International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia



  1. 1 Wednesday, 20 May 1998

    2 (The accused entered court)

    3 (In open session)

    4 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Good afternoon. I wish to

    5 greet the Prosecutor and the Defence. Hello, ladies

    6 and gentlemen. Also, I say hello to the technical

    7 booth and the interpreters. Is everyone ready to

    8 start? However, before we start, we must say that we

    9 are here today to continue this case.

    10 Mr. Dubuisson, could you please state the

    11 number of the case?

    12 THE REGISTRAR: IT-95-14/1-T, Prosecutor

    13 versus Zlatko Aleksovski.

    14 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Thank you. The Prosecutor,

    15 please.

    16 MR. NIEMANN: If Your Honours please, my name

    17 is Niemann and I appear with my colleagues,

    18 Mr. Meddegoda and Ms. Erasmus.

    19 While I am on my feet, I am involved in

    20 another matter at the moment and may I seek Your

    21 Honours leave to attend that court during the course of

    22 the opening address. I regret very much not being able

    23 to hear the opening address by Mr. Mikulicic, but

    24 unfortunately, I am involved in this other matter for

    25 this afternoon. If I may have permission to absent



  2. 1 myself, I would be much grateful, Your Honour.

    2 JUDGE RODRIGUES: It is a pity not to be able

    3 to have you here with us, Mr. Niemann, because you

    4 certainly enrich our trial, but, of course, we do

    5 agree, and you do have leave to leave the trial.

    6 Could I have the appearance for the Defence,

    7 please, Mr. Mikulicic?

    8 MR. MIKULICIC: Good morning, Your Honour,

    9 good morning, esteemed colleagues, Goran Mikulicic

    10 appears for the Defence and my colleague, Mr. Joka.

    11 JUDGE RODRIGUES: In order to organise our

    12 proceedings -- thank you, Mr. Niemann -- our

    13 proceedings this afternoon, I wish to say that we would

    14 have to see how we will be working. We will be having

    15 two 20-minute breaks this afternoon. The first break

    16 would be around ten minutes to 4.00, that is to say,

    17 15.50, and the break after that would be around twenty

    18 past 5.00. That is to say, two 20-minute breaks

    19 because for all of us who are working here, it is very

    20 important; we often forget that in the booths, there

    21 are people who are working for us, working very hard,

    22 quite often.

    23 Also, we have realised that we have assessed

    24 our efforts, and we realise that we always have

    25 interpreters with us and we always have to bear this in



  3. 1 mind. After these pleasant words, we can start the

    2 proceedings now.

    3 I shall now give the floor to Mr. Mikulicic.

    4 You have the floor, Sir.

    5 MR. MIKULICIC: Thank you, Your Honour. In

    6 our proceedings, we have come to a stage when the

    7 Defence starts presenting its case. I shall avail

    8 myself of the opportunity offered by the provisions of

    9 the Statute to make my opening statement so that I

    10 could inform the distinguished Trial Chamber of the

    11 views of the Defence with regard to this trial and also

    12 what our intentions are with regard to the rest of the

    13 case.

    14 May I just say quite briefly, without taking

    15 up too much of our time, that I think that we should

    16 recall briefly the charges that are brought against our

    17 client, Mr. Aleksovski, and then briefly we are going

    18 to recall what the Prosecutor said in his opening

    19 statement, and after that, I shall present an outline

    20 of the views of the Defence with regard to this trial

    21 and what the Defence wishes to do in this connection.

    22 The indictment has brought charges against

    23 our client in terms of three acts, Counts 8, 9, and

    24 10. Count 8, a grave breach of the Geneva Convention

    25 from 1949, as recognised by Article 2B of the statute,



  4. 1 so that is inhuman treatment. Count 9 of the

    2 indictment brings charges against our Defendant also in

    3 terms of a grave breach of the Geneva Convention 1949

    4 as recognised by Article 2C of the Statute, namely,

    5 wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to

    6 body or health.

    7 Count 10 of the indictment brings charges

    8 against our Defendant in terms of a violation of the

    9 laws or customs of war, outrages upon the personal

    10 dignity as recognised by Article 3 of the Statute of

    11 the Tribunal as well as 7(1) and 7(3) of the Statute.

    12 He is being charged either as the immediate perpetrator

    13 of these incriminations or as the responsible person in

    14 the chain of command.

    15 So our Defendant is charged with unlawful

    16 treatment of Bosnian Muslim detainees from the

    17 beginning of January until the end of May 1993. That

    18 is to say, that the indictment thus sets the venue of

    19 these alleged illegal acts; also, the area, and the

    20 area has thus been determined earlier in the previous

    21 proceedings through what the Trial Chamber has ruled on

    22 on the 25th of September, 1997; namely, that the area

    23 where these illegal acts were committed is Kaonik in

    24 the Municipality of Busovaca, so now we have recalled

    25 the incriminations from the indictment.



  5. 1 The Prosecutor, as he opened his case, in his

    2 introductory statement, said that these crimes were

    3 committed in the prison of Kaonik in the Lasva Valley

    4 in a situation of an open conflict between the forces

    5 of the HVO, that is to say the military forces of the

    6 Croatian Defence Council which were allegedly assisted

    7 by the regular army of the Republic of Croatia on the

    8 one hand and, on the other hand, according to the

    9 introductory statement made by the Prosecutor, the

    10 units of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina also took

    11 part. Implicitly in the opening statement the

    12 Prosecutor speaks of an armed conflict with the

    13 elements of an international conflict and has charged

    14 the Defendant of being the commander of the prison in

    15 Kaonik, and that this prison was organised for

    16 detaining Muslims from the nearby villages.

    17 So this is unlawful treatment of the Bosnian

    18 Muslim detainees.

    19 The Prosecutor alleges that these civilians

    20 were detained unlawfully, that they were beaten in

    21 Kaonik, that they were tortured in Kaonik, that they

    22 were exhausted psychologically by intensive

    23 interrogations, that they were used to dig trenches and

    24 as a human shield. The Prosecutor implies that all of

    25 this happened in the area of the Lasva valley in a



  6. 1 situation when the army of the Croatian Defence Council

    2 attacked the Muslim population.

    3 The Prosecutor believes that the Defendant,

    4 personally or in cooperation with others, planned,

    5 instigated, abetted, or otherwise assisted the

    6 commission of these unlawful acts, and that he did this

    7 either personally or by omitting to commit certain

    8 acts, by which he would punish the direct

    9 perpetrators. So this is delictum commisivum and

    10 delictum ommisivum, that is to say, the omission of

    11 commission or non-commission.

    12 In his opening statement, the Prosecutor

    13 recalled certain precedents, especially the Yamashita

    14 case and the hostages case, for which he believes that

    15 they would be applicable to this case too, which is

    16 being tried in this courtroom.

    17 The Prosecutor also implies that the Muslim

    18 civilians were detained only because of their

    19 ethnicity, because of their ethnic background, with a

    20 view to exchanges and the Defendant knew all of this,

    21 allowed this, and even planned this.

    22 Furthermore, the Prosecutor implies that the

    23 detainees were held in crowded rooms, that they had

    24 inadequate medical facilities, that they were

    25 inadequately fed, and that they were psychologically



  7. 1 and physically mistreated.

    2 Also, the Prosecutor implies that Zlatko

    3 Aleksovski, as the commander of Kaonik, did not take

    4 necessary measures to prevent these crimes, to prohibit

    5 them, or to punish their commission, or also that he

    6 personally took part in their commission.

    7 The Prosecutor also invoked the decision of

    8 the Chamber of Appeals in the Tadic case which says

    9 that all victims should be treated alike and that the

    10 conflict in the former Yugoslavia had the character of

    11 an international conflict.

    12 The Prosecutor also invoked the Nicaragua

    13 case in which he says that as far as international

    14 conflicts are concerned, that there should be effective

    15 control over the army that is in conflict by another

    16 state.

    17 That is what the Prosecutor has highlighted

    18 in his opening statement. That is, that he will prove

    19 this or, rather, that he has proven this in his case.

    20 In contrast, at this point in time, the

    21 Defence does not wish to evaluate the Prosecutor's case

    22 because we will do this at the end of presenting our

    23 case, but may I say quite briefly that the Defence

    24 believes that in the Prosecutor's case, the

    25 international nature of the conflict was not proven at



  8. 1 the place and in the time which is incriminated in the

    2 indictment, that is to say, in the period from the 1st

    3 of January until the 31st of May, 1993, in the area of

    4 Busovaca or, more precisely, the Kaonik facility.

    5 The Defence believes and, if we apply the

    6 standard from the Nicaragua case, this has not been

    7 proven so far, namely, that there was effective control

    8 of the Republic of Croatia over the military formations

    9 of the Croatian Defence council in the area to which

    10 the indictment pertains.

    11 We, the Defence, are going to invoke the

    12 ruling of the Trial Chamber in the Blaskic case in

    13 which the Trial Chamber ruled that an international

    14 conflict has to be proven in proceedings at the time

    15 and in the place that is covered by the indictment.

    16 The Defence believes that the military

    17 command responsibility of Zlatko Aleksovski has not

    18 been proven in the hierarchy of the Croatian Defence

    19 Council in view of his military position and also that

    20 it has not been proven that he had effective control

    21 over soldiers of the Croatian Defence Council.

    22 We also believe that it has not been proven

    23 in this case that these are systematic and unlawful

    24 acts against the Muslim population. Also, that it was

    25 not proven that on any occasion Zlatko Aleksovski,



  9. 1 either alone or in concert with other persons, planned,

    2 instigated, or ordered unlawful acts because it has not

    3 been established that he was a member of any military

    4 or politically relevant body at the critical time and

    5 in the place to which the indictment refers.

    6 Also, we believe that it has not been

    7 objectively proven that in the period covered by the

    8 indictment in the Kaonik facility, any one of the

    9 persons interned suffered great bodily injury or was

    10 killed. Such a person has never been identified and no

    11 medical documents have been offered or any other

    12 material proof which would show that there was serious

    13 deterioration of health or of the physical integrity of

    14 the said person.

    15 As the Defence views this case, in our part

    16 of the case, we shall prove as we call upon a witness,

    17 an expert for this area, that at the time and place to

    18 which the indictment refers, that is to say, Kaonik

    19 Busovaca to the first part of 1993, there were no

    20 elements of an international conflict between the

    21 Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of

    22 Croatia.

    23 The Defence shall furthermore prove that

    24 Zlatko Aleksovski did not have effective control, in

    25 terms of command responsibility, over the HVO soldiers



  10. 1 in view of possible excessive acts that the members of

    2 the HVO might have committed.

    3 The Defence shall also prove that Zlatko

    4 Aleksovski personally neither planned nor instigated

    5 nor ordered unlawful acts, and the Defence shall also

    6 prove that, on the other hand, with regard to certain

    7 excessive events, he did react by punishing the

    8 perpetrators within the possibilities he had, holding

    9 the position he had.

    10 The Defence shall prove that certain

    11 incidents, even if they did occur within the Kaonik

    12 facility, were the consequence of exceptional acts of

    13 irresponsible individuals, not a consequence of

    14 systematic behaviour towards the detained persons.

    15 Especially not in terms of treating the detainees in

    16 such a way because they were of Muslim origin.

    17 The Defence will also prove that the

    18 civilians were temporarily detained in Kaonik, from the

    19 Lasva Valley, and that this was done due to security

    20 reasons and in no way because persons of Muslim ethnic

    21 background were being persecuted or that their

    22 intention was to have them exchanged for Croat persons.

    23 Defence will prove the legal basis for labour

    24 done by the internees, and it will point to the

    25 essential use of Additional Protocol 2 of the Geneva



  11. 1 Convention. The Defence will prove that the interned

    2 persons were given adequate medical care, that hygienic

    3 conditions at the Kaonik facility were in accordance

    4 with the standards of the time and space where these

    5 events took place.

