State Department Report On Croatia and the Reaction of the Croatian Government

GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR

(Greek National Committee of the International Helsinki Federation)

& MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP - GREECE

(Greek Affiliate of Minority Rights Group International)

P.O. Box 51393, GR-14510 Kifisia, Greece; tel. 30-1-620.01.20; fax: 30-1-807.57.67;

e-mail: office@greekhelsinki.gr      http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

9/2/1998

 

TOPIC: State Department Report On Croatia and the Reaction of the Croatian Government

 

We distribute the latest press release of the Croatian Helsinki Committee.

 

STATEMENT NO. 65

 

The U.S. State Department's annual country report on the human rights situation in the Republic of Croatia has met with an adequate response from the general public but caused unacceptable, though not unusual, reactions on the part of the Croatian authorities. These reactions show that the Croatian government approves only of those human rights policies which adhere to its own standards. It is obvious that the Croatian authorities are not familiar with human rights issues in general nor with the work of international institutions and organizations dealing with human rights protection.

 

It is significant that the Croatian government's arguments were identical to those that were used by numerous representatives of blatantly non-democratic regimes when criticized in such regular reports.

 

Apart from some standard cliches referring to the war as the reason for the lack of freedom and restrictions in the area of human rights- which, unfortunately, are also used, apart from the government, by some representatives of quasi-non governmental groups and organizations - representatives of the Croatian government (Vlatko Pavletiæ, Ljerka Mintas Hodak and the Government's spokesperson Neven Jurica) have voiced opinions to which the Committee believes it is necessary to react.

 

As to the Report itself, the Committee notes that this is the second consecutive year in which the report has been based on information gathered by both American government agencies and NGOs. At the same time, this Report is significantly different from previous ones in that it introduces a completely new methodological approach and quality into analyses of the human rights situation in Croatia. The Report is not precise enough in numerous details (such as the number of dead, etc.). This seems to be a result of the fact that the part which refers to Croatia is limited in size because the Report covers the whole world. The Croatian Helsinki Committee intends to present its own on the situation to the American administration in the "Critique", which is published annually by the New York based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights as a commentary on the State Department's Country Reports.

 

The Committee is appalled by the fact that the top government officials in Croatia know so little about the State Department Human Rights Report that the vice-president of the Croatian government said the following on Croatian state television (HRT): "The State Department, within the framework its foreign policy, evaluates the human rights situation in numerous states but, of course, not in the U.S. itself." Dr. Mintas Hodak also protested that in the introductory part of the Report on Croatia there was no mention of FR Yugoslavia, claiming that this fact would indicate that the human rights situation there is either exceptionally good or a lot better than the situation in Croatia.

 

The Croatian Helsinki Committee wishes to emphasize (so that the general public may be informed and that the public officials be educated), that the State Department Human Rights Report is written at the request of the American Congress and has been ever since the Carter administration, so that members of Congress, as well as the officials from the other American institutions are informed about the human rights situation world-wide. This report is published early every year in a book where, on several hundred pages, the human rights situation is evaluated in every county in the world except for the U.S: It is normal that a government cannot evaluate the human rights situation in its own country since the basis of a human rights policy is the protection of an individual against any interference in his / her human, political and citizen's rights. It is completely clear that every report that a government writes about itself always carries a germ of non-objectivity.

 

The best example of such an attempt is the 350 page-long report on Human Rights that the Croatian government published which contained a whole series of international norms and laws and only a few concrete examples of human rights abuses. At the same time, the CHC annual report, (which relates to the activities of only one NGO in Croatia numbers approximately 1,000 pages and contains the individual cases of 6,000 persons who directly sought he help of the CHC at offices throughout Croatia.

 

At the same time, within the United States Department of Justice there is a Civil Rights division which is responsible for enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination, specifically in areas of particular concern to human rights issues, such as racial segregation and other kinds of civil discrimination. The fact that Dr. Ljerka Mintas Hodak considers the attitude to the FRY, crucial to the understanding of position of Croatia in the report is evidence of her (and not only her) orientation towards "the East and the Balkans", but which is clearly official government policy persistently rejects, at least verbally, but, on the other hand, clearly a part of its daily policy. In her statement on behalf of the Croatian Government, Dr. Ljerka Mintas Hodak speaks about "occasional factual errors and incompleteness", not stating, however a single concrete case.

 

Regarding the repeated theses of the Croatian authorities that the international community only defends the rights of Serbs, and not the rights of Croats in Croatia, this stand clearly shows a lack of knowledge of this issue. Specifically, the task of human rights policy is primarily to defend the rights of individuals and minorities, and the task of the government institutions is to express the attitudes of the majority. The Vice-president of the Government's statement that the non-governmental organizations do not do enough to defend the rights of Croats is implicit acknowledgement that the system is not working.

 

National rights of the majority should be defended by the elected authorities, contrary to the situation in the pre-1991 period when there was no democratic political system and Croats were in fact a minority.

 

Currently, the CHC deals mostly with Croatian citizens of Croat ethnicity. Their problems, however, are being treated as individual evidence of inappropriate activities of the Croatian authorities and other social factors.

 

The oft-repeated objection that international institutions insufficiently support and do not accept the actions and measures of the government and their positive results, especially when it concerns displaced persons is equally frivolous. Regardless of the fact that displaced persons and other resettled people in Croatia are really the victims of the chauvinistic aggression against Croatia, the task of human rights monitoring and policy is not to praise the activities undertaken by the authorities, but primarily to express critical views and attitudes toward their failures.

 

Expressing the views of the government in her statement for Croatian Television on February 2, 1998, Ljerka Mintas Hodak confirmed that the State Department views differ from the human rights assessments of the other international institutions and factors such as the European Union, the FR Germany, and others. Daily reports arriving from various world and European centers show exactly the opposite tendencies and almost entire agreement relating to questions concerning the approach and ways of handling the Yugoslav crisis, especially concerning attitudes towards fundamental problems concerning human rights issues such as freedom of the media, the right to return, the cessation of chauvinistically-based discrimination, dealing with the consequences of 'ethnic cleansing' and similar things. Certain countries show, most likely due to specific political and economic interests, various nuances with respect to their attitude in dealing with this problem, but still within the context of a global approach towards the former Yugoslav states.

 

The Committee now hopes that the mistakes committed in the past, when certain actors were operating on the territory of Yugoslavia on the basis of narrow and particularly defined interests, will not be repeated contrary to the wishes of the  Croatian government and the wishes of the authorities of other former Yugoslav states. It is evident that all of them have a similar mode of thinking and similar political ideology, which left fatal consequences symbolized in the name: SREBRENICA.

 

The Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights will continue with a publicly critical attitude towards all mistakes committed by the Croatian government as well as international institutions which relate to the human rights field, as is foreseen by the international documents relating to human rights issues, regardless of the fact that the Committee as a whole and all its members are subjected to permanent pressures and threats.

 

The Committee therefore welcomes the State Department Human Rights report in the hope that it will help result in the establishment of an American and international approach towards human rights problems which does not merely mention such problems but also works actively in order to remove both the conditions and result of the human rights violations.

 

Zagreb, February 9, 1998

 

For the CHC

Ivo Banac