Recently a group of artists planned to hold a concert in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik under the title Stop the war in Croatia. Invited to address the audience was STEVAN DEDIJER, a prominent Serbian intellectual. (His brother Vladimir is quite well known in the West as a writer and historian.) Stevan Dedijer divides his time between Sweden, where he is a professor at the University of Lund, and Dubrovnik. The concert was cancelled due to the growing attacks on the city by the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army, and Dedijer forwarded the text of his speech to the Croatian newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija.
The article was reprinted in the October 15 issue of the Australian Croatian weekly Novo Doba. The following translation is by Kathy Brozovic and Mirela Uljar.
The international community can now more clearly see the crux of the war in Yugoslavia. Yesterday I received an invitation from Belgrade to give a lecture this evening. The invitation read: "Come professor, there is no war within 120 kilometres of us".
For the first time in human history, the option to end the use of war as a means of resolving human conflict is now possible. And at this moment the only war on the globe is being waged by Milosevic's regime and its generals against the Republic of Croatia, against Croats, Serbs and others who live in it.
What is Milosevic's military aim? He occupied Kosovo with its 90% Albanian population, forcibly toppled the governments of Vojvodina and Montenegro and attempted to do the same to Slovenia. Milosevic's regime began the war in Croatia under the pretence of helping us Serbs in Croatia.
I am a Serb "from the bottom of the vat where the sauerkraut is best". I love my own and respect the freedom and equal rights of others. To the invitation from Belgrade I replied in the words of a free-thinking partisan general: "I will come to Belgrade when it is liberated from Milosevic's reactionary regime. I firmly believe that with the support of the free world, the freedom-loving people of Serbia will in the near future begin to arise!"
In complete contrast to today's liberation movements across the world, he wants to recreate the Yugoslavia of pre-1941, which collapsed for those same reasons that his world will collapse. And that is the reason, the only reason why no other regime in [the history of] Serbia has been as despised, condemned, isolated and ridiculed across the world as is Milosevic's regime. Not even in 1941 did the Serbian military leaders disgrace themselves as they have today.
He should leave us Serbs in Croatia in peace! We don't need his blood-sucking "help". Serbs in Croatia don't want to be the "fifth column" of the racist Milosevic.
There are a growing number of us who do not want to be neutral to the aggression against our homeland Croatia. There are a growing number of us like the Serbian doctors in Dubrovnik's hospitals who are telling the world that Serbs in Croatia don't have a reserve homeland; they have one, only one, and they must ensure that it meets the aspirations of all citizens. The traditionally good relations between Croatian and vnik must be carefully nurtured.
Based on the Croatian constitution, a law is being prepared which will secure cultural autonomy, language, alphabet, symbols, creative arts and the right of Serbian and other nationalities to participate in the Croatian government. The transfer of this law into practice will bring forward the acceptance of Croatia into the European community.
The sixth column is just as dangerous as the fifth. I have named the sixth the ignorant column, that is, those Croats who are helping Milosevic. They told me yesterday in the court not to refer to my identity card as "licna karta" [the Serbian term for identity card] but as "osobna karta" [the Croatian term] and that as a Serb I should seek my Croatian citizenship in Belgrade. My Croatian brothers and sisters: the sixth ignorant column is just as dangerous to a free Croatia as is Milosevic's "fifth column."