The terror against Croats is both a cause and a consequence of the implementation of the Greater Serbian policy, according to which Croatia and Croats as a people do not exist. After the establishment of the Kingdom of SHS, Serbian terror began throughout the country, especially in Croatia, because Croats resisted the violation of the unification agreement. Stjepan Radić wrote a report on the terror in 1921: the beating and imprisonment of 30,000 peasants in a period of two years (December 1918 – February 1921) for supporting republican opinions and beliefs.
Serbian terror against Croats began in Odessa in 1916 and 1917. The Serbs, together with the Cossacks, forced Croats to join the so-called Yugoslav Legion, and those who did not want to join were mistreated, impaled, forced to dig their own graves and thrown into the sea. The Russians captured around 10,000 Croatian soldiers during the war.
The Croatian soldiers did not want to join the so-called Yugoslav Legion and go to the Salonika Front, so the Serbs killed them. According to military history experts, Dr. Slavko Pavičić and Eng. Franjo Perša, in Odessa, the Serbs, together with the Russian Cossacks, killed and threw into the Black Sea around 10,000 Croatian soldiers who did not want to join the so-called Yugoslav Legion.
December victims
According to the official report, on December 5, 1918, 9 soldiers and 4 civilians were killed and 17 wounded (10 soldiers and 7 civilians) on Ban Jelačić Square. The leaders of the Party of Rights were arrested on the same day. At the end of December (December 27, 1918), 23 soldiers were brought to trial and sentenced to several years in prison.
Stanik victims
On February 8, 1925, the gendarmes killed three people and seriously wounded four. Another person later died from his wounds.
Assassination in the Belgrade Parliament
So, in the first days after the end of the war, the first victims fell, and there would be more in the parliament itself in Belgrade. On June 20, 1928, two Croatian representatives were killed, one was mortally wounded, and two others were seriously wounded, but they survived. Đuro Basariček and Pavle Radić were killed on the spot, Stjepan Radić died of his wounds on August 8, 1928. Ivan Granđa and Ivan Pernar were wounded, but they survived. Puniša Račić was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The prison warden provided him with a luxurious life with as many as three convicts as personal servants. In 1944, he went to Belgrade, where he was captured and shot by partisans.
Sibiu victims
On February 19, 1935, in Sibinje near Slavonski Brod, Croatian peasants were brutally murdered by the anti-Croatian regime of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Eight of them were killed, and the next day six more from nearby Gornja Vrba and Ruščica. The Yugoslav regime did not stop there, but continued to persecute and kill Croatian peasants and patriots throughout the country, which created resentment among Croats.
On Sunday, February 17, 1935, a celebration of Pope’s Day (the anniversary of the election of the Pope) was held in Sibinje with the approval of the authorities. Pastor Mihovil Praskić, accompanied by a dozen horse-drawn carts with parishioners from his parish and other believers, set off for Oriovac to visit the local pastor, his acquaintance and friend.
Passing through Andrijevci, Stari Slatinik, Brodski Stupnik and Radovanje, the participants in the march sang songs of national content and shouted support for Dr. Maček and a free Croatia. The next day, Serbian gendarmes harassed the residents for this, making arrests and the villagers rebelled. The gendarmes fired at the unarmed villagers, one after another, killing eight of them.
Senj victims
And that’s not the end of the list of victims of the Yugoslav Greater Serbia regime. On May 9, 1937, a national assembly was held in Senj, organized by the HSS, in memory of Matija Gubac and the Radić brothers, and several thousand people gathered. Politicians gave speeches against the then anti-Croatian regime, and among the many in the procession was a truck with 33 young men and women from Gospić.
Croatian patriotic songs were sung, and at one point, on the orders of the gendarme commander, Corporal Besedić began shooting, followed by several dozen gendarmes. Many were wounded, and seven Gospić residents died. This tragic event went down in history as the “Senj Victims”, victims of state terror of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. No one was ever convicted of the death of innocent and unarmed people.