    6 We mustn't forget that this is an undeveloped

    7 area, this is a time when there was armed conflict,

    8 that this is an area which was in a military

    9 environment so that some contacts for supplies from

    10 other parts of the country were not possible. In such

    11 circumstances, the Defence will determine that the

    12 conditions were of the standard that was the only one

    13 possible in that region and at that time.

    14 The Defence will also indicate that the

    15 accommodation in the Kaonik prison was in accordance

    16 with what was objectively possible, and it will point

    17 to the temporary nature of this situation, as opposed

    18 to the thesis of the long-term -- long-lasting

    19 situation.

    20 Also, the Defence will prove that the food

    21 made available to the interned persons was, in the

    22 given circumstances, adequate and at the same level

    23 that the food was organised for all people from that

    24 region at that time period.

    25 As opposed to the claims by the Prosecution



  12. 1 that Kaonik was built for the purposes of persecution

    2 and internment of the Muslim population, the Defence

    3 will prove that this facility was not built or intended

    4 for that purpose but that due to the circumstances

    5 which were not foreseeable, but did happen at the

    6 critical time, it was simply in the absence of any

    7 other facility that this facility was used for

    8 temporary internment.

    9 The Defence will further prove that in the

    10 circumstances of armed conflict between HVO and the

    11 army of Bosnia-Herzegovina, military units of the army

    12 of Bosnia-Herzegovina attacked the Lasva Valley and not

    13 the other way around; that military units of the HVO

    14 attacked the Muslim population in the Lasva Valley.

    15 The Defence will further prove that in this

    16 case, the precedent from the Yamashita and the hostages

    17 cases cannot be applied and also it is not possible to

    18 apply the analogy of military command, of a military

    19 commander to Zlatko Aleksovski as the warden of the

    20 Kaonik facility as far as his command responsibility is

    21 concerned as it's incriminated by the indictment.

    22 The Defence will show you that in spite of

    23 the fact that at the given time at the Kaonik facility,

    24 there were hundreds of people temporarily interned.

    25 Nobody at the Kaonik facility was killed, nobody was



  13. 1 seriously injured physically, or in any other way was

    2 seriously mistreated which would have the consequence

    3 of a grave harm to the health. Not one of these

    4 persons got sick from a serious illness, and none of

    5 those people who were temporarily interned at Kaonik

    6 was after being released from Kaonik was treated in

    7 hospital or as an outpatient.

    8 The place where these alleged events took

    9 place has been determined in time and space to the

    10 facility of Kaonik, as I said earlier in my decision of

    11 the 25th of September, '89. For the purpose of what I

    12 have said just now, the Defence will bring before the

    13 Trial Chamber about 20 witnesses from whom the Defence

    14 intends to have two expert witnesses, one has been

    15 announced for today and for the next few days, and the

    16 second expert witness, the Defence plans for him to

    17 speak on this case on the topic of the component of the

    18 international conflict at the end of the Defence's part

    19 of the trial.

    20 The Defence will also bring out facts through

    21 the testimony of the witnesses by which it intends to

    22 prove what I have just said.

    23 This is all that I wanted to say in my

    24 opening statement, more or less. I wouldn't wish to

    25 abuse the time available further, so that if Your



  14. 1 Honours agree, we could start right away with the

    2 expert witness of the Defence and I will announce him

    3 when he is brought into the courtroom, so would the

    4 usher please bring in the Defence witness?

    5 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Yes, we agree,

    6 Mr. Mikulicic. Please bring in the witness.

    7 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Can you hear me well?

    8 THE WITNESS: Yes.

    9 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Good day. Would you please

    10 read the oath which is written on the piece of paper?

    11 Please read it.

    12 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will

    13 speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

    14 truth.

    15 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Thank you. Please sit

    16 down. Could you please tell me your first name and

    17 your last name.

    18 THE WITNESS: My name is Dusan Bilandzic.

    19 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Please, would you sit

    20 down? Thank you for coming to testify before the

    21 court. You will now respond to questions that

    22 Mr. Mikulicic, the Defence for the Defendant will ask,

    23 I think you know Mr. Mikulicic.

    24 MR. MIKULICIC: Thank you, Your Honour.

    25 WITNESS: DUSAN BILANDZIC



  15. 1 Examined by Mr. Mikulicic.

    2 Q. Good day once again, Professor Bilandzic.

    3 Thank you for the Defence coming to, based on your

    4 expert knowledge to try, to this Trial Chamber and for

    5 all of us, to put more light on a problem that is very

    6 important in these proceedings. In order to acquaint

    7 the Trial Chamber, Professor, you are, by your

    8 qualifications, what is your area of speciality? Would

    9 you please tell us all about your career, starting from

    10 your professorship at the Faculty of Political Sciences

    11 dating from the sixties and seventies and then on until

    12 your membership at the Academy of Arts and Sciences of

    13 the Republic of Croatia.

    14 Professor, you, as a student, you completed

    15 the Franciscan gymnasium school for priests; is that

    16 correct?

    17 A. Yes.

    18 Q. After that, you finished high school and then

    19 World War II broke out?

    20 A. Yes, that's true.

    21 Q. As a young person, you joined the fighting in

    22 World War II and you took part in the fighting against

    23 the occupation of fascist forces on the territory of

    24 former Yugoslavia; is this correct?

    25 A. Yes.



  16. 1 Q. From the very first day of the uprising until

    2 the end?

    3 A. Yes.

    4 Q. At the end of the war, participating in the

    5 military operations, you got some -- you got some

    6 military ranks.

    7 A. I came out of the war as a major and I left

    8 the JNA as a colonel.

    9 Q. Up until what year was your military career?

    10 When did you leave the army and decided to work in the

    11 civilian service?

    12 A. I left the chief -- the headquarters of the

    13 JNA at the end of March in 1960.

    14 Q. Before that, you were a professor at the

    15 Military Academy?

    16 A. Yes, I taught the history of the Second World

    17 War and the partisan war in Yugoslavia.

    18 Q. Then your political engagement in the

    19 territory of former Yugoslavia came about, you became a

    20 representative -- a Croatian representative in the

    21 federal political organisations; would you tell us

    22 which ones?

    23 A. I worked in the federal administration as a

    24 representative of Croatia, first of all in the Central

    25 Committee of the trade unions of Yugoslavia, and then a



  17. 1 director of the Research Institute of the League of

    2 Communists of Yugoslavia, of the Communist party.

    3 Q. In the period of 67 to 69, you were the

    4 director of the Croatian Institute for the history of

    5 the labour movement?

    6 A. Yes, that's right.

    7 Q. After that, you became the director of the

    8 Institute for Social Research of the League of

    9 Communists of Yugoslavia?

    10 A. Yes, that's right.

    11 Q. And then you devoted yourself to teaching

    12 where you remain until the present time, so from 1974

    13 until today at the Faculty of Political Sciences?

    14 A. Yes, but at the same faculty, I was teaching

    15 from '67 to '74, so that practically I was at the

    16 faculty from '67 until the present day.

    17 Q. In the period from '74 to '78, you were also

    18 the Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences?

    19 A. Yes, that's right.

    20 Q. After that, in the meantime, you were also a

    21 member of Parliament of the Republic of Croatia, also

    22 you were a member of the central committee of the

    23 League of Communists of the Republic of Croatia, and in

    24 the period after democratic elections in the Republic

    25 of Croatia in 1990, you became Vice-President of the



  18. 1 Republic of Croatia at the time that that post existed?

    2 A. Yes, that's right.

    3 Q. Now you're a member of the Croatian Academy

    4 of Arts and Sciences as the highest scientific body in

    5 the region of the Republic of Croatia?

    6 A. Yes, that's right.

    7 Q. You've written many articles, many books.

    8 What is the topic, what is the scientific area that you

    9 are interested in, that you work in?

    10 A. I've written eleven books out of which the

    11 most important one is the “History of the Socialist

    12 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." The other works

    13 concern the political and economic make-up of the

    14 former Yugoslavia, and I have also done research into

    15 the mechanisms of self-management so that my topic

    16 always was the analysis of social development in the

    17 region of former Yugoslavia from the breakdown of

    18 Austro-Hungary until the present time.

    19 Q. If we place this in a time context, then this

    20 would be the period from 1918 until the present time,

    21 of course with some indications of earlier times?

    22 A. Of course, with an introduction that also

    23 partly also encompasses the political development of

    24 Serbia. Following the Serb revolutions in 1804 and

    25 1815, and also the political life of Croatia as part of



  19. 1 the Habsburg monarchy, this would be an introductory

    2 part.

    3 Q. So if I understood you correctly, your

    4 research and your scientific interests range from

    5 events in the region of former Yugoslavia, the creation

    6 of a common state, and then, finally, the

    7 disintegration of that state?

    8 A. Yes, that's right.

    9 Q. So the topic that you will talk to us about

    10 is the process of disintegration of former Yugoslavia

    11 as a process of disintegration which, in fact, had, as

    12 a consequence, the events, a part of which, maybe the

    13 most horrible part, is the event from Bosnia that this

    14 case also deals with, so I would like to ask you to

    15 give us a sort of framework, a brief introduction, in a

    16 spontaneous talk, and then I will ask questions as I

    17 feel necessary. So please go ahead.

    18 A. Your Honour, the subject matter of Yugoslavia

    19 is one of the most difficult in Europe in the 20th

    20 century, primarily for the following reason: I could

    21 say that the contradictions of the world met in a very

    22 confined area on the territory of the former

    23 Yugoslavia, that is to say, within a community that was

    24 multi-national, multi-religious, even

    25 multi-civilisational, if you wish. May I recall on the



  20. 1 territory of the former Yugoslavia, over a span of 80

    2 years, there were five wars, and each and every one of

    3 these wars broke out among the different peoples of

    4 Yugoslavia and ended up in genocide, in ethnic

    5 cleansing.

    6 I have to present certain facts here that are

    7 relevant to the understanding of this subject matter,

    8 although it is a very difficult one. You know very

    9 well that the creation of states, its break-up, and

    10 then wars, liberation wars, wars of conquest,

    11 et cetera, begin by being preceded by the establishment

    12 of a certain ideology and the establishment of certain

    13 political programs. Therefore, in order to understand

    14 what happened, we must say a few words precisely about

    15 these political ideologies and political programs that

    16 came into being before Yugoslavia was created.

    17 The political ideology either of the Serbs or

    18 of the Croats or the Macedonians or the Slovenes,

    19 et cetera, has a certain aspect of its own, one that is

    20 aimed at creating a state of its own, as I usually put

    21 it; namely, every nation, even if it is a micro-nation

    22 consisting of several hundreds of thousands of

    23 inhabitants or very big nations --

    24 Q. Sorry for interrupting you, Professor, but

    25 could you please speak slower because of the



  21. 1 interpreters?

    2 A. The Serb state idea and the Croat state idea

    3 came into being exactly in the mid 19th century. I

    4 wish to point out that this was before Bismarck united

    5 Germany or Garibaldi united Italy. I do not wish to

    6 say that the Croats and the Serbs were at a higher

    7 level development because of that. On the contrary, I

    8 simply wish to say that that is when they came into

    9 being.

    10 Allow me to point out what was the substance

    11 of the Serb state idea and what was the substance of

    12 the Croatian state idea and may I point out the extent

    13 to which they corresponded to one another and, on the

    14 other hand, the extent to which they were opposed to

    15 one another?

    16 There are many sources that I cannot quote

    17 here that concern the Serb state idea. I shall refer

    18 to but two that are of capital importance. I shall not

    19 refer to the statesman Garasanin, I am just going to

    20 mention the person who wanted to create a Greater

    21 Serbia within Dusan's empire. Namely, the history of

    22 Europe shows that nations primarily wish to have a

    23 state which covers something that did exist in the

    24 past. That would be the first principle. And within

    25 that state, they wish to include even the most distant



  22. 1 branches of their ethnos, even the most distant ones.

    2 These were the ideas of a greater Germany,

    3 greater Bulgaria, greater Serbia, greater Croatia,

    4 et cetera.

