Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

38. Tudjman earned a bad name in the West as early as the 1980s (especially
in Jewish circles) as a historian who called the Holocaust a myth analogous to
Great Serbian myths and cast doubt on the number of Holocaust victims. Robert
D. Kaplan, “Croatianism: The Latest Balkan Ugliness,” New Republic, 25 November
1991.
39. In 1997 the Simon Wiesental Center in Vienna designated as war crimes
suspects these Argentine citizens of Croatian background: Dinko S ˇ akić, former
commander of the Jasenovac camp, and S ˇ akić’s wife, Nada, who ran a prison
for women. The S ˇ akićs were extradited to Croatia for a trial. Nada S ˇ akić was
released. Dinko S ˇ akić was given a 20-year jail sentence for war crimes and crimes
against humanity but was not tried for genocide.
40. In 1996 Tudjman’s book containing his revised views on the Holocaust
was published in English as Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy,
trans. Katarina Mijatović (New York: M. Evans, 1996.). During the first top-level
official visit of a Croatian state delegation to Israel, on 12 May 1998, Granić
paid a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem, where
he laid a wreath on behalf of the Croatian government and released a statement
to “express and testify to the deepest regret and condemnation of the persecution
and suffering and the tragedy of the Jews on Croatian territory ...during World
War II and the Nazi occupation.” Associated Press, 12 May 1998.
41. In the 1998 annual report of the US nongovernmental organization Freedom
House, Croatia was classified as a “partly free country” with a downward
trend in democratization (83 countries including the ex-Yugoslav republic of
Slovenia were classified as “free,” and the Serbo-Montenegrin Federation was
classified as “unfree”); Voice of America, Croatian Service, 30 December 1998.
In October 1999, the European Union decided to deliver two official diplomatic
protest notes critical of the electoral law and organizations of the forthcoming
parliamentary elections in Croatia and of its noncooperation with the Hague
Tribunal. Voice of America, Croatian Service, 23 October 1999. Also in October
1999, Transparency International (TI) a on-governmental organization for struggle
against corruption, released an annual report according to which Croatia’s
regime is one of the most corrupt in the world (Croatia was ranked at 74th
place and Milosˇević’s Yugoslavia 90th among 99 countries included in the report).
Voice of America, Croatian Service, 26 October 1999. Human Rights
Watch released in December 1999 an annual report on Croatia, according to
which “serious restrictions of human rights and political liberties are the legacy
of Franjo Tudjman and his regime.” Voice of America, Croatian Service, 21
December 1999.
42. BBC World, 18 December 1999; Washington Post, 17 December 1999.
43. On 21 October 1999, Christopher Smith, member of the US House of
Representatives and chair of the Congressional Committee for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, issued a report entitled “When Will Croatia Become a Democratic
Country?” The Smith report said that 10 years after the demise of communism,
Croatia had failed to become a democratic country because of an
authoritarian and corrupt regime in Zagreb. Voice of America, Croatian Service,
22 October 1999.
44. Such comments were released, for example, by the German television
Deutsche Velle and Voice of America, Croatian Service, on 13 December 1999.
45. Slobodna Dalmacija, 30 January 2000.
46. Slobodna Dalmacija, 3 March 2000.
47. Voice of America, Croatian Service, 30 September 2000.
300 notes to pages 195–197