In September, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, leader of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and representatives of the country’s Serb minority commemorated the 25th anniversary of the killings of Serbs in the village of Varivode – one of several incidents that happened in the wake of the Croatian Army’s Operation Storm, which saw the Croatian Army defeat rebel Serb forces and take back large amounts of territory.

The Varivode commemoration was the second memorial ceremony this year for Serbs killed in 1995 to be attended by senior Croatian officials, after President Zoran Milanovic and War Veterans Minister Tomo Medved took part in a commemoration of the anniversary of a massacre in the hamlet of Grubori in August.

Many observers welcomed these gestures as a step forward towards reconciliation and the normalisation of Croat-Serb relations in the country, which have continued to be deeply troubled over the 25 years since the conflict ended.

Earlier in August, Croatian leaders staged a ceremony to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Croatia’s victory in Operation Storm – the military action that heralded the end of the war, but also caused around 200,000 Serbs to flee the country. Around 600, mostly elderly Serb civilians were also killed during and after the operation.

Plenkovic told the ceremony that Operation Storm was Croatia’s “greatest victory”, but he also expressed sympathy for all the victims, “not only Croats but also Serbs”.

“We remember with sadness the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were expelled from their homes,” he added.

Celebrations of 25th anniversary of Cratia’s victorious ‘Operation Storm’ at the Knin Fortress in August. Photo: EPA-EFE/MIROSLAV LELAS.

Another development that hinted at steps towards reconciliation was the attendance of Deputy Prime Minister Boris Milosevic from the Independent Democratic Serb Party, which represents Croatia’s Serb minority, at the state celebration.

Milosevic said he could not forgive the crimes that were committed, but was ready for “any type of gesture that I think would improve the position of my community”. He attended despite calls from political leaders in Serbia for him not to participate.

Last month, Milosevic also took part in a commemoration of the 29th anniversary of the fall of the Croatian town of Vukovar after a devastating three-month siege by Yugoslav troops and Serb paramilitaries – a key symbolic wartime event for Croats.

Reconciliatory messages were also heard at commemorations at the former World War II concentration camp at Jasenovac, which has been the focus for disputes for several years as right-wingers and nationalists have tried to play down the deaths at the camp that was run by Croatia’s WWII-era Nazi-allied Ustasa movement.

In April, senior Croatian officials, anti-fascists and leaders of Croatia’s Serb, Roma and Jewish communities held a joint commemoration of the Jasenovac camp’s victims for the first time since 2016.

Until this year, minority groups have boycotted the official state commemoration, insisting that the authorities have not taken genuine measures to stop or even limit revisionist denials of the Holocaust.

However, despite cautious welcomes for the decrease in nationalist rhetoric and expression of reconciliatory sentiments at these key historical events, questions were raised about whether this occurred because elections had already happened earlier in the year and the HDZ had already formed a government. Expressions of nationalism usually increase before elections as right-wingers seek political advantage by using ethnically-charged rhetoric.

Many experts also wondered whether the government will, after making these symbolic gestures, move on to solving specific problems – punishing the perpetrators of war crimes, doing more to find wartime missing persons or improving the position of the country’s Serb minority.

The signs were not all positive, however. President Milanovic, from the centre-left Social Democratic Party, who came to power in February after running an election campaign under the slogan “Wars are over”, was criticised for awarding medals to various units of the Croatian Defence Council, the Croat military force in the Bosnian war. One of the medals was received by general Zlatan Mijo Jelic, who has been charged with committing crimes against Bosniak civilians.

Progress in war crimes prosecutions ‘stagnant’

Croatian far-right politician and former general Branimir Glavas being taken for questioning by a Bosnian court in May 2009. Photo: EPA/FEHIM DEMIR.

The progress of war crimes trials was slowed by measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, which were imposed in the spring. But even before the pandemic, NGO Human Rights House Zagreb said in its annual report, published in April, that the situation as regards prosecutions was “stagnant”.

Croatia has also persisted with the often-criticised practice of trying war crime defendants in absentia, as many of the accused are Serbs who no longer live in the country.

“Instead of improving regional co-operation with the judiciary of the countries where war crimes indictees live, the number of trials in absentia is increasing,” Human Rights House Zagreb said.

In one verdict that was delivered without the defendants present in March, a Zagreb court found the wartime leader of rebel Croatian Serbs, Milan Martic, and his military chief-of-staff, Milan Celeketic, guilty of staging rocket attacks on Croatian cities in 1995.

Similarly, in December, former Serb paramilitaries Dusan Zarkovic, Bogdan Jednak and Dusan Martic were sentenced to 15 years in prison each in absentia for the killings of Croatian civilians in the village of Josevica in central Croatia in November 1991.

In cases concerning war crimes against Croatian Serbs, the Supreme Court in May upheld a verdict sentencing former army officer Josip Krmpotic to three years in prison for committing war crimes against civilians during the ‘Medak Pocket’ operation in southern Croatia, but acquitting him of failing to prevent the killing of prisoners of war.

Meanwhile there was yet another delay in the decade-long legal process in which former Croatian MP and wartime general Branimir Glavas has been tried repeatedly for crimes against Serb civilians in the eastern city of Osijek in 1991.

According to Zagreb County Court, the Glavas case will be even further prolonged because the presiding judge in the trial was named as a judge on the newly-established High Criminal Court, which could start operating in 2021, and her current cases will now be distributed to other judges.

“This means that the hearing has to start all over again and all the evidence has to be presented again because the presiding judge will change. The records of the earlier examination of witnesses and experts may be read [at the new hearing] if they have been examined at a [past] hearing in the presence of the parties,” the court’s spokesperson told BIRN.

The human rights NGO Documenta has argued that judges appointed to other positions should complete ongoing proceedings, particularly in war crimes trials, as these are the most serious offences.

Glavas, who was first arrested back in 2006, continues to deny the charges against him.

Croatia, Serbia ‘agree to search for graves’

Investigators recover a dead body from a mass grave at the Catholic cemetery in the village of Ilok in eastern Croatia in September 1999. Photo: EPA/STRINGER.

Twenty-five years after the war in Croatia ended, a law that will set out the rights of civilian victims of the conflict, parents of children who were killed, children of parents who were killed and families of missing persons has finally been drafted, and the Croatian government expects it to be passed by parliament relatively soon.

Online public debate on the draft legislation ended in November, and many organisations involved in the issue welcomed it, but some warned that it could deprive some war victims of their rights to financial compensation, orthopaedic aids and priority status for employment and accommodation in care homes.

As the law strictly states that the rights cannot be exercised by members, helpers or associates of enemy military and paramilitary units “who took part in the armed aggression against Croatia”, some experts believe that Serb civilians could have difficulties proving that they did not assist or collaborate with the ‘enemy’.

Meanwhile, Croatia has been conducting field surveys and investigations in attempts to find the rest of the missing persons from the 1990s war.

Croatian media reported that Zagreb and Belgrade agreed in October on locations to be searched for the remains of war victims.

Serbia is expected to search three locations, near the towns of Sremski Karlovci and Bogojevo in its northern province of Vojvodina, and along the River Danube from the city of Smederevo towards the Djerdap hydropower plant.

Croatia will search a cemetery in the town of Knin and try to identify where people who were killed after its army’s Flash and Storm military operations are secretly buried.

According to the War Veterans Ministry, Croatia is still looking for 1,869 people who disappeared during the conflict.