    5 The ideology of the great Serb linguistic

    6 reformer who had world wide recognition, Vuk Stefanovic

    7 Karadzic was his name, it relies upon the German theory

    8 of the nation, and the German theory of the nation says

    9 one language, one nation. Safarik established this in

    10 1826 and then Vuk Karadzic in 1849 elaborated on this

    11 idea, and proceeding from the true fact that Serbs,

    12 Croats, Muslims, Montenegrins, et cetera -- excluding

    13 Slovenia -- speak one language, which is true. He

    14 deduced on that basis that this is one nation because

    15 it is one language.

    16 So all the people who speak Serbian, i.e.

    17 Croatian, and he omits that, are Serbs.

    18 If one looks at how widespread the Serb

    19 language is, then one comes to the conclusion that

    20 Serbs spanned the area from Trieste to Saloniki

    21 and Istanbul. In 1873 a map was issued on

    22 how widespread the Serbs were, and you will see what

    23 this looks like on this map.

    24 May I show it now here on the ELMO? Is that

    25 all right? Oh, I see.



  23. 1 THE REGISTRAR: This is D14.

    2 MR. MEDDEGODA: Your Honours, if I may

    3 interrupt my learned friend? Your Honours, I must

    4 point out that there is no English translation of what

    5 appears in this map. My learned friend, I believe,

    6 will submit an English translation of the writing that

    7 appears on this map before the Defence case is

    8 concluded or at least before we cross-examine the

    9 witness in the course of this week, Your Honour.

    10 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Mr. Mikulicic?

    11 MR. MIKULICIC: Your Honour, this is an

    12 historical map and the inscription uses the Cyrillic

    13 alphabet that is used in Serbia. The Defence can

    14 provide for a translation of this but only in terms of

    15 the Latin alphabet, the Latin inscription, but these

    16 are geographical names so we cannot really translate

    17 them. What the Defence can do during the presentation

    18 of its case is have translated the description of this

    19 map. However, Professor Bilandzic is going to read

    20 this out now, so that will become part of the

    21 transcript, but we are going to try to provide a

    22 translation during the course of the proceedings.

    23 Thank you.

    24 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Mr. Prosecutor, it's

    25 sufficient for you to have this explanation, that



  24. 1 Professor Bilandzic is going to give? You will get an

    2 inscription of what is on the map, that is to say, the

    3 geographical names because geographical names cannot

    4 really be translated. What do you think of that,

    5 Mr. Prosecutor?

    6 MR. MEDDEGODA: Certainly, Your Honour. As

    7 Your Honours say, the source of map and those details,

    8 since they have not been translated, it is not possible

    9 for the Prosecution to get to the source of the

    10 document, to ascertain from where the document has been

    11 obtained, and if my learned friend, through the

    12 witness, would give sufficient details in order to

    13 identify, in order to enable us to identify the source

    14 of the document, certainly the Prosecution would have

    15 no objection.

    16 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Yes, I think that

    17 Mr. Mikulicic has already said that, so there is going

    18 to be a translation either into the English or into the

    19 French language, and that will suffice. I think that

    20 we can continue with the evidence of Professor

    21 Bilandzic.

    22 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your Honour.

    23 Another document whose author is Jovan Cvijic,

    24 president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, a

    25 professor at the Sorbonne in Paris --



  25. 1 MR. MIKULICIC: Sorry to interrupt you,

    2 Professor. Could you please be so kind as to explain

    3 the document that is in front of you on the ELMO for

    4 the Trial Chamber and then we're going to move on to

    5 the other document, and please, whenever you use a

    6 document, would you mention the source, please?

    7 A. All right. This document was published by

    8 Serbia in 1873 on the basis of an analysis of how

    9 widespread the Serb language is and, as you can see on

    10 the extreme left, in the corner --

    11 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Professor, excuse me for

    12 interrupting you. Perhaps this is not very pleasant

    13 for you, but could you explain the map to us in the

    14 following way, by turning to the ELMO, because if you

    15 show it only on your screen, we cannot see it.

    16 However, if you show this on the ELMO, then we will be

    17 able to see it too, if this is not too uncomfortable

    18 for you.

    19 I'm sorry, Mr. Mikulicic, for having

    20 interrupted.

    21 A. You see, this line here is the peninsula of

    22 Istria, just before Trieste, and then there is a line

    23 going to Zagreb almost, and then it continues toward

    24 Hungary and it goes toward the Hungarian border. It

    25 includes Vojvodina. Then it moves toward the Danube,



  26. 1 near the Bulgarian Serbian border, approximately. It

    2 includes the border zone with Bulgaria and it goes down

    3 to Macedonia, but below this green colour it says Serbo

    4 Macedonians, because they are also considered to be

    5 Serbs and they spread all the way to Saloniki.

    6 So this entire thesis is based on the

    7 fact of how widespread the Serb language is, so I

    8 repeat, this thesis is one language, one nation; one

    9 nation, one state. So that is the heart of the matter.

    10 And now may I just mention in a few words the

    11 world renowned authority of the Serb Academy of

    12 Sciences and Arts, Jovan Cvijic, who is President of

    13 the Serb Academy of Sciences and Arts who presented the

    14 following thesis that the same thing that we are

    15 showing here, he said literally from Trieste to

    16 Saloniki and to Istanbul, all of that is an

    17 uncrystallised ethnic mass which has not yet created

    18 firm state and political structures.

    19 This mass consists of 9.625.200 and all --

    20 and this entire mass, so to speak, speaks Serbian, and

    21 at that point in time, and that is 1908 when the

    22 kingdom of the Serbs was recognised and it was

    23 recognised way back, the Berlin congress in 1878, in

    24 that Serbia, as a state --

    25 JUDGE VOHRAH: I am having difficulty hearing



  27. 1 the English translation. Would the technical engineer

    2 please attend to this?

    3 A. Serbia, which was then called the kingdom of

    4 Serbia, had 2.700.000, a population of 2.700.000 and

    5 the territory that speaks Serbian has 9.625.200

    6 citizens. In this analysis made by Jovan Cvijic,

    7 President of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts,

    8 which was entitled "The Annexation of Bosnia and

    9 Herzegovina and the Serb issue," it says that Bosnia

    10 and Herzegovina is a central Serb country and, he adds,

    11 this is not similar to Alsace Lorraine, between France

    12 and Germany, but it is similar to the importance that

    13 the area of Moscow has for Russia.

    14 If you look at the map, you will see that

    15 Bosnia and Herzegovina is to the west of Serbia and

    16 that Croatia continues. So Bosnia --

    17 JUDGE RODRIGUES: I'm sorry, Professor.

    18 Could you please -- when you're saying something to us,

    19 you will have to forget what you have in front of you

    20 on the table. Please think only of that which you have

    21 at the ELMO so that we can all follow what you are

    22 saying. We are just getting used to all these

    23 technical facilities too, and we know it's difficult

    24 for you, but, please, just point to the things that are

    25 on the ELMO. Thank you.



  28. 1 A. You see, on this ELMO ...

    2 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Professor, also, all the

    3 documents that you wish to show to us have to be

    4 registered, they have to get a certain number.

    5 A. Thank you.

    6 THE REGISTRAR: This is document D15.

    7 A. So if you would look on the map, Bosnia and

    8 Herzegovina cannot be the central part of -- a central

    9 Serbian country because it's situated between Croatia

    10 and Serbia. However, the Serbian Academy has the right

    11 to claim this because it sets out from the fact that

    12 Croatians speak Serbian and belong to the Serbs. Also,

    13 only they're of the Catholic faith. In that sense,

    14 Bosnia is a central Serbian country.

    15 I would like to finish with this on the

    16 Serbian idea of -- national idea. Now I will talk

    17 about the Croatian national idea.

    18 Croatia had a different historical

    19 development. In brief, it was a kingdom until 1925.

    20 Then it entered into a personal union with Bulgaria so

    21 that both states, Hungary and Croatia, had one king,

    22 who was Crowned both as the Hungarian and the Croatian

    23 king. This was in 1102. In 1526, because the Turks

    24 had started to conquer that area because Hungary became

    25 very weak so that Croatia and Hungary accepted the



  29. 1 Austrian empire, the Habsburg Monarch as their king,

    2 since then, until 1918, until the creation of

    3 Yugoslavia, the Austrian empire, each Austrian emperor

    4 from Maria-Theresia and so on, would also be crowned as

    5 the King of Croatia.

    6 So Croatia had three elements of state hood.

    7 It had a name, the kingdom of Croatia, it always had an

    8 established territory, it had its assembly, some kind

    9 of parliament, it had a Viceroy who was called Ban.

    10 In a parliamentary debate in Hungary, the

    11 Croatian Ban, on the occasion of an attempt to apply

    12 Hungarian laws in Croatia, stated the famous sentence:

    13 (statement in Latin), in other words one kingdom has no

    14 right in this case, the Hungarian, to impose its laws

    15 on another kingdom, i.e., Croatia. Why did I mention

    16 this?

    17 This position that Croatia within the

    18 Habsburg monarchy and that it had such a status is the

    19 foundation of the state idea of Croatia.

    20 Croats comprised 5.6 of the population of the

    21 whole Habsburg monarchy, and their idea, their

    22 programme, political programme, which was formulated by

    23 the Viceroy, i.e. Ban Jelacic, and a national movement

    24 that Croatia would be forever within the Habsburg

    25 monarchy, but to have this monarchy federalised in such



  30. 1 a way that Croatia unifies all the countries of the

    2 Austro-Hungarian, these would be all the southern

    3 Slavs, and you see this is Slovenia, this is Croatia,

    4 Vojvodina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, so that all of these

    5 countries gather around Croatia and get -- receive the

    6 status of the third member of the Habsburg monarchy.

    7 Because as far as -- as you know, Austria and Hungary

    8 had a dominant position within the Habsburg empire.

    9 And here, they wanted to create a third

    10 unit. Another thing that's very important. This is

    11 the so-called dualism of the Habsburg monarchy. If the

    12 Austrian empire and the Habsburg monarchy accepted the

    13 Croatian solution, then Austria would be tri -- it

    14 would have three parts and not two parts, it wouldn't

    15 be a dual. This was the main concept of the Croatian

    16 state idea. I would also like to mention two more

    17 concepts, one is the Yugoslav concept. In Croatia, a

    18 strong Yugoslav movement developed in Croatia in the

    19 second half of the 19th century. Whose elite imagined

    20 the creation of a greater Yugoslav state, but as a

    21 federation with the intimate desire that Croatia would

    22 be in a hegemonic position. Symbolically, in 1866

    23 there was an academy of arts and sciences formed in

    24 Zagreb but it wasn't named as the Croatian academy, it

    25 was called the Yugoslav South Slav Academy because this



  31. 1 was supposed to be an academy of Croats, Serbs,

    2 Slovenes and Bulgarians, if you please. So this is a

    3 marginal political idea, mostly entertained by the

    4 intelligentsia. The third idea that had no chance at

    5 all was the formation of an independent state, so these

    6 were the concepts.

    7 So the Serb state idea which goes for the

    8 expansion of Serbia, the Croatian state idea which goes

    9 for the creation of a third member of the Habsburg

    10 empire, the so-called southern Slav unit in the

    11 confederation with Hungary and Austria.

    12 And there is also the Croatian idea to join

    13 Serbs to Montenegro, but this would then have to be a

    14 federation, so I move to the next question: What

    15 happened in brief in World War I?

    16 Unfortunately, the countries of southern

    17 Slavs from Austria; Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes. The

    18 citizens of Vojvodina, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, were

    19 unfortunately in the war against Serbia during the

    20 entire four years, they were actually the occupiers

    21 there.

