Our Governor General is visiting Slovenia and Croatia this week. We sent the letter below as a protest. Please see:
http://www.gg.ca/document.aspx?id=13305 http://www.gg.ca/index.aspx?lan=eng SERBIAN NATIONAL SHIELD SOCIETY OF CANADA VOICE OF CANADIAN SERBS Her Excellency Michaelle Jean Governor General of Canada Ottawa, Ontario Your Excellency: We learned of Your Excellency's upcoming visit to Slovenia and Croatia during the next few days. We wish to draw to your attention a number of recent public occurrences in Croatia which demonstrate that Croatia has far to go on the road to democracy and human rights, particularly in relation to its treatment of its few Serbian citizens. Those Serbs had the courage to return to their homes in Croatia where they had lived for centuries after some 250,000+ of them were "ethnically cleansed" from their land in one weekend in August 1995 during Operation Storm. Your Excellency's meeting with Mayor Zeljko Kerum of Split is of particular concern. As late as one month ago, Mayor Kerum was making racist and discriminatory public statements against the Serbian people and against journalists who are following his questionable practises and public outbursts. The general feeling in Croatia is that he will not be penalized or removed from office for his repeated offensive statements. Croatian cities, including its capital Zagreb, have tolerated the racist music of the rock band Thompson whose lyrics repeat the phrase "Kill the Serbs" and inspire Croatian youth at their concerts to sing those racist lyrics punctuated with Nazi salutes. That band was prevented from entering Canada some years ago and has evoked repeated protests from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and other Jewish groups. Just last week at Varazdin, a town not too far from Vukovar, when a visiting Serbian junior soccer team played against a junior Croatian team the Croatian fans kept fervently repeating those same words "Kill the Serbs"! At numerous games played in Croatia there have been physical attacks against the Serbian athletes. These are not the signals of democracy or tolerance and this behaviour runs contrary to those virtues of democracy and tolerance which are the hallmarks of our country Canada. En route to Vukovar, which had a large Serbian population before the 1990s war, it is unfortunate that Your Excellency is not scheduled to stop at Jasenovac to pay respect to the hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats who were massacred ruthlessly by the Croatian Ustashi (Nazis) at the Jasenovac death camp, known as the Auschwitz of Yugoslavia. In both World Wars Croatia fought against the Western Allies. In fact, in December 1941 the wartime Croatian Ustashi government declared war on the Allies, including Canada. No peace treaty was ever signed! Now Canada is making a state visit to a country which has fought against Canadian soldiers in those wars and even attacked Canadian soldiers at the Medak Pocket in the 1990s. On the other hand, Canada and the Serbs were Allies in both World Wars. The Holocaust against the Jewish nation is well recognized and the Jewish people will never forget the Holocaust perpetrated against them. By the same token, the Serbian people cannot forget the massacres of hundreds of thousands of our forefathers at the hands of the Croatian Ustashe. The Serbian children and grandchildren of those victims, many of whom live in Canada, will always remembr our Serbian Holocaust. We realize that the political scene has changed, but we must acknowledge that the historical facts remain. It is truly sad that the Serbian contribution to the Allied cause has been forgotten and dismissed and that our Canadian government is not condemning the official and non-official anti-Serbian statements and actions in Croatia even today. Yours respectfully, Bora Dragasevich, President Emeritus Tel: 416-496-7881 Alexander Pantelic, President Tel: 905-262-1799
