Plitvice Lakes incident
Encyclopedia
The Plitvice Lakes incident of late March/early April 1991 (known in Croatian
as "Plitvice Bloody Easter", Krvavi Uskrs na Plitvicama/Plitvički Krvavi Uskrs) was an incident at the beginning of the Croatian War of Independence
. It was a clash between Croatian policemen and special police (the Croatian army was still being formed and organized at that time), the forces aiming to create the independent Republic of Croatia, and Serbs, supported by Belgrade and the Yugoslav People's Army
. It resulted in two deaths – one on each side – and contributed significantly to the worsening ethnic tensions that were to be at the heart of the subsequent war. It started when the rebel Serbs took over the Plitvice Lakes
, expelled its management and annexed it to the SAO Krajina
.
(bordering western Bosnia and Herzegovina
) launched an armed uprising in which Croatian government officials were forcibly expelled or excluded from a wide area of the Krajina. Croatian government property was seized throughout the region and handed over to the control of local Krajina Serb municipalities or the newly established "Serbian National Council" led by Milan Babić
(later to become the government of the breakaway SAO Krajina
). The process did not happen overnight but took a considerable amount of time – well over a year – to complete.
The Plitvice Lakes
are a scenic area and national park
of Croatia, located in the Krajina near the Bosnian border, about 150 km south of the Croatian capital Zagreb
. Prior to 1995, the surrounding area was primarily Serb-populated and the lakes were on the edge of the area controlled by the Krajina Serbs. The national park was, however, principally under the control of Croats loyal to the Zagreb government.
, supported by paramilitary volunteers from Serbia proper under the command of Vojislav Šešelj
. The region itself is relatively sparsely populated and there was no obvious threat to local Serbs. It has been suggested that, instead, the Serb seizure of the park may have been motivated by a desire to control the strategic road that ran north-south through the park, linking the Serb communities in the Lika
and Banovina regions. Tuđman's government decided to retake the park by force.
On Easter Sunday, 31 March 1991, Croatian police from the Croatian Ministry of the Interior (MUP) entered the national park to expel the rebel Serb forces. Serb paramilitaries ambushed a bus carrying Croatian police into the national park on the road north of Korenica
, sparking a day-long gun battle between the two sides. During the fighting, two people, one Croat and one Serb policeman, were killed. Twenty other people were injured and twenty-nine Krajina Serb paramilitaries and policemen were taken prisoner by Croatian forces. Among the prisoners was Goran Hadžić
, later to become the President of the Republic of Serbian Krajina
.
The violence was greeted with alarm by Yugoslavia's collective Presidency, which met on the night of 31 March to discuss the situation at Plitvice. At the insistence of Serbia
's representative on the Presidency, Borisav Jović
, but against the wishes of Slovenia and Croatia, the Yugoslav People's Army
(JNA) was ordered to intervene to create a buffer zone between the two sides and end the clashes. The JNA units, commanded, ironically, by a Croatian colonel, moved in the following day. The Serbian parliament also met in emergency session, treating the clashes as a virtual casus belli
and voting to offer the Krajina Serbs "all necessary help" in their conflict with Zagreb.
On 2 April, the JNA ordered the Croatian government's special police units to leave the national park, which they did. General Andrija Rešeta, in overall command of the operation, told the media that his men were "protecting neither side" and were there only to prevent "ethnic confrontations" for as long as was necessary. However, the Croatian government reacted with fury to the JNA move. Tuđman's senior aide Mario Nobilo claimed that the JNA had "told us quite literally that if we do not evacuate Plitvice they will liquidate our police" and Tuđman himself gave a warning on Croatian radio that if the army continued its activities it would be regarded as a hostile army of occupation.
Although the JNA's intervention successfully brought an end to the fighting, it had the effect of consolidating the front lines in the region and preventing any further Croatian operations against the rebel Serbs. A few months later, the outbreak of full-scale war resulted in the national park falling firmly into Krajina Serb hands, this time fully and overtly supported by the JNA. Croatian control of the Plitvice Lakes was not finally restored until after Operation Storm
in August 1995.
The dead on both sides were treated as martyr
s by their respective populations. Both Josip Jović and Rajko Vukadinović, the Croat and Serb policemen killed at Plitvice, were feted by their respective media as martyrs to the cause.
The incident had wider political and military consequences as well: On 1 April 1991, partly in response to the events at Plitvice, the Krajina Serb authorities unilaterally declared the self-styled "Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina
" to be independent of Croatia and announced that it would remain part of Yugoslavia. In other Serb communities around Croatia, barricades were erected to block any Croatian attempts to reassert government control. Croatian officials accused Serbia's president Slobodan Milosevic
of stage-managing the unrest in Croatia, hoping to intimidate Croatia's resolve to secede from the country unless Yugoslavia is transformed into a loose confederation. They also accused him of attempting to coax the Yugoslav People's Army
, to overthrow Croatia's democratically elected Government.