    22 The Croatian assembly, as well as the

    23 parliamentarians in the Austrian parliament, in World

    24 War I, almost until the disintegration of

    25 Austro-Hungary, took the position of the trialism that



  32. 1 I mentioned earlier, i.e. the southern Slavs within the

    2 Habsburg monarchy would have their own state,

    3 recognising the Austrian emperor. Serbia had a

    4 different idea. In 1915, it received agreement of the

    5 Russian empire, Great Britain, France, Italy, as the

    6 powers of Allies to expand in such a way

    7 that a part of the Slavic countries from the

    8 Austrian -- Austro-Hungarian empire would be joined to

    9 Serbia. This is the so-called concept of Greater

    10 Serbia.

    11 Just roughly these -- this is the secret

    12 London contract agreement which was signed between

    13 Serbia and the allies in 1915.

    14 THE REGISTRAR: This is document D16.

    15 A. As you can see on the map, after the

    16 central -- the fall of the central powers of

    17 Austro-Hungary, Serbia is given the territory which

    18 goes along this blue line. Excuse me. It takes the

    19 area close to Virovitica, but it is this red line and

    20 it goes all the way to the sea, so that Serbia would

    21 get Bosnia and Herzegovina, a good part of Dalmatia and

    22 also the eastern part of Croatia. However, things did

    23 not quite develop in that way because Serbia lost the

    24 support of Russia in 1917, and Wilson, United States

    25 President, did not agree so easily to the contributions



  33. 1 and the secret agreements that the peoples -- whereby

    2 peoples would be joined to one or the other side, so

    3 that this could not be carried out exactly in this

    4 way. Something else was carried out.

    5 As I said, the Croatian citizens who were in

    6 the war against Austro-Hungary -- for Austro-Hungary,

    7 they were pretty faithful to Austro-Hungary and

    8 generally the southern Slavs accept the Serbs who, of

    9 course, felt in the fight against Serbia felt quite

    10 uncomfortable and escaped from the army, would cross

    11 the front lines and go as volunteers, even a few

    12 Croats. But on the whole, the Croatian assembly

    13 parliament, until the end of the Austro-Hungarian

    14 empire, mainly remained on the positions of the

    15 mentioned trialism, i.e., the state within the

    16 Austro-Hungarian empire.

    17 When Austria was in agony, then the

    18 parliamentarians in Vienna, Slovenes and Croats as well

    19 as the empire Croatian assembly, decided to create one

    20 state.

    21 Outside of Austro-Hungary, if it should fall

    22 apart, meaning to create a state which would

    23 comprise -- now I will show this on the map so would

    24 you please show this to the court?

    25 MR. MIKULICIC: If you allow me, Your Honour,



  34. 1 the map that Professor Bilandzic took is a new map

    2 which we didn't have time to prepare because Professor

    3 Bilandzic in the course of his work prepared it today,

    4 so for the needs of the evidence, we will photocopy

    5 that later, but for now Professor Bilandzic will tell

    6 us what it is all about.

    7 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Mr. Meddegoda, do you

    8 agree?

    9 MR. MEDDEGODA: Yes, Your Honour, as long as

    10 I have a copy of the translation prior to the

    11 cross-examination in order for the Prosecution to do

    12 that effectively.

    13 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Yes, thank you. Would you

    14 please continue?

    15 THE REGISTRAR: Document D17.

    16 A. I will draw a line which will divide Serbia

    17 and the countries of Austro-Hungary, the Slav

    18 Austro-Hungarian countries, and the line goes like

    19 this: West of this line, there are Bosnia and

    20 Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina. At the

    21 time of Austro-Hungary's agony, these countries form a

    22 state. At the end of October 1917, they name it the

    23 state of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs.

    24 At that time, Serbia has the idea, since

    25 Austro-Hungary is in agony, to simply join these



  35. 1 countries to Serbia, meaning to avoid the creation of a

    2 different southern Slav state because besides Serbia

    3 and Montenegro, there would be another state, and this

    4 should be avoided.

    5 It wants to expand Serbia with new countries

    6 and it would have the order of a centralist kingdom,

    7 according to the political system model that was in

    8 Serbia from 1903 to 1918.

    9 So two completely opposing ideas clashed like

    10 that, and this state, the capital of which was Zagreb,

    11 entered into negotiations with Serbia and on November

    12 9th, 1918, an agreement was reached about the creation

    13 of new Yugoslavia, so this new state would enter Zagreb

    14 with Belgrade, but it was demanded for this to be a

    15 confederation, the state itself, whose capital was now

    16 Zagreb, which Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina

    17 entered, was organised within itself as a federation,

    18 so you would have governments in Ljubjana, Zagreb,

    19 Sarajevo, Split, and Novi Sad. So this federation

    20 would enter into confederative relations with the

    21 kingdom of Serbia which was already before that joined

    22 by Montenegro. The president of the Serbian government

    23 signed such an agreement for the creation of Yugoslavia

    24 on this basis.

    25 But the Serbian government, having studied



  36. 1 the Geneva declaration -- I don't know if I stated

    2 already that this happened in Geneva, so the Geneva

    3 declaration -- the Serbian government refused this

    4 thesis with two arguments: First, we are one nation,

    5 one people, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, they are one

    6 nation. So one nation cannot enter into state

    7 contracts amongst itself, within itself.

    8 Secondly, what you are proposing from Zagreb

    9 is a copy of the Austro-Hungarian dualism, meaning to

    10 say, the dual monarchy, so that then we would have both

    11 a Serb monarchy, i.e. a Yugoslav monarchy, so this was

    12 rejected.

    13 Yugoslavia was created as a centralist state.

    14 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Mr. Mikulicic and Professor

    15 Bilandzic, after these two arguments that we have

    16 listened to now, I think it is time for a break of 20

    17 minutes, and then I would like to ask you to continue

    18 with your testimony. So now we adjourn for a 20-minute

    19 break.

    20 --- Recess at 4.00 p.m.

    21 --- Resumed at 4.20 p.m.

    22 (The accused entered court)

    23 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Mr. Mikulicic and Professor

    24 Bilandzic, we can continue. Please go ahead.

    25 MR. MIKULICIC: Thank you, Your Honours.



  37. 1 Q. Professor Bilandzic, after the break, we can

    2 continue with your testimony.

    3 You mentioned that the first Yugoslavia in

    4 1918 was organised as an expanded Serbia. Would you

    5 please explain this for us, what is the background of

    6 this claim of yours, but please turn your microphone

    7 on.

    8 A. Two or three sentences before I respond to

    9 that question.

    10 Why was a state created in the agony of

    11 Austro-Hungary in 1917 which was joined by Slovenia,

    12 Bosnia, Vojvodina and Croatia, and why did it agree to

    13 become abolished and to become part of Serbia? This is

    14 a complex situation. And it's about the fact that

    15 Serbs -- Serb, Italian, and French troops, as the

    16 troops of entente, freely entered because this was the

    17 territory of the defeated Habsburg monarchy, that's one

    18 thing. Second, the Croatian peasant population, after

    19 the example of the Russian revolution, started to

    20 create chaos, rebellion, robberies, looting of rich

    21 homes, and the Croatian political ruling class agreed

    22 to enter -- for the Serb troops to enter in order to

    23 stifle these rebellions. The new state didn't have an

    24 army or the police because it was created in the agony

    25 of Austro-Hungary so that it accepted this concept of



  38. 1 the creation of such a Yugoslavia, i.e., a centralist

    2 one.

    3 And in response to your question, this is

    4 about the fact that the government of the kingdom of

    5 Serbia, working precisely in the spirit of the concept

    6 of creating one state, abolished the structures in all

    7 the other countries, meaning the governments in Zagreb,

    8 the government in Sarajevo, the government in Novi Sad,

    9 and the government in Ljubjana and all of their

    10 parliaments, and instead of those historic countries,

    11 the whole new state was divided into 33 administrative

    12 regions, subject to the Royal rule in Belgrade, so they

    13 disappeared from political life, the historical

    14 countries which lasted for thousands of years, so to

    15 say, and also their state structures disappeared. And

    16 this is how a centralist state was formed.

    17 Q. Professor, in such a situation, do you see

    18 elements of conflict which would later be demonstrated

    19 in events in this region?

    20 A. As soon as the centralist Yugoslavia was

    21 established, even a few days before it was established,

    22 in Croatia -- I should not say overnight but within a

    23 few months' time, a massive national movement was

    24 created and Stjepan Radic came to its head, the leader

    25 of the Croatian peasants' party, because peasants were



  39. 1 80 percent of the population, he practically came the

    2 charismatic national leader, and Croatian

    3 parliamentarians rejected the recognition of this newly

    4 established state and this went on for several years.

    5 After that, they did enter the parliament of

    6 the kingdom of Yugoslavia after all, where great

    7 polemics continued because the political parties of

    8 some other countries, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, of

    9 course not all of them but some of them, embraced the

    10 positions of federalism, namely, Radic's Croats said

    11 that things had to go back to 1918, that is to say, not

    12 to recognise the establishment of that state, and they

    13 tried, through the parliament, to renew the federation

    14 instead of a centralist state.

    15 Terrible quarrels broke out in the

    16 parliament, and on the 28th of June, 1928, a member of

    17 parliament, Punisa Racic, took out his pistol, and

    18 during a heated quarrelsome debate in parliament, he

    19 killed three leaders of the Croats, and two were

    20 seriously injured. That was the leadership of the --

    21 the political leadership of Croatia that was in the

    22 federal parliament, they were killed literally in their

    23 parliamentary seats.

    24 After that, the Croats refused to take part

    25 in political parliamentary life, and then King



  40. 1 Alexander came to face a dilemma. What should he do?

    2 The danger of a revolution was looming over him. He

    3 invited the successor of Stjepan Radic, this was

    4 Dr. Vlatko Macek, and offered him the amputation of

    5 Slovenia and Croatia. According to this amputation,

    6 Croatia would have received 54.2 percent of the

    7 territory of the kingdom of Croatia that existed within

    8 Austro-Hungary. In the negotiations between the King

    9 and the Croats, he was -- actually, a man named

    10 Svetozar Pribicevic who was leader of the Serbs in

    11 Croatia, conducted these negotiations on behalf of the

    12 King, and the Croats could not agree to this because

    13 only 54.2 percent of their territories would remain in

    14 their hands, and so they rejected this. And there's

    15 another reason for this rejection: The entente sought

    16 a stable Yugoslavia, and they needed a stable

    17 Yugoslavia for two reasons: First of all, Yugoslavia

    18 was supposed to be an impediment to the possible

    19 renewal of German Imperialism, and secondly, Yugoslavia

    20 should be a state within the small entente, that was

    21 supposed to be a sanitary cordon against Bolshevik

    22 Russia, that is to say the Baltic states, Poland,

    23 Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia so this was the

    24 "cordon sanitaire." So the great powers supported

    25 Yugoslavia, and this amputation never occurred, but



  41. 1 then a practical question was raised: Could

    2 parliamentarianism be continued after the assassination

    3 of the leadership of Croatian politics. This could not

    4 continue in this way not only because of them but also

    5 because of Serbia.

    6 In the kingdom of Yugoslavia, Serbs accounted

    7 for 36 percent of the population so if, for example,

    8 the British model of democracy were to be applied and

    9 if truly fair and free and honourable parliament

    10 elections were to take place, Serbs would always be a

    11 minority in that parliament, and the regime of the

    12 kingdom of Yugoslavia could not be perpetuated because

    13 the non-Serb nations were a majority. So the King

    14 decided in favour of a military dictatorship, and he

    15 appointed a general of his as Prime Minister, and they

    16 went even a step further. It is not only that a

    17 Croatian -- the names of Croatia and Macedonia and

    18 others were abolished but also the name of Serbia

    19 itself was abolished. It was hoped that this could

    20 turn into a melting pot and that a Yugoslav nation

    21 could be created and therefore that statistics should

    22 be abolished. I'm sorry. I can't remember the name.

    23 Please help me with this. Oh, yes, a census, a

    24 census. The census never said Serb, Croat, Slovene,

    25 et cetera, we were all Yugoslavs, you know, there were



  42. 1 no separate nations of this kind. Of course, this was

    2 utopia, this was a delusion, and this went on until

    3 1934.

