By Indra Darmawan

By Indra Darmawan

JAKARTA (JP): We have followed the media accounts of the
tragic conflict in Yugoslavia with great interest and have been
disturbed by the oversimplification of the causes of the present
conflict between Serbs and Croats in the republic of Croatia.

Yugoslavia's economic and political system is different from
that of other Eastern European countries. It broke away from
Soviet control in 1948 and has tried to develop a different type
of economic system.

The economy was not centrally controlled. It was developed
under local communities, under the concept of "Self Management"
in which workers were involved in the decision making process of
a company. Since 1980, central control has weakened and the
various republics have built up their own separate power bases.

The conflict has been perceived as one between two republics,
Croatia and Serbia, and a conflict between two political systems,
Croatia democracy and Serbia communism. As Margaret Thatcher once
stated: "It is between communists and those -- the Croatians --
who seek democracy."

The term "seek" is appropriate since after a year in office
the Croatian Democratic Union Government has done nothing to
reform the economy or the political institutions. The economy is
proceeding with a centralization drive re-nationalizing 40
percent of the Croatian economy and placing five of the
republic's largest enterprises directly into state hands.

With regard to the political system, the powers of parliament
have been restricted and policy is decided in the President's
office by unelected advisers. The press is under complete control
and the voices of dissent are becoming increasingly rare. The
office of the liberal Croatian Peasant Party and the Socialist
Party have been bombed in Zagreb.

The conflict, obviously, is not between two republics, but a
conflict within a republic. The conflict is between the Serbian
minority in Croatia and the Croatian government.

There are 600,000 ethnic Serbs living in Croatia and over the
last few years they have become increasingly alienated and
frustrated by the "serbophobic" nationalism that has swept
Croatia.

The right-wing Croatian Democratic Union won the election in
May 1990. Its stated aim was to create an Independent State of
Croatia. The Serbs refused to be a part of such a state and
created their own autonomous state of "Krajina", where the
majority of the Serbs live, within Croatia.

The fear of the Serbian minority has been represented as one
of acute paranoia. Their fear stems from their recollections of
what happened when they lived in the Independent State of Croatia
in 1941.

Serbs have lived in Croatia since the 13th century and co-
existed with Croats quite happily until World War II, when the
Germans and the Italians mixed in and an Independent state of
Croatia was set up. Croatia was controlled by fascist Croatian
Ustasha whose stated aim was to eliminate non-Croats from their
midst. A concentration camp, Jasenovac, which was the third in
size in occupied Europe, was set up. Gassing was not used there,
the camp "laborers" were slaughtered with guns, knives and axes.

The exact number of dead has never been confirmed, but
estimates vary between 200,000 and 600,000 Serbs, Jews and
Gypsies. The rise in Croatian nationalism has led to the
emergence of symbols and language which bring back memories of
the war years. The Serbs fear a repeat performance.

The president of Croatia has openly boasted that his wife is
"pure Croat, neither Serb nor Jew" and that the Serbs "belong to
a different civilization." He also claims that only 40,000 to
50,000 people, primarily Croatian socialists, followed by Serbs,
Gypsies and Jews, perished at the Jasenovac concentration camp.

The Serbs feel outraged that the Croatians show no remorse,
but instead minimize or even deny that such things ever occurred.

It could be argued that all this fear is a reaction to what
happened in the past and that it has no relevance to the
situation in Croatia today.

Unfortunately these nationalistic feelings have been embodied
in the republic's new constitution, which makes a point of
differentiating between the Croats and the rest. The cyrillic
alphabet, used by the Serbs, has been banned.

Croatian intellectuals have been trying to unearth archaic
words in order to distinguish between "Croatian" and "Serbian"
language. Many Serbs have been systematically purged from their
jobs and forced out of their homes. Hundreds of thousands of
Serbs have fled Croatia and it is estimated that a large majority
of them may be barred by Croatian authorities from returning when
the war ends. Innocent people are being killed on both sides.
Local papers often report about people being attacked in buses
simply because they are Serbs.

The events in Yugoslavia are a mirror image of what may happen
in other East European countries where nationalism and
intolerance are rife.

International guarantees for minorities must be introduced and
enforced in these newly emerging states.

The writer, a graduate from the London School of Economics, is
a lecturer in social sciences at the University of Indonesia.

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