Skirmish of Borovo Selo
 
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Today's Borovo on the map of Croatia |
The Borovo Selo incidents on May 2, 1991 were deadly clashes in the early stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia . Numerous Croatian police officers and Serbs were killed in the armed conflict in the predominantly Serbian village of Borovo near Vukovar in eastern Croatia . The event accelerated the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars .
procedure
In the early hours of May 1, 1991, four Croatian police officers entered Borovo Selo and tried to exchange the flag of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for a Croatian flag .
The police were prevented from doing their job by Serbs who kept watch in the village overnight. Two police officers were wounded and taken prisoner in the shooting that followed.
On May 2, in nearby Osijek, the Croatian authorities dispatched around 150 police officers to Borovo Selo to free the prisoners.
The police, who set out in a convoy of buses and police cars, reached the village but were caught in a shootout.
There are at least three different - and conflicting - descriptions of the events in Borovo Selo. These versions differ greatly depending on the ethnic background and political orientation of the narrator:
- The Croatian authorities claim that the police forces who were sent to the village were invited to a meeting agreed by both sides. They allegedly traveled with white flags but were ambushed by local militant groups and “terrorists” from Serbia (by Šešelj's paramilitary groups ). Twelve Croatian police officers are said to have been killed and a further 20 wounded and some Serbs killed, the figures speak of 3 to 20 dead.
- Another version reported by journalists from statements made by the local population says that the police entered the village and began to shoot anything that moved. According to this version, the police took Serbian women and children hostage but were evicted by the local population, who released the hostages without any outside help.
- Finally, SRS founder Vojislav Šešelj announced his version on Belgrade television, which is also said to be covered with video material from his own men. He claimed that 14 of his men, plus 6 local men and two other Serbian volunteers, were responsible for the fight against the "Ustasha". These allegedly killed 100 Croatian police officers, including one civilian. In his later statements before the war crimes tribunal, however, he reduced his allegation to 30 people killed on the Croatian side. He also claimed that Kurdish mercenaries were involved.
consequences
Following a May 4 meeting of the Yugoslav government condemning the Borovo Selo murders, the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense summoned the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) to the region to create a buffer between the two sides. Prime Minister Ante Marković traveled to Borovo Selo to negotiate the release of the captured Croatian police officers.
For its part, the Croatian government agreed to an increased presence of the JNA in this area, which would have important consequences for the impending civil war. The government saw political difficulties as a consequence of what had happened, which revealed a serious tactical misjudgment of the situation on the part of the Croatian authorities. There were reports that the news of the killings and desecrations caused "panic" among senior Croatian government officials who were concerned about the likely political consequences for Zagreb.
The mayor of Osijek, Zlatko Kramarić , heavily criticized the Croatians' lack of preparation in his later memoirs. Osijek's police chief Josip Reihl-Kir also publicly announced that Croatian extremists had taken over the local situation and blocked efforts to broker peace. Two months later he was killed in an assassination attempt by a Croatian police officer with ties to the ruling HDZ .
The incident served to further radicalize both sides. Croatian nationalists described him as part of Milošević's supposed "Bolshevik" strategy of importing Serbian ultra-nationalism and paramilitarism into Croatia. A Croatian newspaper wrote of Serbian paramilitaries as "beasts in human form", "bearded animals on two legs" and bloodsuckers. State television presenters began to generally refer to the Serbian rebels as Chetniks , bringing the terms of World War II back into everyday life.
The day after the Borovo Selo incident, President Tuđman appeared on Croatian television. He warned that the "open war" had begun and that if "it became necessary" the Croatian people should take up arms to "defend the freedom and independence of the Republic of Croatia."
On the same day, anti-Serb pogroms broke out in the Dalmatian cities of Zadar and Šibenik , on the other side of Croatia, in which Tuđmans HDZ was accused of complicity.
For its part, the Serbian media claimed that the incident was caused by “genocidal” Croatian efforts to repress the Serb minority, drawing explicit parallels to the Croatian genocide against Serbs during World War II.
Each side interpreted the incident as a sign that their continued existence was threatened by the other side and that secession (from Yugoslavia and Croatia) would be the only way to ensure national survival.
As one commentator put it, "the chances for initiatives to reach any kind of non-violent compromise have been greatly reduced" as a result.
Only a few months later, Borovo Selo found himself in the front lines of the Battle of Vukovar , the largest single battle of the Croatian War .
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ John B. Allcock (ed.): Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia. , ABC-Clio Inc, 1998, p. 20.
- ^ R. Craig Nation: War in the Balkans, 1991-2002 . Strategic Studies Institute, August 2003 (PDF, 1.6 MB; on strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil).
- ^ Judge K. Parker ea: Judgment. UN ICTY, September 27, 2007, accessed November 22, 2018 .
- ^ Robert J. Donia: Bosnia-Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed. C. Hurst & Co., 1994, p. 224.
- ↑ Mihailo Crnobrnja: The Yugoslav Drama. McGill-Queens University Press, 1996, p. 157.
- ↑ Ejub Štitkovac: Croatia: The First War. In Jasminka Udovicki, James Ridgeway (ed.): Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia , Duke University Press, 2000, pp. 157–159.
- ^ Vojislav Šešelj: Testimony to the ICTY . August 24, 2005 (on un.org).
- ^ Vojislav Šešelj: Testimony to the ICTY . August 24, 2005 (on un.org).
- ↑ Allan Little, Laura Silber, The Death of Yugoslavia , p.155 (Penguin Books, 1996)
- ^ A b Paul Hockenos, Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars , p. 58-59. (Cornell University Press, 2003)
- ↑ Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century , p. 130. (Yale University Press, 2001)
- ↑ Ejub Štitkovac, "Croatia: The First War", pp. 157–159, in Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia , ed. Jasminka Udovicki & James Ridgeway. (Duke University Press, 2000)
- ↑ Hannes Grandits and Carolin Leutloff, "Discourses, actors, violence: the organizations of war-escalation in the Krajina region of Croatia 1990-91", p. 37, in Potentials of Disorder: Explaining Conflict and Stability in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslavia , ed. Jan Koehler, Christoph Zurcher. (Manchester University Press, 2003)