    4 In 1934, the Ustashe organisation, this was a

    5 pro-fascist organisation from Croatia, and they were

    6 assisted by Bulgarian and Macedonian revolutionaries,

    7 and they killed King Alexander in Marseilles, and a

    8 year later parliamentarianism was established once again but

    9 there were different manipulations involved and I will

    10 not elaborate on that further. It is important to say

    11 the following: The Yugoslav society split according to

    12 three different lines: First, there was a bloc of

    13 centralists, unitarianists, and there was a federal

    14 bloc too, and within the federal bloc, within every

    15 national group there were also fractions in favour of

    16 breaking up Yugoslavia, but then this is also a broad

    17 subject that I cannot get into now. It is only under

    18 the pressure that was brought to bear by Great Britain

    19 and France that an agreement was finally reached

    20 between Belgrade and Zagreb.

    21 Belgrade gave Zagreb an autonomous state unit

    22 which was called the Banovina of Croatia, so this

    23 historic name of Croatia was reinstated, and it came

    24 into being in the following manner: Bosnia-Herzegovina

    25 was divided, Croatia got 66.000 square kilometres which



  43. 1 is about nine and a half thousand square kilometres

    2 more than the territory of the following socialist

    3 republic of Croatia.

    4 Q. You mean Croatia after the Second World War?

    5 A. Yes, that's what I mean.

    6 Q. Sorry for interrupting you, Professor, but

    7 you mentioned just now Bosnia-Herzegovina as describing

    8 these events. If we are to go back a bit, we will see

    9 that in this area, the primary tension, so to speak,

    10 was between Serbia and Croatia. Where did Bosnia stand

    11 in this context?

    12 A. Oh, very well. Now I wanted to speak about

    13 Bosnia in greater detail anyway, but perhaps by way of

    14 an introduction, I could say a few things. In

    15 Bosnia-Herzegovina, I don't have the accurate figures

    16 here, but I won't make any major mistakes. During the

    17 Austro-Hungarian rule, 43 percent of the population of

    18 Bosnia were Serbs 32 percent were Muslims, and 23

    19 percent were Croats. The Croatian political idea

    20 counted on the possibility of annexing Bosnia according

    21 to that idea of trialism that we've been referring to.

    22 According to the Berlin agreement, Bosnia-Herzegovina

    23 came under the rule of Vienna and Budapest and in 1908

    24 it was annexed, Austro-Hungary tried to create a

    25 Bosniak nation because they thought that the power of a



  44. 1 state can create nations. Sometimes this is possible,

    2 but sometimes it is not. When is it not possible?

    3 When the process of the creation of states has gone so

    4 far that they no longer agree to a melting pot. Serbs

    5 and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina did not accept the

    6 concept of a Bosniak nation, so Serbs and Croats

    7 remained only, and this concept failed.

    8 Croat politicians in 1908, during the

    9 annexation sent a message to Belgrade -- I'm quoting

    10 from memory -- if Bosnia is not annexed but is handed

    11 over to the kingdom of Serbia, we would welcome this.

    12 That is what Croats say. Croats from Zagreb say that.

    13 However, if we live to see such a fate that the great

    14 powers do not give you Bosnia, you should be happy if

    15 it falls into the hands of Austro-Hungary because we

    16 are going to work on uniting all these countries into

    17 one state according to this idea of trialism.

    18 So how should I put this? Zagreb and

    19 Belgrade -- we've elaborated on that considerably so

    20 I'm just repeating it now -- had aspirations to take

    21 over all of Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially their

    22 extremists on both sides. Only a compromise could

    23 ensure a solution, just or unjust.

    24 In 1939, the Serbs and the Croats, seven days

    25 before the outbreak of the Second World War, they



  45. 1 divided up Bosnia. Approximately, because I don't have

    2 the exact figures now, the greater part of the

    3 territory came under the rule not of Serbia but of

    4 Yugoslavia -- I'm sorry, I just have to give this brief

    5 explanation.

    6 If the Banovina of Croatia was established

    7 and it took about one third of the territory of Bosnia

    8 and it was created, it was recognised it is an

    9 autonomous land, the King, or rather, the Prince, the

    10 Regency, they accepted this. And if you look at the

    11 map, what has actually happened? The entire remaining

    12 part of Yugoslavia, that is to say a larger part of

    13 Bosnia, Vojvodina, Montenegro, Macedonia remained as a

    14 single entity, and the ruling class, the Serb ruling

    15 class, wanted to create from this remainder of

    16 Yugoslavia the so-called Serb autonomous unit, so even

    17 before the Second World War it would have had three

    18 units: Slovenia, under the name of Dravska Banovina,

    19 Croatia under the name of Banovina Croatia, and the

    20 so-called Serb lands, the remainder. And that is

    21 approximately about two thirds of Yugoslavia, perhaps

    22 even more than that.

    23 I personally think -- although in

    24 historiography there is no proof to this, that already

    25 in 1939 there was an attempt to split up Yugoslavia



  46. 1 into three parts: Slovenia, Croatia, and the Serb

    2 lands. So this was only a question of days. However,

    3 after seven days, seven days after this agreement came

    4 into being, the Second World War broke out, and that is

    5 what I wish to say about the kingdom of Yugoslavia, and

    6 now with your permission, I should like to move onto

    7 the war between 1941 and 1945.

    8 Q. I'm sorry, Professor, perhaps before you move

    9 on to this other part, perhaps we should go back a

    10 bit?

    11 You explained to us what were the forces of

    12 history that were in play and what kind of interests

    13 clashed in the area. Please tell us, tell the Chamber,

    14 what was the structure of the population in this area

    15 in terms of religion, in terms of civilisational

    16 development, industrial development, do you see any

    17 forces of conflict in play there that would perhaps, in

    18 the near future, lead to the events that actually

    19 ensued?

    20 A. It's a known fact that Yugoslavia was

    21 multi-national. It's also well-known that Yugoslavia

    22 did not recognise the existence of nations,

    23 nationalities, but it contained within itself five

    24 nations: The Serb nation, Croatian, Slovene,

    25 Macedonian, which was not only not recognised but you



  47. 1 couldn't even say Macedonian or Macedonia, and also

    2 it's very debatable about Montenegro. A part of

    3 Montenegrins consider themselves to be Montenegrins and

    4 the rest consider themselves Serbs.

    5 Secondly, Yugoslavia was a multi-confessional

    6 country. Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro are countries

    7 of the Orthodox faith, 45.5 percent, Croatia and

    8 Slovenia are Catholic countries, 30.8 percent, and

    9 Muslim, Sunni, 17 percent. But it's even more

    10 important that the degree of development, the

    11 differences among the Yugoslav countries, were seven to

    12 one, which means that the least developed parts of

    13 Yugoslavia would, if we mark them as one, the rate

    14 of -- the rate of development would be 700 percent of

    15 greater difference. So we also want -- 1500 years from

    16 the arrival to the Balkans and to this area, these

    17 peoples were never in one state. The first time this

    18 happened was in 1918, so that they carry with them a

    19 stamp, a cultural civilisational stamp, the western

    20 part of Croatia, Slovenia, Vojvodina, which is Serb,

    21 have that Danubian central European stamp which was

    22 left by Austro-Hungary which was a pretty solid state

    23 at a high level of civilisation, which is a country

    24 with a rule of law regardless of the fact that it was

    25 accused as the prisoner of nations.



  48. 1 The eastern part was under the Byzantine

    2 influence, for five hundred years it was under Turkish

    3 occupation, so there are civilisational differences

    4 here. So that the creation of a common state from such

    5 varied elements could not be expected to be a

    6 successful process of organic capillary linking among

    7 the peoples into a stable political and social

    8 community. This just simply did not happen.

    9 If you permit me now about the war? As you

    10 know, war is always a test of the situation. War

    11 frees, releases the most savage as well as the most

    12 noble -- how shall I say? -- moments in human society.

    13 So the war of 1941 to 1945, unfortunately -- I was a

    14 Communist for 50 years, a member of the Central

    15 Committee. However, unfortunately we have to change

    16 the historiography that we Communists imposed on the

    17 public. It did not happen the way we told generations

    18 from elementary schools, the way we presented it

    19 through mass media textbooks. It didn't quite happen

    20 that way.

    21 In 1941, Yugoslavia, on April 6th, it was

    22 attacked, which is also one more argument saying that

    23 it could not determine its own path. We said that it

    24 was created to a large part by the entente powers,

    25 Great Britain, France, Italy, and we have a negative



  49. 1 example. This is a relatively small country which was

    2 an instrument in the hands of the German Reich. Hitler

    3 offered Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Agreement,

    4 but it didn't agree to that.

    5 In 1941, the Yugoslav army gave absolutely no

    6 resistance to the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht, Bulgarian

    7 and Hungarian armies entered Yugoslavia without a

    8 struggle, weapons were laid down without a struggle.

    9 Germany created Greater Croatia, Hitler created Greater

    10 Croatia.

    11 Q. How?

    12 A. He joined Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

    13 into one state and named it the Independent Republic of

    14 Croatia, the Independent State of Croatia. This was a

    15 quisling creation, a puppet state under the protection

    16 of Hitler and Mussolini, and the state, the Ustashe

    17 state, accepted to implement Nazi-fascist racial laws.

    18 It took out its sword against the Serbs, Jews, Gypsies,

    19 Romanies with the aim of creating from that state, an

    20 as-ethnically-homogeneous-as-possible Croatia, treating

    21 Muslims in Bosnia as -- and this is the term used by

    22 the Ustashas -- as the flower of Croatian people who

    23 converted to Islam but they were still Croats.

    24 Q. Regarding the Muslim nations, could you

    25 please explain how a Muslim nationality nation came



  50. 1 about in this region?

    2 A. This is a subject that requires a lot of

    3 research. In brief, Catholicism, which spread from the

    4 Vatican, and to Christianising the Balkan area,

    5 including Croatia, sometime in the Middle Ages required

    6 quite strongly that rituals in churches could not be

    7 conducted in the national language. This caused a lot

    8 of resistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina so a part of

    9 those people accepted that well-known religion which

    10 developed in other parts of Europe as well, the

    11 Patarines (phonetics) -- I think there is another name

    12 for it; it doesn't matter right now -- and then when

    13 the Turks conquered Bosnia and Herzegovina, that part,

    14 as well as other parts of the people, accepted Islam

    15 and Muslims. Absolutely there is no doubt about that.

    16 They are Slavs, just like Serbs, Croats and the others

    17 are, they are Slavs, but they just converted to Islam.

    18 When the independent state of Croatia as a

    19 puppet state was created, they quite voluntarily

    20 accepted -- a part of them accepted the Banovina

    21 Hrvatska, I mean the puppet state, the independent

    22 state of Croatia; and during the kingdom of Yugoslavia,

    23 because they were, just like the Croats, persecuted,

    24 they were a faction, one faction of them. But this was

    25 not a decisive factor. Communists later will decide to



  51. 1 recognise them as a nation, and this will be 1969. And

    2 for the first time in 1971, the census includes them as

    3 a nation, and this is something that was started by the

    4 Communist party of Yugoslavia.

    5 So when the independent state of Croatia was

    6 created and when it started to introduce the

    7 Nazi-fascist order, of course, this could not remain

    8 without the resistance of the Serbs and also

    9 democratically-oriented Croats.

    10 Serbia turned into a zone of occupation and

    11 it was reduced to the territory it had before the

    12 Balkan wars, before the expansion of Serbia. Kosovo

    13 was joined to Vojvodina -- I mean Albania, Macedonia to

    14 Bulgaria, Vojvodina, Dravska Banovina to Hungary and so

    15 forth. This is really not important at this time.

    16 Something else is important.

    17 There is the question of what will happen

    18 with us, who with us, with Croats, Serbs, Slovenes and

    19 the others, when the Second World War is over. A part

    20 of the people believed in the thousand-year-old new

    21 Ordnung, Hitler's famous new order that will last for a

    22 thousand years. But, of course, the majority of the

    23 people, deep inside themselves, were convinced that

    24 Germany will lose the war, and this was something that

    25 they wanted to prepare for. I'm speaking now, first of



  52. 1 all, about the elites.

