Operation Flash "part of joint criminal enterprise"

The Croatian Operation Flash, which completed the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from western Slavonia, "was part of a joint criminal enterprise". This is according to NGO Veritas President Savo Strbac, who referred to the recent Hague verdict handed down to two Croatian generals who led Operation Storm, which was launched several months later in 1995. Operation Flash "part of joint criminal enterprise" The Operation Flash anniversary was marked yesterday in Serbia and the Serb Republic (RS) in Bosnia, but also in Croatia. The first exodus of Serbs in the war actually took place in Western Slavonia in December 1991, when almost 190 villages in the area were ethnically cleansed, Strbac recalled in an interview for Tanjug on the occasion of the 16th anniversary of the offensive. The Serbs were then expelled and their property and homes looted and destroyed in the area of Grubisno Polje, Pakrac, Daruvar and Lipik, said Strbac, adding that estimates suggest the number of the expelled Serbs is somewhere between 52,000 and 70,000. He pointed out that the great exodus was preceded by an ethnic cleansing of Pozega basin carried out not by a military action, but rather through a tactic of deceit in “a most fascist manner, when the Croatian authorities issued an order for the evacuation of 26 villages.” “These were the Serb villages on the slopes of the Papuk Mountain and they received an order, plastered in public, just like in the time of Hitler, to take what they can carry in a bundle and report back to the specified collection centers,” said the president of Veritas, adding that the order was obeyed by about 6,000 Serbs. He said "the first neo-Ustasha concentration camps Pakracka Poljana and Marino Selo were set up in the area", and the prisoners, Serbs who had been transported there from the so-called Pavilion 22, formed in Zagreb and a number of smaller towns, had been tortured, and many had been killed. Strbac said that all Croatian military operations in the former Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK), which had been under the protection of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), had been part of a planned and systematic cleansing of the Serbian population in Croatia according to the “scorched earth” method, including Operation Flash in which 283 Serbs had been killed and about 15,000 displaced. Horrible atrocities against civilians were committed in the Croatian Army operations Flash and Storm during air strikes on Serb refugee convoys. Strbac recalled that in the Operation Flash offensive on May 1-2, a number of Croatian aircraft MIG-21 had rocketed a single quart in Bosanska Gradiska (northern Bosnia-Herzegovina) twice, killing several people, including a brother and a sister younger than ten years of age. None of the representatives of international humanitarian organizations could have approached the war crime scene until the Croats picked up the corpses and washed the road with water hoses and detergent in order to conceal evidence and the scope of the crime before the visit of the then UN envoy Yasushi Akashi. So far only a few cases of crimes in Western Slavonia have been prosecuted, said Strbac, adding, however, that nobody has yet been held accountable for the crimes in Operation Flash based either on involvement or command responsibility charges. Operation Flash victims are honored in Belgrade (FoNet)

Operation Flash "part of joint criminal enterprise"

The Operation Flash anniversary was marked yesterday in Serbia and the Serb Republic (RS) in Bosnia, but also in Croatia.

The first exodus of Serbs in the war actually took place in Western Slavonia in December 1991, when almost 190 villages in the area were ethnically cleansed, Štrbac recalled in an interview for Tanjug on the occasion of the 16th anniversary of the offensive.

The Serbs were then expelled and their property and homes looted and destroyed in the area of Grubišno Polje, Pakrac, Daruvar and Lipik, said Štrbac, adding that estimates suggest the number of the expelled Serbs is somewhere between 52,000 and 70,000.

He pointed out that the great exodus was preceded by an ethnic cleansing of Požega basin carried out not by a military action, but rather through a tactic of deceit in “a most fascist manner, when the Croatian authorities issued an order for the evacuation of 26 villages.”

“These were the Serb villages on the slopes of the Papuk Mountain and they received an order, plastered in public, just like in the time of Hitler, to take what they can carry in a bundle and report back to the specified collection centers,” said the president of Veritas, adding that the order was obeyed by about 6,000 Serbs.

He said "the first neo-Ustasha concentration camps Pakračka Poljana and Marino Selo were set up in the area", and the prisoners, Serbs who had been transported there from the so-called Pavilion 22, formed in Zagreb and a number of smaller towns, had been tortured, and many had been killed.

Štrbac said that all Croatian military operations in the former Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK), which had been under the protection of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), had been part of a planned and systematic cleansing of the Serbian population in Croatia according to the “scorched earth” method, including Operation Flash in which 283 Serbs had been killed and about 15,000 displaced.

Horrible atrocities against civilians were committed in the Croatian Army operations Flash and Storm during air strikes on Serb refugee convoys.

Štrbac recalled that in the Operation Flash offensive on May 1-2, a number of Croatian aircraft MIG-21 had rocketed a single quart in Bosanska Gradiška (northern Bosnia-Herzegovina) twice, killing several people, including a brother and a sister younger than ten years of age.

None of the representatives of international humanitarian organizations could have approached the war crime scene until the Croats picked up the corpses and washed the road with water hoses and detergent in order to conceal evidence and the scope of the crime before the visit of the then UN envoy Yasushi Akashi.

So far only a few cases of crimes in Western Slavonia have been prosecuted, said Štrbac, adding, however, that nobody has yet been held accountable for the crimes in Operation Flash based either on involvement or command responsibility charges.