Last week, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found
former Croatian General Ante Gotovina and a fellow officer, Mladen Markac, guilty of war crimes during the Yugoslav Wars. The news has been greeted with dismay in Croatia. Tens of thousands of war
veterans and citizens rallied under the slogan “For the Country” in Zagreb’s main square, Trg Bana Jelacica, over the weekend to express their outrage against the verdicts. The Croatian
government has followed suit, calling the verdict “unacceptable” and vowing to “do everything in our power to change it.”
The verdicts are understandably difficult for some Croats to bear. Their struggle for independence against Serbia has, like all such conflicts, been shrouded in mythology, and it is difficult for some to accept that while the Croatian struggle may have been right and justified, its execution was illegal, cost many civilian lives and amounted to a war crime.
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