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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