Croats Joke About Re-Opening Camp for Thieving Politicians

Over 1,300 people have signed a not-quite-serious online petition to re-open the infamous Yugoslav Communist-era prison camp on Goli Otok [Bare Island] - but not to punish political dissidents.

They say the camp inmates should be criminals of a different type - people who have robbed the country of its wealth and impoverished society.

On the petition website Change.org, the unknown initiators behind the sarcastic petition, "Petition for Opening Goli otok," take aim at the elites who were involved in the country's often dubious privatisation processes from the 1990s onwards, following the break-up of former Yugoslavia.

The sales of former state-owned companies and property have been bitterly criticised for what are alleged to be numerous irregularities.

"Will it be big enough for all of them, on state and local level?" wonders one person on the website, pondering the various politicians who got involved in these sales.

"Support for the neighbours," a person from neighbouring Serbia writes.

"All our [public] property under Socialism was stolen and sold ... All the factories … all the natural resources are the property of the people, and now they are seizing our homes and our children! We have suffered enough," another person complains.

Located along the northern Croatian coast, Goli Otok served as a prison camp for alleged supporters of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin between 1949 and 1956.

After Yugoslavia broke ties with Stalin's USSR in 194, the Yugoslav state under President Josip Broz Tito jailed all those suspected of still supporting Stalin.

Goli Otok held some 16,500 people, 413 of whom died there, either killed directly or dying due to the grim conditions or as a result of suicide.

After 1956, it...

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