UN judge dismisses claims of genocide by Croatia, Serbia
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THE United Nation’s highest court yesterday rejected rival claims of genocide by Croatia and Serbia in landmark rulings over their 1991-95 war, and urged the former foes to turn the page on a bloody history.
Croatia voiced dismay with the judgement, saying it changed “nothing” in its relations with Belgrade, but Serbia said it hoped it would help forge better ties.
International Court of Justice chief judge Peter Tomka first dismissed Zagreb’s claim that Serb forces committed genocide during Croatia’s war of independence. He made a similar ruling in a counter-claim by Belgrade over a Croatian counter-offensive that forced 200,000 Serbs to flee after the last major battle of the war.
Tomka said both sides had committed crimes during the conflict including forcible displacement, but that neither had proved genocide, which “pre-supposes the intent to destroy a group, at least in part.”
But he added: “The court encourages the parties to continue their cooperation with a view to offering appropriate reparation to the victims of such violations, thus consolidating peace and stability in the region.”
Zagreb had dragged Belgrade before the ICJ in 1999 on genocide charges linked to the war in Croatia that killed 20,000 people, one of several conflicts during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Serbia was accused of ethnic cleansing as a “form of genocide” in the town of Vukovar and other areas, leading to large numbers of Croats being displaced, killed or tortured.
Vukovar was captured after a three-month siege by the Yugoslav army and Serb rebels, in one of the darkest chapters of the conflict.
After its fall, about 22,000 non-Serbs were expelled, and about 350 people from the Vukovar region are still reported missing.
Belgrade responded with a counter-suit in 2010, saying about 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to flee when Croatia launched a military operation to retake its territory in 1995.
Following Zagreb’s Operation Storm, the proportion of ethnic Serbs in Croatia shrank from 12 percent to 4 percent.
Belgrade was outraged in 2012 when Operation Storm’s Croatian military commander Ante Gotovina was acquitted on appeal before the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Speaking outside the courtroom at the stately Peace Palace, Serbian Justice Minister Nikola Selkovic said the ruling “is going to start a new and blank page in our relationship with Croatia.”
“We have to live with each other,” he said. “I’m sure we have learned a good lesson.”
But the reaction from Zagreb was of dismay.
“We are not satisfied with the court’s ruling, but we accept it in a civilised manner,” Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said.
Ties between the two improved after the war but turned frosty in 2012 after inflammatory comments by both sides.
The ICJ has recognized only one genocide case. In 2007, it ruled that genocide had taken place in 1995, at Srebrenica in Bosnia, when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb troops.
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