Plitvice Lakes incident

Plitvice Lakes incident
Part of Croatian War of Independence
Plitvice Lakes Plitvice Lakes (Croatia)
Date 31 March - 1 April 1991 Location Plitvice Lakes, Croatia Result Croatian victory Serb blockade lifted
Belligerents
SAO Krajina (Serb insurgents)	Croatia
Commanders and leaders
Milan Martić Milan Babić	Josip Boljkovac
Casualties and losses
1 dead 29 captured	1 dead

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.

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 region (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.

Memorial to Josip Jović, the first Croatian policeman killed in action

Conflict at Plitvice

On 29 March 1991, the Plitvice Lakes management was expelled by rebel Krajina Serb police under the control of Milan Martić, 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.

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 martyrs 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:

The Trial Chamber found that the evidence showed that the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, openly supported the preservation of Yugoslavia as a federation of which the SAO Krajina would form a part. However, the evidence established that Slobodan Milošević covertly intended the creation of a Serb state. This state was to be created through the establishment of paramilitary forces and the provocation of incidents in order to create a situation where the JNA could intervene. Initially, the JNA would intervene to separate the parties but subsequently the JNA would intervene to secure the territories envisaged to be part of a future Serb state.

— The ICTY in its verdict against Milan Martić

See also

• Croatian War of Independence
• Plitvice Lakes National Park
• Timeline of the Croatian War of Independence