    2 The government of the kingdom of Serbia

    3 escaped to London. From London, they organised, i.e.,

    4 better to say it established, determined the policy for

    5 its followers during the war. The policy was as

    6 follows: The democratic wing of the Croatian people,

    7 represented by the pro-British Croatian Peasants Party,

    8 Radic that I mentioned who was killed, his party was

    9 pro-British, pro-Allies. The Royal government, they

    10 believed the following: Be quiet. Do not go into war

    11 against the occupiers. Wait until the end of World War

    12 II. The allies will come, they will liberate us, and

    13 then we will resolve all our questions. So there is no

    14 fighting.

    15 The Communist party of Yugoslavia right away

    16 in 1941, on the 4th of July, twelve days after the

    17 Wehrmacht attacked Russia, started a rebellion, rose

    18 against the occupiers, and started a war, a cruel war.

    19 This war was conducted by Tito, and with all the

    20 downfalls, all the successes and the failures, in 1943,

    21 in late 1943, Tito had an army of 300.000 people. This

    22 is a respectable army.

    23 The Royal government in London reacted very

    24 strongly towards the partisan movement and towards

    25 Tito's army, ordering its military Minister, Draza



  53. 1 Mihailovic, he was the leader of the Chetniks and who,

    2 in the middle of the war, had about 100.000 people,

    3 that he must destroy Tito's army at any cost. Of

    4 course, against Tito's army, the NDH, the puppet state

    5 and also Nedic's army fought against that army as well,

    6 so that all of the different political forces fought.

    7 Why did the Royal government ask the Chetniks

    8 to destroy the partisan forces? Because the Communist

    9 party of Yugoslavia had a programme of liquidation of

    10 Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia, which means

    11 liquidation of that Serbia which ruled Yugoslavia but

    12 also the NDH even more because it was a puppet state.

    13 So the Communists reject the concept of Serb

    14 bourgeoisie, Croat bourgeoisie, Yugoslav bourgeoisie

    15 and the forces of the bourgeoisie in general and they

    16 offered a compromise.

    17 Q. And what was the gist of the compromise from

    18 the Communist party of Yugoslavia?

    19 A. It stated the Croats will get a state in the

    20 Second World War.

    21 Q. What kind of a state?

    22 A. It will be a state but within the Yugoslav

    23 federation. The same thing will be for the Slovenes,

    24 for the Macedonians, for the Montenegrins, and for

    25 Bosnia-Herzegovina. "You Serbs must return to Serbia



  54. 1 and you will be a republic just like the other

    2 republics."

    3 As opposed to that, the Royal government had

    4 also a project of what will happen at the end of World

    5 War II. According to that project -- there are

    6 documents, there are maps here, but I don't really want

    7 to present them -- but this is the Yugoslav People's

    8 Army and the old regime published these documents, and

    9 these are well-known to the whole of Yugoslavia.

    10 There would be a much stronger regime

    11 established after World War II because Croatia would be

    12 left with only 20 percent of its territory, there would

    13 be only Zagreb and a few other municipalities, regions

    14 in north-western Croatia would remain so, but the border

    15 between Greater Serbia would be set on the river Kupa

    16 together with Slovenia. So this was the most

    17 disgusting, the most extreme form of the renewal of

    18 Greater Serb Yugoslavia.

    19 Q. Who propagated such a form of the renewal of

    20 Greater Serb Yugoslavia at that time?

    21 A. There is a document, an assistant of Draza

    22 Mihailovic, his name is Stevan Moljevic, he's a member

    23 of the Central Committee of the Chetnik movement. I,

    24 of course, have to skip a lot of things. Draza

    25 Mihailovic, General, who at the end of 1941 became a



  55. 1 Minister of the kingdom of Yugoslavia, so he was a

    2 contact with the Royal government in London from which

    3 he received directives, he was the leader of the

    4 Chetnik movement. He was that in 1941, 1942, and 1943,

    5 and in the Western media, he was declared as the Robin

    6 Hood of the Balkan mountains, as the greatest guerrilla

    7 in Europe. Some forces today are preparing in

    8 Washington an agreement as the first and greatest

    9 guerrilla fighter in Europe, and really, he did create

    10 an army of 100.000 Chetniks. But that army waged war

    11 only against the partisans, and this was ethnically a

    12 purely Serb army without any other members and it was a

    13 terror for non-Serbian people.

    14 There is a terrible paradox in this.

    15 Churchill told King Peter in 1944, in January, "Please

    16 sack Draza Mihailovic, dismiss him. Pull out of an

    17 impossible situation. You are having contacts with

    18 Germans, Italians, and the Independent State of

    19 Croatia, and you are not fighting against the Germans.

    20 So we have a situation here where you are an allied

    21 country, Yugoslavia, but your army in Yugoslavia, the

    22 Chetniks, are cooperating with our enemies, with the

    23 Germans."

    24 When Eden asked him -- and to go on.

    25 So Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt, on



  56. 1 December 1st, 1943, in Teheran, reached the decision to

    2 reject Draza Mihailovic and to accept Tito as the only

    3 leader of the national uprising in Yugoslavia, the

    4 popular uprising in Yugoslavia, and to provide arms to

    5 him. To Eden's question on one occasion, "Why are you

    6 helping Communists and not the Chetniks?" he said "I am

    7 helping those who are killing more Germans." I think

    8 this is just an aside, but it's not that important.

    9 So the main clash in the territory of the

    10 former Yugoslavia in 1941, 1942 is the clash between

    11 the partisan army and the Communist party of

    12 Yugoslavia, of course, which was asking for six federal

    13 units and the army of the kingdom of Yugoslavia which

    14 wants to renew the Greater Serbian Yugoslavia in a much

    15 more drastic form than it was between the two World

    16 Wars.

    17 Q. Excuse me just for a second. I would like to

    18 clarify some facts. You stated that the army of Draza

    19 Mihailovic was actually an ethnically composed army

    20 comprising only one people, those were Serbs. On the

    21 other hand, the partisan army, how was that conceived

    22 from that standpoint?

    23 A. It is a very interesting and important issue,

    24 you know, but it kept changing. In 1941, from July

    25 until November, Serbia was the bastion of the partisan



  57. 1 movement with a total of 25.000 partisans. Also

    2 Montenegro, which then had about 30.000 partisans, so

    3 Tito had 50.000 partisans, approximately, in the first

    4 two months of the uprising from Serbia and Montenegro.

    5 However, at the end of November 1941, this army of

    6 Tito's was broken up. Out of a total of about 60.000

    7 partisans in Serbia and Montenegro, only 6.000 remained

    8 and they had to flee to Bosnia.

    9 So in Serbia, from the beginning of 1941

    10 until the Red Army came in 1944, practically -- we used

    11 to call this "revolution" in Communist terminology, a

    12 socialist revolution -- the socialist revolution was

    13 then quelled.

    14 Tito then left Serbia and Montenegro and went

    15 to Bosnia and Croatia. In Bosnia and Croatia, he

    16 created this army of 300.000 people in Bosnia, Croatia,

    17 and Slovenia, of course. I am going to give you some

    18 interesting figures now.

    19 This army of 300.000 people consisted of 96

    20 brigades, there were divisions, cores, et cetera, and

    21 out of this total, 38 brigades or 40 percent were in

    22 Croatia, in Bosnia 23, in Slovenia 17, in Montenegro 6,

    23 in Serbia 5, and in Vojvodina 5.

    24 There is just one more thing I have to add to

    25 this. Bearing in mind the future state structure of



  58. 1 Yugoslavia, Tito and the Communist party, from 1941 to

    2 1945, had a military structure according to the future

    3 republics. That is to say that every republic had

    4 headquarters, a general staff of its own partisans,

    5 though there was a general staff of Croatia, Serbia,

    6 Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina respectively.

    7 He, Tito, coordinated things with his own

    8 small general staff and also a small group of

    9 divisions, three to five, but the remaining 37

    10 divisions are under the command of republican

    11 headquarters. So, of course, in addition to this

    12 military structure, a political structure was created

    13 too; also the national assemblies of these future

    14 republics and also provisional governments. So already

    15 from 1941 there was a federal structure, which meant

    16 death to a Greater Serb Yugoslavia and to the quisling

    17 Greater Croatia, namely the independent state of

    18 Croatia.

    19 So this was the main clash between those who

    20 were aspiring for power after the Second World War,

    21 namely, the Royal government in London and the

    22 Communist party on the other hand.

    23 In 1944, because Tito did not have Serbia

    24 then, he asked Stalin to help him in liberating

    25 Serbia. Stalin ordered Marshall Tolbuhin, the



  59. 1 commander of the Third Ukrainian Front, to make

    2 available to Tito the strongest forces possible.

    3 Marshall Tolbuhin gave the 57th Soviet army to Tito,

    4 the 14th mechanised corps of General Zhdanov, four

    5 divisions -- I can't remember the name now -- the storm

    6 forces, and Dimitrov, the well-known leader of the

    7 Comintern, on the 9th of September, 1944, he took over

    8 Bulgaria and he also sent his forces to Serbia, and

    9 Tito on the other hand, from Western Yugoslavia, that

    10 is to say, from Bosnia and Croatia, he sent nine

    11 partisan divisions to Serbia. In Serbia itself in

    12 1944, he established five divisions from the Serb

    13 people who lived there, and in the autumn of 1944, the

    14 Communist party managed to get Serbia. So the Royal

    15 government and Draza Mihailovic ended the war at that

    16 point.

    17 So that was where the main clash was within

    18 Yugoslavia between two completely, absolutely opposite

    19 irreconcilable ideas, state ideas too. However, the

    20 rift among the people themselves was even greater

    21 within each nation -- this was a conflict between

    22 nations in part. But, for example, in Croatia, when

    23 the Ustashe persecuted the Serbs, Serbia, of course,

    24 which was tied up by the Wehrmacht, could not help the

    25 Serbs in Croatia, but the Serbs in Bosnia strongly



  60. 1 resisted the independent state of Croatia in 1941. So

    2 there was a conflict between the Serbs and Croats in

    3 Croatia and in Bosnia -- I mean, there were some Croats

    4 who were supporting the Ustashes and then there was yet

    5 another war. That is a civil war within each and every

    6 nation. Croat Communists were fighting against Croat

    7 Ustashes, Serb Chetniks were fighting against Serb

    8 partisans, and Slovene partisans were fighting against

    9 Slovenes who were in the democrat forces. So this is a

    10 triple war within the nations, between the nations, and

    11 then these global forces, Tito's army, et cetera,

    12 et cetera.

    13 So that is how the Second World War came to

    14 an end in which the Communists won and created a

    15 federation consisting of six states, six republics. I

    16 say republic states because the constitutions treat

    17 them as states, the constitution from 1946, the

    18 constitution from 1963, the constitution from 1971, and

    19 in particular, the constitution of 1974.

    20 And now a few words about Tito's Yugoslavia.

    21 The Communists thought that they had resolved

    22 all the issues relevant in Yugoslavia. That isn't the

    23 very nature of ideology. "Before us there was only

    24 darkness, and when we come to power, then comes

    25 welfare, well-being, a new civilisation, happiness,"



  61. 1 et cetera, et cetera. So this was a wonderful utopia

    2 which became an opium for over a billion inhabitants of

    3 our planet. Communism embraced Yugoslavia too,

    4 especially the younger generation.

    5 The Communists said that they found an ideal

    6 solution to the national issue and, indeed so, they did

    7 find an ideal solution from the point of view of

    8 creating states. But they proceeded from a Communist

    9 thesis that nations are a product of capitalism, and as

    10 soon as the capitalist order is toppled, as soon as the

    11 bourgeoisie is no longer in power, as soon as the

    12 working class comes to power, then the process of the

    13 withering away of nations will begin. So we don't have

    14 to pay any attention to whether these are republics or

    15 not.