The ICTY addressed the series of incidents in Croatia in 1991, which included Plitvice Lakes Incident:
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
as "Plitvice Bloody Easter", Krvavi Uskrs na Plitvicama/Plitvički Krvavi Uskrs) was an incident at the beginning of the Croatian War of Independence
Croatian War of Independence
The Croatian War of Independence was fought from 1991 to 1995 between forces loyal to the government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia —and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat...
. It was a clash between Croatian policemen and special police (the Croatian army was still being formed and organized at that time), the forces aiming to create the independent Republic of Croatia, and Serbs, supported by Belgrade and the Yugoslav People's Army
Yugoslav People's Army
The Yugoslav People's Army , also referred to as the Yugoslav National Army , was the military of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.-Origins:The origins of the JNA can...
. It resulted in two deaths – one on each side – and contributed significantly to the worsening ethnic tensions that were to be at the heart of the subsequent war. It started when the rebel Serbs took over the Plitvice Lakes
Plitvice Lakes
Plitvice Lakes National Park is the oldest national park in Southeast Europe and the largest national park in Croatia. The national park was founded in 1949 and is situated in the mountainous karst area of central Croatia, at the border to Bosnia and Herzegovina...
, expelled its management and annexed it to the SAO Krajina
SAO Krajina
Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina or SAO Krajina was a self proclaimed Serbian autonomous region within modern-day Croatia . It existed between 1990 and 1991 and was subsequently included into Republic of Serbian Krajina...
.
Background
In May 1990 the HDZ party led by Franjo Tuđman won Croatia's first post-communist multi-party elections. Tuđman pursued a strongly Croatian nationalist course, advocating independence from Yugoslavia. Much of Croatia's large Serb minority was opposed to Tuđman's policies, regarding him as anti-Serb, and sought to remain within Yugoslavia. Following Tuđman's election, ethnic Serb nationalists in the Krajina regionKninska Krajina
Kninska Krajina is a geographical region in Croatia. It is located around the town of Knin in northern Dalmatia.-Geography:Kninska Krajina is situated between Bukovica in the southwest, Lika in the northwest, Drniška krajina in the south, Cetinska krajina in the southwest, and Bosnia and...
(bordering western Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
) launched an armed uprising in which Croatian government officials were forcibly expelled or excluded from a wide area of the Krajina. Croatian government property was seized throughout the region and handed over to the control of local Krajina Serb municipalities or the newly established "Serbian National Council" led by Milan Babić
Milan Babic
Milan Babić was from 1991 to 1995 the first President of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, a Croatian region at the time of the war largely populated by a Serbs of Croatia that wished to break away from Croatia.He was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former...
(later to become the government of the breakaway SAO Krajina
SAO Krajina
Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina or SAO Krajina was a self proclaimed Serbian autonomous region within modern-day Croatia . It existed between 1990 and 1991 and was subsequently included into Republic of Serbian Krajina...
). The process did not happen overnight but took a considerable amount of time – well over a year – to complete.
The Plitvice Lakes
Plitvice Lakes
Plitvice Lakes National Park is the oldest national park in Southeast Europe and the largest national park in Croatia. The national park was founded in 1949 and is situated in the mountainous karst area of central Croatia, at the border to Bosnia and Herzegovina...
are a scenic area and national park
National park
A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or...
of Croatia, located in the Krajina near the Bosnian border, about 150 km south of the Croatian capital Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
. Prior to 1995, the surrounding area was primarily Serb-populated and the lakes were on the edge of the area controlled by the Krajina Serbs. The national park was, however, principally under the control of Croats loyal to the Zagreb government.
Conflict at Plitvice
On 29 March 1991, the Plitvice Lakes management was expelled by rebel Krajina Serb police under the control of Milan MartićMilan Martic
Milan Martić is a Serbian politician, former president of the Republic of Serbian Krajina...
, supported by paramilitary volunteers from Serbia proper under the command of Vojislav Šešelj
Vojislav Šešelj
Vojislav Šešelj, JD is a Serbian politician, writer and lawyer. He is the founder and president of the Serbian Radical Party and was vice-president of Serbia between 1998 and 2000...
. The region itself is relatively sparsely populated and there was no obvious threat to local Serbs. It has been suggested that, instead, the Serb seizure of the park may have been motivated by a desire to control the strategic road that ran north-south through the park, linking the Serb communities in the Lika
Lika
Lika is a mountainous region in central Croatia, roughly bound by the Velebit mountain from the southwest and the Plješevica mountain from the northeast. On the north-west end Lika is bounded by Ogulin-Plaški basin, and on the south-east by the Malovan pass...
and Banovina regions. Tuđman's government decided to retake the park by force.
On Easter Sunday, 31 March 1991, Croatian police from the Croatian Ministry of the Interior (MUP) entered the national park to expel the rebel Serb forces. Serb paramilitaries ambushed a bus carrying Croatian police into the national park on the road north of Korenica
Korenica
Korenica is a village in Lika, Croatia, located in the municipality of Plitvička Jezera, on the road between Plitvice and Udbina. It has 1,570 residents .In SFR Yugoslavia it was named Titova Korenica after Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito...
