberately resisted the return of Croatian Serbs to their homes. Although hundreds of cases were resolved, the fate of thousands of people who "disappeared" remained unclear.

The UN Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia (untaes) oversaw the reintegration of the last remaining rebel Croatian Serb area to Croatian authority. In July untaes' mandate was extended until January 1998, although it only had executive authority over the region until October. After that, the area was returned to Croatian control. In August William Walker replaced Jacques Klein as the UN-appointed Administrator for untaes.

In April elections were held for municipal and county assemblies and for the upper house of parliament. The ruling party Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica, Croatian Democratic Union, regained control of the upper house and almost all the 21 county and municipal assemblies. In Eastern Slavonia, where elections were organized by untaes, Croatian Serbs won 11 of 28 municipalities. President Dr Franjo Tudjman was re-elected in elections held in June

In April, under pressure from untaes and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr), the Croatian authorities agreed to a formal procedure for registering and administering the return of displaced people. By establishing joint working groups, the agreement allowed potential returnees to register their desire to return, and established procedures to ascertain the status of their houses. By the end of the year, approximately 2,500 refugees and displaced people had returned to Eastern Slavonia and approximately 9,000 from Eastern Slavonia to the Krajina. However, about 300,000 Croatian Serbs remained refugees in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and some 40,000 to 50,000 Croatian Serbs remained refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina. There were violent attacks on returnees (see below), which the authorities claimed were due to procedures not being followed, but there were no provisions to protect returnees within the agreement, nor was it known whether the authorities had plans to protect those who had returned to the Krajina. Croatian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina were prevented by administrative obstacles from returning to Croatia.

In June the mandate of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (osce) Mission in Croatia was extended until the end of 1998. The mission was reinforced by additional personnel to monitor human rights, particularly of Croatian Serbs. The monitors also observed the extent of Croatia's implementation of its commitments regarding the return of refugees and displaced people.

Also in June, Croatian Serb Slavko Dokmanoviç was arrested with the support of untaes personnel and transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He had been secretly indicted by the Tribunal in April 1996 for crimes related to the killing of approximately 260 men who had been taken from a hospital in Vukovar, Croatia, in 1991. His defence challenged the legitimacy of his arrest, which took place when he travelled to Eastern Slavonia from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for a meeting with untaes. Four other Croatian Serbs known to be indicted by the Tribunal remained at large; two of them were believed to be in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other two in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Croatian authorities also failed to cooperate fully with the Tribunal by arresting indicted Bosnian Croat suspects in Croatia and transferring detainees to the custody of the Tribunal (see Bosnia-Herzegovina entry)

Croatia ratified the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in November. Croatia had signed the Convention in November 1996 when it was admitted to the Council of Europe (see Amnesty International Report 1997).

As of April, more than 80,000 refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina remained in Croatia. In addition, approximately 17,500 Bosnian Croats and approximately 3,000 Croats from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had obtained citizenship and settled in Croatia. Many of the Croat settlers were encouraged to move into houses owned by Croatian Serbs in the Krajina as well as in Bosnian Croat areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In some cases, housing appeared to have been deliberately allocated to refugee families when it became known that the owners' return was imminent

Croatian Serbs, human rights defenders and critics of the government were the most common targets of a range of human rights violations committed throughout the country. Journalists and open critics of the government faced criminal charges, sometimes solely for expressing their opinions. In May a Zagreb court upheld an appeal by the state prosecutor against the acquittal of Viktor Ivaniç and Marinko Ùuliç, editors of the independent weekly Feral Tribune, who had been charged with "slandering or insulting" President Tudjman in 1996 (see Amnesty International Report 1997). The first hearing of a retrial was opened in December, but adjourned. In August a prominent human rights activist, Ivan Z. Ùiak, gave an interview in Feral Tribune in which he alleged that President Tudjman had discussed the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina at a meeting with Serbian President Slobodan Miloßeviç in 1991. He faced charges of "spreading false information" with the intention of causing alarm among a large number of citizens, which may be punished by up to six months' imprisonment. The leader of an opposition political party, Dobroslav Paraga, faced similar charges for making the same allegations in the independent newspaper Novi List. If found guilty and imprisoned on these charges, all four men would be prisoners of conscience

The Croatian authorities released 18 Bosnian Serb prisoners of war, all of whom had been detained in Croatian prisons, including the "Lora" military prison in Split, after the cessation of hostilities. They included nine who were released in August in exchange for nine Bosnian Croats convicted of common crimes in Republika Srpska (see Bosnia-Herzegovina entry). All 18 had been detained since at least 1995 and at least one of them had been imprisoned since 1994 (see Bosnia- Herzegovina entry).

