Several hundred Croats from Croatia and abroad rallied in the centre of The Hague on Saturday afternoon to protest against guilty verdicts handed down by the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) against Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, and against the tribunal's assessment of 1995's Operation Storm as a "joint criminal enterprise".
The protest, entitled "Justice Has Lost Its Balance", was organised by the Croatian World Congress and was held in the city's Plein Square.
The protesters arrived from Croatia, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. The protest began with the playing of the Croatian national anthem, and on the podium were eight empty chairs with the names of Gotovina, Markac and six Bosnian Croats who are also on trial at the ICTY.
The rally was addressed by the Bishop of Gospic and Senj, Mile Bogovic. "We stand here feeling undefended and even unjustly accused. Not just our accused and convicts, but we, too, as a nation feel convicted. We have come here with pain in our souls because those who deserve the credit for our freedom and who defended our lives are not free. We sympathise with them and we want to pray here for them and with them," he said.
Among the protesters was Marko Miljanic, the wartime commander of the defence forces in Skabrnja village, just inland from the coastal city of Zadar, who said that he had come to "give his support to the convicted generals".
"It's a disgrace that the international community and the Hague tribunal are not convicting real culprits, but are slinging mud at the heroes of our Homeland War, who are now sitting in prison instead of holding government positions in the country they fought for. We had the right to liberate our country and no one can take it away from us," Miljanic said.
Protesters were carrying Croatian flags and banners with messages of support for the generals, and were signing patriotic songs. "General Gotovina saved 50,000 people in Bihac, and has been sentenced in The Hague to 24 years in prison for one person," a banner said.
The rally was passing peacefully in the discrete presence of Dutch police and was due to end later in the afternoon.
The ICTY trial chamber in the case has sentenced General Gotovina to 24 years and General Markac to 18 years in prison for crimes committed against Serb civilians during Operation Storm in the summer of 1995. The appeal proceedings are in progress.
