Obradovic: Genocide committed against Serbs not Croats

THE HAGUE - Sasa Obradovic, Serbia's agent to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), stated on Monday that genocide was committed against Serbs in Croatia rather than the other way round as the Croatian side claims, noting that today only one third of Serbs live in this country compared to 1991.

“If genocide happened, then it was committed against Serbs during Operation Storm, and these are our main arguments that we will present in the dispute,” Obradovic told reporters after the end of the first day of presenting the oral arguments before the ICJ in The Hague.

He said that Serbia did not want this dispute in spite of a great number of Serb victims in Croatia during the war.

“However, the dispute happened and we are now in a phase which can be labeled as a historic irony - it is a common knowledge that Serbs were the victims of genocide in Croatia in Jasenovac, Jadovno and Jastrebarsko (extermination camps) in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which at the time comprised Bosnia-Herzegovina and Srem,” Obradovic said.

He noted that nonetheless during the NATO air campaign against Serbia, former Croatian president Franjo Tudjman filed a lawsuit reading that Serbs committed genocide in the nineties during the armed conflict in Croatia.

“The lawsuit was filed by the Croatian president, who was the greatest advocate of separatism that destroyed the former Yugoslavia, and who said that Serbs should be banished from Croatia, which will be documented before this court,” he said.

“And Serbs did disappear. Today, there is only one third of the number in 1991, and four times less than in 1931, but we have not heard anything about that today,” Obradovic said commenting on the argument by...