Murders in Zagreb and the surrounding area
Milan Šufflay, a world-renowned scientist, was murdered in Zagreb on February 18, 1931. Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann protested the murder (April 1931).
The assassination attempt on Croatian writer and lawyer Mile Budak in the center of Zagreb failed, although the wounds were life-threatening. Due to insecurity, Mile Budak went abroad, later serving as a minister in Pavelić’s government. The communists (Chetniks) brutally murdered him in 1945. They also murdered his daughter Grozdana, who was a high school student, and removed her heart and took it to her father before the execution. Not even beasts can do that.
In 1933, historian Ivo Pilar was murdered in Zagreb, and in Dugo Selo, HSS vice president Josip Predavec, a father of 6 children, was murdered.
Velebit Uprising of 1932.
Due to Serbian terror, the Velebit Uprising broke out in 1932 and was suppressed. The gendarmerie station in Brušani was attacked on September 7, 1932. The uprising failed, and after the failed uprising, the Serbian gendarmerie carried out a reign of terror against the inhabitants of Lika (abusing, beating, looting and burning down Croatian homes).
Sacrifices of the Zítnik and Udbin
During the elections on May 6, 1935, the Gospić Chetniks killed 2 people and wounded 9 people.
On Orthodox Christmas Eve, January 6, 1936, Chetniks killed a young Croat, Ilija Žaja, in Udbina. On April 9, 1936, the most popular Croatian politician at the time, Karlo Brkljačić Kacan, was killed in an ambush.
There were more murders, but few remember them.
Chetnik movement
The Chetniks were the mainstay of the Great Serbian regime and as such were directly supported by it. Chetniks are also members of a Serbian military organization with a distinct Greater Serbian, nationalist and chauvinistic goal. The first Chetnik detachment that stands in connection with the contemporary Chetnik movement was created in Belgrade in 1903 under the patronage of General Jovan Atanacković, the then Minister of Defense of the Kingdom of Serbia and one of the main actors of the conspiracy that overthrew the Obrenović dynasty in 1903 (with the extremely brutal murder of the king and queen) and brought the Karađorđevićs to power in Serbia.
In 1921, Chetnik veterans founded the “Association of Chetniks for the Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland” in Belgrade . The Democratic Party had the main influence on the organization, but this was disputed by the Radical Party. In 1924, they founded two new organizations: “Association of Serbian Chetniks for King and Fatherland” and Association of Serbian Chetniks “Petar Mrkonjić”.
In May 1925, these two organizations merged into the “Association of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić for King and Fatherland”. The actual leader of that association until 1928 was Puniša Račić (assassin of Stjepan Radić). In October 1924, “Voice of Serbian Chetniks” was launched in Osijek , published by the Association of Serbian Chetniks for the Osijek region and Baranja, the first Chetnik newspaper in Croatia and Slavonia.
Thus, Chetnik organizations were organized and existed deep in the Croatian ethnic space, long before the appearance of the Ustashas. In 1938, there were 500,000 Chetniks in Yugoslavia, and in 1940, a Chetnik command and six Chetnik battalions were established in the Yugoslav army. That these same Chetniks would massively exchange their cockades for Partisan caps in 1944 and 1945.
The Ustasha movement as a reaction to the Greater Serbian killings of Croats
The Ustasha movement arose in response to the assassination of Stjepan Radić and other Croatian representatives in the Belgrade Assembly, and to the continued terror and persecution of Croats under the Greater Serbian dictatorship of King Alexander. The Ustasha movement was founded on 7 January 1929 under the name Croatian Revolutionary Organization, and was a Croatian separatist and nationalist, totalitarian movement that fought against Greater Serbian centralism and hegemony in Yugoslavia. The movement’s goal was to establish an independent Croatia by all means, including the use of terror and violence.
Original text in Croatian by Lily Bencik.
Source
https://www.hrvatski-fokus.hr/2020/08/26273/?