Trials and appeals continued in many cases of Croatian or Bosnian Serbs charged with war crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In at least 12 cases the fairness of the proceedings was in doubt. For example, in December one Croatian Serb was sentenced to three consecutive terms of 20 years' imprisonment. For two of the three sets of charges against him, he appeared to have been convicted solely on the basis of an uncorroborated confession made in 1993 and which he had withdrawn claiming that it had been made as a result of ill-treatment. For the other set of charges, witness testimony was reportedly contradictory and the judge added to the court record information not provided by the witnesses.

Unofficial sources in Serbia claimed that more than 100 Croatian Serbs remained imprisoned for war crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina

There were reports of ill-treatment by police. The victims included human rights defenders, journalists and members of minorities. Vjekoslav Magaß, a representative in Eastern Slavonia of the Hrvatski Helsinki Odbor, Croatian Helsinki Committee, was assaulted by an off-duty police officer in April. The officer reportedly hit and punched Vjekoslav Magaß and threw stones at him as he tried to get away

The authorities continued to fail to protect Croatian Serbs who had remained in the Krajina following offensives in 1995 by Croatian armed forces (see Amnesty International Report 1997). They continued to be attacked by civilians, sometimes accompanied by police and soldiers. Croatian Serb refugees and displaced people who tried to visit or return to their homes in the Krajina were also attacked. In May, after a group of 10 displaced people returned to their homes near Hrvatska Kostajnica, a crowd of about 150 Bosnian Croat refugees armed with sticks and poles, went on the rampage. They systematically identified houses owned by people who had remained in the area during its occupation by Serb forces, primarily Croatian Serbs, then ransacked them and assaulted the occupants. Dozens of people were beaten during the initial mob attacks and in isolated assaults over following days. Mirko Kneeviç, who was 60 years old, died in hospital apparently as a result of beatings. National and local officials tried to justify the actions of the rioters, and 10 people were charged only with "participating in a gathering which committed a criminal act", despite the availability of witnesses to specific assaults.

Croatian Serbs, both returnees and those who had stayed in Croatia since 1995, came under attack in other towns in the Krajina, including Kistanje, Drniß, and Golubiç. In Eastern Slavonia, those responsible for attacks on Croatian Serbs were not brought to justice. For example, in December a man arrested for a deliberate grenade attack which resulted in the death of one man was charged with a minor offence and released.

A number of land-mines or booby traps were placed in homes and other areas which had previously been cleared. For example, in April a man was killed in an explosion when he disturbed a haystack on his farm near Udbina. In the same area that month, a 67-year-old man was injured by a booby trap in a field near his house, and a woman was seriously injured by explosives placed under a plank in her garden.

The Croatian authorities supplied some information about criminal investigations into offences in the Krajina committed between August 1995 and April 1997 (see Amnesty International Reports 1995 and 1996). However, it was not possible to ascertain from the information provided whether human rights violations had been investigated or whether those responsible had been brought to justice. Many serious cases remained outstanding.

Of more than 2,000 people still missing as a result of the armed conflict in Croatia, many were believed to have "disappeared". Hundreds of cases were resolved, primarily through the identification of bodies exhumed from mass graves by the Croatian authorities or the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Among them were Sinißa Glavaßeviç, Branimir Polovina and scores of others who had been taken from a hospital in Vukovar and detained by Yugoslav National Army troops in November 1991 (see Yugoslavia entry, Amnesty International Report 1992). However, there was little progress in establishing the whereabouts of Croatian Serbs who "disappeared" during the armed conflict in 1991 and 1992 and during the military offensives in 1995

At least 15 people, primarily from the Middle East, were detained in a "reception centre for foreigners" near Zagreb, apparently in contravention of international standards. At least three men were held for 12 months before being released and others remained in detention at the end of the year.

Amnesty International addressed the authorities on a variety of concerns including the protection of Croatian Serbs in the Krajina, freedom of expression, the protection of asylum-seekers, and the ill-treatment of Croatian Serbs, human rights defenders and others. The organization also stressed to the authorities that those responsible for war crimes should be brought to justice, but in fair and impartial trials. The organization also issued recommendations to the osce regarding the human rights aspects of its mission. In many cases, the authorities responded but failed to address fully Amnesty International's concerns.