    16 The political system, the economic system,

    17 cultural policy, economic policy, foreign policy,

    18 military policy, do not have to deal with the

    19 federation. They don't have to be imbued with

    20 federalism. On the contrary, there is no Communism

    21 without centralism. So everything should be

    22 centralised in Belgrade. Therefore, what Croatia's

    23 policy will be like in the fields of culture,

    24 education, economic affairs, et cetera, will not be

    25 established by you in Zagreb but by the politburo of



  62. 1 the Communist party of Yugoslavia in Belgrade. What

    2 Serb policy will be like will not be determined by

    3 Serbs, by the Republic of Serbia, but it will be

    4 sustained by us. Who are we? The leadership of

    5 Yugoslavia. The politburo and the government. This is

    6 valid in the case of Slovenia also and everyone else.

    7 Therefore, the Communists did practically

    8 introduce a federation, but all of government in all

    9 fields, foreign policy, military policy, interior

    10 policy, legal policy, cultural policy, educational

    11 policy, everything was centralised in the leadership of

    12 the Communist party of Yugoslavia and the federal

    13 government.

    14 At the beginning, things worked well. There

    15 was no resistance to this. Why? Because nationalist

    16 forces, chauvinist forces of Serbia, Croatia, and the

    17 others, were defeated in the Second World War, and they

    18 were hiding in their little holes. There was no longer

    19 a multi-party system. Everything was in the hands of

    20 the Communist party 100 percent.

    21 Secondly, the forced industrialisation

    22 process had prevailed throughout the masses, and bear

    23 in mind the fact that Yugoslavia was a country of

    24 illiterate and semi-literate people, and when you tell

    25 these people that they are going to be an industrial



  63. 1 power, and that is what the Communists would say, they

    2 forgot about their own republic altogether.

    3 Thirdly, in 1948, Stalin declared war on

    4 Yugoslavia. This is the well-known conflict between

    5 Tito and Stalin. I personally with the army dug

    6 trenches on the border with Hungary awaiting for four

    7 years an aggression of the Red Army against the former

    8 Yugoslavia. This situation created a homogeneous mass

    9 which resisted, and then as Stalinism was being

    10 destroyed, a new utopia was being created. Instead of

    11 the thesis that the Soviet Union is the flowering

    12 garden of the new civilisation, the Communist party of

    13 Yugoslavia said that the Soviet Union was a dark force,

    14 worse than Hitler's Germany. This was the official

    15 position of the 6th Congress of the Communist party of

    16 Yugoslavia in 1952. They said that a new society would

    17 be created based on workers' self-management, and this

    18 went on for some 15 years or so.

    19 However, then everything changed; namely, if

    20 everything is centralised and if, from every republic,

    21 every morning aeroplanes go, trains, cars, et cetera, go

    22 to the centre; for example, if you want to buy a

    23 refrigerator for a hotel, you have to get an import

    24 permit from the federal government, and this was the

    25 situation until the late '60s.



  64. 1 So there was resistance to this kind of

    2 centralism within the republicans and this kind of

    3 Communist centralism was unbearable. That is one

    4 thing. Slovenia and Croatia were permanently bringing

    5 pressure to bear with a view to diminishing centralism

    6 radically; namely, that the federal government should

    7 be a negotiating table where the republics would chart

    8 policies.

    9 On the other hand, there was a contrary

    10 phenomenon. The highly centralised state structure

    11 appeared as ideal ground for a crawling ideology for

    12 great Serbian ideas. Centralism is ideal for this kind

    13 of thing, and they thought that it was in this way that

    14 they would come to rule Yugoslavia once again in 1962

    15 at a secret meeting on the 12th, 13th, and 14th of

    16 March. Tito, at a three-day meeting with about 60 of

    17 the top people of Yugoslavia, had a discussion and

    18 reached Thesis No. 1. The relations between the

    19 republics are such that Yugoslavia was about to break

    20 up. Of course, this was a top state secret.

    21 Secondly, ideologically, an offensive would

    22 have to be waged against centralism and unitarianism.

    23 This was in 1962. A new Yugoslav summit was held on

    24 the 12th and 13th of November 1965. Bear in mind the

    25 fact that the well-known Rankovic was there, he was



  65. 1 Vice-President of the republic, the second most

    2 important person in Yugoslavia. Also well-known Eduard

    3 Kardelj was there. I mean, well-known amongst us. He

    4 was the author of all the documents of the Communist

    5 party of Yugoslavia and of all the constitutions of

    6 Yugoslavia. He came up with the following thesis which

    7 is of key importance now. I am quoting him again from

    8 memory: We Communists are making a disastrous mistake

    9 because with our practical policy we are denying the

    10 existence of republics and nations and we cannot

    11 continue in this way. When we die, Tito, Kardelj,

    12 Rankovic, this guard of the revolution and the war,

    13 Yugoslavia will fall into the hands of hegemonist

    14 forces; that is, the hegemonist force that is in

    15 Serbia. In order to save what we achieved by blood,

    16 that is to say, Yugoslavia, through the four years of

    17 war that we waged for it, we have to make confederacy

    18 out of it, and, if needed, even a federation of

    19 sovereign states. That was Kardelj's expose on the

    20 12th and 13th of November, 1965.

    21 After that, the pendulum of Yugoslav

    22 political life came to move towards confederalism. In

    23 1974, a confederal constitution was adopted which

    24 introduced the principle of 100 percent parity and the

    25 principle of veto.



  66. 1 According to the principle of parity, an

    2 Albanian could be the President of the State of

    3 Yugoslavia, and this was indeed the case. Fadil Hodza,

    4 an Albanian, was President of Yugoslavia because there

    5 was a rotating presidency. There were eight federal

    6 units, six republics and two autonomous provinces,

    7 which were practically made equal by the 1974

    8 constitution. So people from Vojvodina -- Stevan

    9 Doronjski, the representative of Vojvodina, more

    10 specifically he became President of Yugoslavia, head of

    11 state. So this was a semi-confederacy. Some people

    12 say confederacy, others don't even say that it was a

    13 federation. Some people say there was still a

    14 centralist state. No, it was not. But then that's not

    15 important.

    16 Q. Sorry. Just a second, Professor. Sorry to

    17 interrupt you again. In all these events that you are

    18 speaking about, could you tell us briefly what the

    19 position of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was

    20 at that stage; and in this republic, there were the

    21 members of all three nations that are predominant

    22 throughout Yugoslavia, namely Serbs, Croats, and

    23 Muslims. What is the position of Bosnia in this state,

    24 this state that used to be centralist before and now is

    25 yielding to the forces of federalism and confederalism?



  67. 1 A. I know some of this from my own personal

    2 experience. I was in government at that time. I

    3 didn't have any great political power, but I was near

    4 the leaders.

    5 You see, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the

    6 situation is quite special because their mainstreams,

    7 Serbia and Croatia, acted like a magnet, attracting

    8 Serbs from Bosnia to Serbia and Croats from Bosnia to

    9 Croatia. For example, in 1921, in Bosnia, 44 percent

    10 of the population was Serb, approximately. In 1991, 13

    11 percent less Croats. In 1921 had 23 percent, and in

    12 1991, 17 percent. That is 6 percent less. Muslims in

    13 1921 had about 32 or 33 percent, but in 1991, there was

    14 almost 44 percent, 43.7 percent to be more precise.

    15 As far as political life is concerned, I must

    16 point out a tragic thing. The Croats from Bosnia,

    17 notably Herzegovina, who wholeheartedly supported the

    18 quisling independent state of Croatia, paid a high

    19 price in Bosnia and Herzegovina until the mid '60s. At

    20 a party meeting -- I don't know if the gentlemen are

    21 aware of these special party meetings, the big ones

    22 that were held, that is where big papers were written

    23 for -- read out and then research was carried out, and

    24 these big meetings would go on for two or three days --

    25 the leader of the Communist party of Bosnia and



  68. 1 Herzegovina in May 1965, his name with a Cvijetin

    2 Mijatovic, a Serb who was in charge of the Communist

    3 party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he said -- after two

    4 days of this party meeting on the position of the

    5 Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina, he said, "I am ashamed as

    6 a Serb. I must say that it has been difficult to be a

    7 Croat since 1945 until the present day."

    8 Let me just add one more thing. Serbs were

    9 dominant in Bosnia-Herzegovina because I omitted to

    10 mention that Bosnian Serbs and Croatian Serbs were a

    11 very strong support of Tito's from 1948 until the end

    12 of his life. In terms of percentage, the Serbs of

    13 Bosnia and the Serbs of Croatia gave the greatest

    14 contribution to Tito's partisan army.

    15 However, Bosnia, when the federation became

    16 stronger and became more federal, as it were, a group

    17 of people came to power in Bosnia, Branko Mikulic,

    18 Pozderac, before that Hasam Brkic, and then later some

    19 Serbs, the Bosnian state, the Republic of Bosnia,

    20 became so self-supporting that it was the most

    21 hard-line republic in the negotiations with other

    22 republics. And they did not yield. I mean, their

    23 leadership did not yield either to Serbia or to

    24 Croatia; and according to their political mentality,

    25 they somehow accepted that the federal administration



  69. 1 would be leading them by the hand. From the '70s

    2 onwards, they became a very hard-line republic which

    3 defended its interests so strongly, very often

    4 clambering against Belgrade and Zagreb and the federal

    5 authorities. I said that this was the golden age of

    6 Piracles in Bosnia-Herzegovina. From the '70s they

    7 started with this expansion, as it were, in terms of

    8 infrastructure and modern industry. They created major

    9 systems, et cetera, big systems. So they, in a way,

    10 became Tito's main support.

    11 And, excuse me, but while Belgrade and Zagreb

    12 considered that this was a Turkish -- there is an

    13 expression, a Turkish dark region as a symbol of

    14 backwardness, illiteracy, et cetera --

    15 MR. MIKULICIC: Perhaps, Your Honours, this

    16 is the moment to take a break according to the

    17 programme that you gave us earlier and then we can

    18 continue after the break?

    19 THE WITNESS: I could finish in about 15 or

    20 20 minutes, so as you wish.

    21 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Thank you, Mr. Mikulicic.

    22 I think that I perhaps made a mistake when I was

    23 thinking about today. But I think we will take a

    24 15-minute break anyway.

    25 I have noticed that the interpreters do need



  70. 1 a break, so we will have a 15-minute break.

    2 THE WITNESS: I will be only 15, 20 minutes

    3 more. Thank you very much.

    4 --- Recess taken at 5.25 p.m.

    5 --- Resumed at 5.40 p.m.

    6 (The accused entered court)

    7 JUDGE RODRIGUES: Mr. Mikulicic, please go

    8 ahead.

    9 MR. MIKULICIC: Thank you very much.

    10 Q. Professor, you mentioned that the rulers of

    11 the then Yugoslavia in the '60s at a secret meeting

    12 became aware of these disintegration processes that

    13 after what seemed firm hegemonism after World War II,

    14 these disintegration trends now could be seen. What

    15 happened after the state leadership of the former

    16 Yugoslavia realised this?

    17 A. The state leadership, first of all, was

    18 divided. A faction of it, led by Tito, Kardelj,

    19 Serbian leaders, a part of the leaders of Croatia and

    20 Slovenia and so on, as well as a part of the Serbian

    21 elite, personally felt that Communism was tying the

    22 hands of Serbia. This is paradoxical, but history is a

    23 paradox. Let me try to explain that a little bit.

    24 People, ordinary people, except extremely

    25 privileged ones, kind of looked more towards the West



  71. 1 as a democratic society, faith was being lost in

    2 Communism, the faith in self-management also was being

    3 lost, the country was beginning to be democratised. In

    4 1961, the citizens got passports for the first time, a

    5 lot of emigration began, so in 1968-69, there were

    6 about 800.000 workers in Germany, in France, in

    7 Belgium, in Western Europe as a whole.

    8 So that there was pressure from the inside

    9 for society to democratise, to open up towards itself

    10 from the inside, to be more democratic and also to open

    11 up its borders. Yugoslavia was the only Communist

    12 state where foreign travel was not banned, and this was

    13 a major democratic wave which lasted based on the

    14 ideological concept with Soviet Communism. So society

    15 was opening up more and more.