, sparking a day-long gun battle between the two sides. During the fighting, two people, one Croat and one Serb policeman, were killed. Twenty other people were injured and twenty-nine Krajina Serb paramilitaries and policemen were taken prisoner by Croatian forces. Among the prisoners was Goran Hadžić
Goran Hadžic
Goran Hadžić is a former president of the Republic of Serbian Krajina who was in office during the Croatian War of Independence. He is accused of crimes against humanity and of violation of the laws and customs of war by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.The court...
, later to become the President of the Republic of Serbian Krajina
Republic of Serbian Krajina
The Republic of Serbian Krajina was a self-proclaimed Serb entity within Croatia. Established in 1991, it was not recognized internationally. It formally existed from 1991 to 1995, having been initiated a year earlier via smaller separatist regions. The name Krajina means "frontier"...
.
The violence was greeted with alarm by Yugoslavia's collective Presidency, which met on the night of 31 March to discuss the situation at Plitvice. At the insistence of Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
's representative on the Presidency, Borisav Jović
Borisav Jovic
Borisav Jović is a former Serbian communist politician, who served as the Serbian member of the collective presidency of Yugoslavia during the late 1980s and early 1990s...
, but against the wishes of Slovenia and Croatia, the Yugoslav People's Army
Yugoslav People's Army
The Yugoslav People's Army , also referred to as the Yugoslav National Army , was the military of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.-Origins:The origins of the JNA can...
(JNA) was ordered to intervene to create a buffer zone between the two sides and end the clashes. The JNA units, commanded, ironically, by a Croatian colonel, moved in the following day. The Serbian parliament also met in emergency session, treating the clashes as a virtual casus belli
Casus belli
is a Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war. means "incident", "rupture" or indeed "case", while means bellic...
and voting to offer the Krajina Serbs "all necessary help" in their conflict with Zagreb.
On 2 April, the JNA ordered the Croatian government's special police units to leave the national park, which they did. General Andrija Rešeta, in overall command of the operation, told the media that his men were "protecting neither side" and were there only to prevent "ethnic confrontations" for as long as was necessary. However, the Croatian government reacted with fury to the JNA move. Tuđman's senior aide Mario Nobilo claimed that the JNA had "told us quite literally that if we do not evacuate Plitvice they will liquidate our police" and Tuđman himself gave a warning on Croatian radio that if the army continued its activities it would be regarded as a hostile army of occupation.
Although the JNA's intervention successfully brought an end to the fighting, it had the effect of consolidating the front lines in the region and preventing any further Croatian operations against the rebel Serbs. A few months later, the outbreak of full-scale war resulted in the national park falling firmly into Krajina Serb hands, this time fully and overtly supported by the JNA. Croatian control of the Plitvice Lakes was not finally restored until after Operation Storm
Operation Storm
Operation Storm is the code name given to a large-scale military operation carried out by Croatian Armed Forces, in conjunction with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to gain back control of parts of Croatia which had been claimed by separatist ethnic Serbs, since early...
in August 1995.
Consequences
The Plitvice Lakes incident had important consequences for both Serbs and Croats. The fatalities were the first in the Serb-Croatian conflict and contributed to radicalisation on both sides. Nationalist hard-liners and extremists cited the clash as indicating the need to adopt radical solutions, while moderate politicians arguing for negotiations and non-violent solutions lost influence.The dead on both sides were treated as martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
s by their respective populations. Both Josip Jović and Rajko Vukadinović, the Croat and Serb policemen killed at Plitvice, were feted by their respective media as martyrs to the cause.
The incident had wider political and military consequences as well: On 1 April 1991, partly in response to the events at Plitvice, the Krajina Serb authorities unilaterally declared the self-styled "Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina
SAO Krajina
Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina or SAO Krajina was a self proclaimed Serbian autonomous region within modern-day Croatia . It existed between 1990 and 1991 and was subsequently included into Republic of Serbian Krajina...
" to be independent of Croatia and announced that it would remain part of Yugoslavia. In other Serb communities around Croatia, barricades were erected to block any Croatian attempts to reassert government control. Croatian officials accused Serbia's president Slobodan Milosevic
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...
of stage-managing the unrest in Croatia, hoping to intimidate Croatia's resolve to secede from the country unless Yugoslavia is transformed into a loose confederation. They also accused him of attempting to coax the Yugoslav People's Army
Yugoslav People's Army
The Yugoslav People's Army , also referred to as the Yugoslav National Army , was the military of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.-Origins:The origins of the JNA can...
, to overthrow Croatia's democratically elected Government.
The ICTY addressed the series of incidents in Croatia in 1991, which included Plitvice Lakes Incident:
See also
- Croatian War of IndependenceCroatian War of IndependenceThe Croatian War of Independence was fought from 1991 to 1995 between forces loyal to the government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia —and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat...
- Plitvice Lakes National Park
- Timeline of the Croatian War of IndependenceTimeline of the Croatian War of Independence-1991:* 1–3 March 1991* Pakrac clash* 31 March 1991* Plitvice Lakes incident* 1 April 1991* Republic of Serbian Krajina is proclaimed* 2 May 1991* Borovo Selo killings* 25 June 1991* Slovenia and Croatia declare their independence* 1 August 1991...