Reconciliation Network: Political Messages Surrounding Operation Storm Anniversary Narrow Room for Self-Criticism

Storm

The RECOM Reconciliation Network said on Aug. 6 that Serbian Remembrance Day, observed in memory of the victims of Croatia's Operation Storm and Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and Veterans Day, a Croatian official holiday celebrating this operation, were surrounded by political messages that "additionally narrow the room for a self-critical reevaluation of the past and acknowledging the victims, regardless of their religion or ethnicity."

RECOM said in a press release that, as promised, Croatia had passed a Law on Civilian Victims of War, but "the messages that are related to missing persons, and criticism of the Hague Tribunal's case law as to command responsibility have distanced the country from its duty to promote regional reconciliation as a member of the European Union."

"The Serbian president's messages, infused with strong nationalist rhetoric and linking the Serb victims of Storm and Jasenovac into a historical injustice done unto Serbs, will do no good to either Serbs nor Serbia nor the victims of Storm," RECOM cautioned.

"At the gathering (in the Belgrade suburb of Busije) that Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia called a mass for the dead, there was a failure to politically acknowledge his reasonable and important words," RECOM said, recalling that the patriarch had warned that "the abuse of victims can only deepen the spiral of conflict, and the pattern of lamentation will only shut (society) into a permanent state of helpless victimhood."