    16 At the same time, it began to have conflicts

    17 amongst the parties on the inside. On one hand,

    18 impatient liberals, democrats, wanted even faster

    19 democratisation; and then, on the other side, other

    20 factions were actually afraid of democratisation,

    21 especially the Yugoslav People's Army which was the

    22 most indoctrinated Communist institution in the

    23 country.

    24 Since this democratisation enabled the start

    25 of national affirmation, that you could sing national



  72. 1 songs, patriotic songs, you could speak more freely

    2 about the position of certain nations with Yugoslavia,

    3 the army and a part of the war, partisan generation,

    4 got afraid, got scared about democratic development.

    5 But in spite of that, Tito's authority was extremely

    6 powerful. There was no force that could go against

    7 him.

    8 I said that they had a constitution, new

    9 constitution in '74 which was confederal, which is also

    10 a paradox. They strengthened the power of the police

    11 and the party structure. This was a response to the

    12 opposition which was against the constitution in Serbia

    13 and also in Croatia. There was the mass pock

    14 (phonetic), it was a mass movement in Croatia which

    15 shook up Yugoslavia in its own way. I don't know if

    16 you want to ask any questions about that.

    17 Q. If you permit me, Professor, before you move

    18 onto the next topic, mentioning all of these events,

    19 you're talking about these internal powers, forces

    20 which are acting in the territory of a

    21 multi-civilisational, multi-confessional,

    22 multi-national state. How does the world view this

    23 state, the great powers, because we have seen that

    24 since the creation of Yugoslavia, in all of this period

    25 that you spoke about, the great powers had a major



  73. 1 role. How are they behaving at these times?

    2 A. Yugoslavia was the most extreme, the most

    3 hard-core pro-Soviet state in 1945. In Europe, on the

    4 whole planet, there was no country which was so loyal

    5 to the Soviet Union as Yugoslavia. After 1948, when

    6 the conflict happened between Tito and Stalin and when

    7 war could have broken out, there was the question of:

    8 Where is Yugoslavia going after this conflict?

    9 It's lucky for it because at the moment that

    10 it left the Soviet bloc -- this was in 1948-1949 -- the

    11 NATO pact was treated in 1949 and the Warsaw treaty was

    12 created in 1948, even though the Soviet bloc was

    13 created in 1948-1949. So it was lucky that Tito

    14 brought it out of the Soviet bloc.

    15 So then we have the question of whether it

    16 will approach the West. It didn't join the West, but

    17 it did get military and economic aid from the West.

    18 When relations between Khruschev and Tito

    19 were normalised, the Soviet Union agreed to

    20 Yugoslavia's non-bloc position, the West also said,

    21 "Okay, we accept Yugoslavia's non-adherence to

    22 blocs." But both blocs, both Super Powers, because

    23 Europe was ruled by the Soviet-American peace pacts, so

    24 both powers hoped that Yugoslavia one day perhaps will

    25 join NATO or turn towards the Warsaw treaty one day.



  74. 1 Lucky for Yugoslavia, Tito is one of the

    2 leaders of the world's non-aligned movement which

    3 comprises over 100 states, Nassar, Nehru, Sukarno, and

    4 so on. So that his role as one of the three leading

    5 figures of the non-aligned movement was much stronger

    6 than Yugoslavia would mean in the world otherwise. So

    7 both blocs, the USSR and the USA, made approaches

    8 toward Yugoslavia. So Yugoslavia had a privileged

    9 position: It didn't belong to any blocs, but both

    10 blocs -- how should I say that? -- wanted for it to

    11 join them.

    12 So Tito played a wonderful, brilliant role.

    13 He didn't join one bloc or the other, but this

    14 strengthened his position and this strengthened the

    15 regime a lot. But Yugoslavia was nevertheless

    16 determined by blocs; it could not make major social

    17 reforms which would bring it in conflict.

    18 Hungary tried to democratise in 1946 and it

    19 got tanks, Czechoslovakia tried in 1968 and it got

    20 tanks, Berlin tried in 1958 and it got tanks. So the

    21 shackles of the Cold War, which shackled all of the

    22 countries of Europe, they shackled Yugoslavia too but

    23 in a specific way because in a way it became the mascot

    24 both of the East and West, and that is one of the

    25 factors of its relative stability.



  75. 1 Q. In such a situation, in such a specific

    2 position that Yugoslavia had its foreign policy aspect;

    3 on the other hand, at the outset of the start of the

    4 activity of the forces of disintegration that are

    5 taking place, how did the great powers react to that?

    6 Did they, from their positions, feel that it was better

    7 to preserve Yugoslavia as an integral -- or to permit

    8 Yugoslavia to disintegrate where events were leading in

    9 any case?

    10 A. I have no proof or arguments based on which I

    11 could say that the West wanted destabilisation of

    12 Yugoslavia. Quite to the contrary. We had visits from

    13 Carter, Kennedy, I don't know who didn't come. Tito

    14 went to all the metropolises of the world, so I don't

    15 believe that.

    16 I believe that the Soviet Union, Breschnev,

    17 who several times exerted pressure, he wanted

    18 Yugoslavia to enter the East bloc, to leave the

    19 position of a non-bloc country, but Tito never

    20 permitted that, so that in this aspect, as I said, both

    21 blocs in a way agreed to this non-bloc position.

    22 Q. Please continue.

    23 A. Okay. So to bring us to a close. Two

    24 processes were parallel towards the end of Tito's life,

    25 and the first year after he died, a year before his



  76. 1 death, there was a very serious economic crisis in

    2 Yugoslavia. The process of industrialisation was

    3 stopped and so on.

    4 Secondly, based on the confederal

    5 constitution of 1974, the state structures of the

    6 republics were already so strengthened that they no

    7 longer wanted to listen to the federal administration.

    8 The federal administration requested more than

    9 ordered. But Tito was the absolute master of the

    10 situation, absolute, and not one structure, Serbian,

    11 Croatian, Slovenia, et cetera, not one of them could do

    12 anything without Tito's knowledge.

    13 When Tito died, the economic crisis deepened,

    14 and now there was the question of whether we could live

    15 on without Tito, without his dictatorship which, in my

    16 opinion, I thought was positive, but this is where I am

    17 subjective, so please don't take this. I am speaking

    18 as a former member of the Central Committee of the

    19 Communist Party. That's what I was. So let's leave

    20 that aside. That's not important.

    21 In 1991, there was an uprising by the

    22 Albanians in Kosovo. This was a serious matter. The

    23 republics agreed to resolve the economic crisis, the

    24 serious economic crisis, and there is a conflict among

    25 them. Some support public ownership and the market



  77. 1 mechanism and the others were saying, "But this is the

    2 abandoning of socialism and we won't permit that."

    3 After the uprising, the rebellion in Kosovo,

    4 Serbia initiates a constitutional process to change the

    5 1974 constitution in two ways: First, the provinces to

    6 no longer be members of the federation because they

    7 were within the republics so, i.e., for them to be

    8 returned into Serbia because before they were

    9 autonomous.

    10 Second, to limit the powers of the republics

    11 in a way that more rights and jurisdiction will be

    12 given to the federal administration. Serbia exerts

    13 pressure to go into reform. However, according to the

    14 constitution in force then, no one can even launch an

    15 initiative without a consensus, which means that at the

    16 beginning, at the very first step, at the stage of

    17 initiative, at the stage of proposing changes, each

    18 republic and province has the right to veto. So that

    19 all the republics and the provinces unanimously

    20 responded to Serbia, "No, no, there are to be no

    21 changes, neither in the republics, neither in the

    22 provinces. We have to live according to the 1974

    23 constitution, the confederal constitution."

    24 This caused a major revolt in Serbia which

    25 developed on the basis of old -- what I mentioned in



  78. 1 the first part of our conversation. There was a vision

    2 created in Serbia that Yugoslavia will break apart,

    3 that Croatia and Slovenia will leave Yugoslavia, that

    4 if the 1974 constitution is respected, that Serbs in

    5 Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina will find

    6 themselves in a different state if separatism takes

    7 place and that Serbia cannot bear such a development.

    8 So negotiations between Serbia and the rest of the

    9 republics lasted for six years, 1981 to 1987.

    10 In the meantime, the temperature in Serbia,

    11 the political temperature in Serbia, came to the

    12 boiling point. Hundreds of thousands, millions of

    13 people came out for meetings with the slogan, "Let's

    14 save Yugoslavia. Let's save socialism, Communism."

    15 All the republics dug in against reform except Serbia,

    16 and Serbia did not have the constitutional ability to

    17 change anything. Out of eight members of the

    18 federation, it was enough for one to say "No" and there

    19 would be no changes; but if all seven say "No," then of

    20 course there would be no changes then.

    21 Since the temperature had reached a terrible

    22 state, the new leadership of Serbia, in 1987, 1988,

    23 reached a decision, "We will not negotiate with the

    24 rest of Yugo republics. We will bypass the

    25 constitution. We will not wait for any negotiations



  79. 1 with the other five republics and the provinces. We

    2 will go outside the institutional." What does that

    3 mean, "outside the institutional"? We will use the

    4 argument of force.

    5 Q. Professor, excuse me for interrupting. When

    6 you say the leadership of Serbia comes out with this

    7 idea, which leadership is that?

    8 A. The leadership which negotiated for six

    9 years, led by Ivan Stombolic (phonetics) was replaced,

    10 and a new leadership was formed headed by Slobodan

    11 Milosevic in 1987, and this leadership said, "We will

    12 not discuss with the republics. We will use force."

    13 And then we come to 1987, the fall of Vojvodina, of the

    14 autonomy of Vojvodina, the fall of Kosovo in 1988-

    15 1989, and the fall of Montenegro in 1989. When I say

    16 "the fall," understand the following: the mass

    17 demonstrations, the mobilisation of the population at

    18 meetings toppled the leaderships of Vojvodina, Kosovo,

    19 and Montenegro.

    20 In this way, Milosevic got four votes in the

    21 federation: Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and

    22 Vojvodina. Now, the balance of power is 4-4 because

    23 the new leaderships of Kosovo, Vojvodina, and

    24 Montenegro now go hand in hand with Milosevic. On the

    25 other side are the other four republics, Slovenia,



  80. 1 Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia.

    2 Q. Sorry to interrupt you, Professor. But when

    3 you said that the leadership in Vojvodina was replaced

    4 and in Kosovo, those were two autonomous provinces with

    5 the right to vote in the federal assembly. In order to

    6 clarify matters, could you please explain to the Trial

    7 Chamber how these leaderships were replaced, in what

    8 way?

    9 A. You see, this was a technology (sic) which

    10 came to be called "the happening of the people."

    11 Q. And what was it that happened?

    12 A. Party organisations, trade union

    13 organisations, various associations, the Serb Orthodox

    14 Church, the Association of Writers, different

    15 organisations of all kinds, they organised mass rallies

    16 that were attended by 100.000, 200.000, 300.000

    17 people. And in 1989, at the confluence of the Sava and

    18 Danube rivers in Belgrade, there were 1 million

    19 people. In Kosovo, there were over a million people on

    20 the 28th of June, 1989. These rallies were so strong

    21 that the leaderships could not sustain this. They

    22 simply had to resign.

    23 JUDGE RODRIGUES: I'm sorry to interrupt

    24 you. Unfortunately, for reasons which are not up to

    25 us, we will have to stop at 6.00. Perhaps now we can



  81. 1 adjourn.

    2 Let me remind you that we continue tomorrow

    3 morning at 9.00 and we were going to work until 2.15

    4 p.m. because we have to coordinate the activities of

    5 the two courtrooms.

    6 So we shall conclude at this point,

    7 Professor, and see you tomorrow morning.

    8 --- Whereupon proceedings adjourned at

    9 6.05 p.m. to be reconvened on

    10 Thursday, 21st May, 1998, at

    11 9.00 a.m.

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