The Borovo Selo killings of 2 May 1991 (known in Croatia as the Borovo Selo massacre, Croatian:Pokolj u Borovom Selu and in Serbia as the Borovo Selo incident, Serbian: Инцидент у Боровом Селу) were one of the bloodiest incidents in the early stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia. A number of Croatian policemen and Serbs were killed in an armed confrontation in the Serb-populated village of Borovo Selo near Vukovar in eastern Croatia. The incident set the stage for – and helped to accelerate – the subsequent outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars. May 2 is the 122nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (123rd in leap years). ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Motto: none Anthem: Bože pravde (English: God of Justice) Capital Belgrade Largest city Belgrade Official language(s) Serbian1 Government Republic  - President Boris Tadić  - Prime Minister Vojislav KoÅ¡tunica Formation and independence    - Formation of Serbia 814   - Formation of the Serbian Empire 1345   - Independence from the Ottoman Empire July 13, 1878... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a Balkan state that existed from 1945 to 1992. ... Police forces are charged with the responsibility of maintaining law and order (law enforcement), and protecting the general public from harm. ... Serbs (Serbian: Срби, Srbi) are a South Slavic people who live mainly in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, to a lesser extent, in Croatia. ... Coat of arms of Borovo Borovo (Serbian: Борово), previously called Borovo Selo (Борово Село), is a village and a municipality in eastern Slavonia (Vukovar-Srijem County), Croatia. ... Position of Vukovar within Croatia Vukovar (Hungarian: Vukovár, German: Wukowar) is a city in eastern Croatia, and the biggest river port in Croatia located at the confluence of the Vuka river into the Danube. ... The Yugoslav wars were a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Yugoslavia that took place between 1991 and 2001. ...

Croatian War of Independence (Croatian: Domovinski rat (Homeland war)), was a war in Croatia from 1991 to 1995, between the Croatian government and Croatian Serbs, backed up by Serbia-controlled Yugoslav Peoples Army. ... The Plitvice Lakes incident of March 1991(known in Croatian as Plitvice Bloody Easter, Krvavi Uskrs na Plitvicama / Plitvički Krvavi Uskrs) was a clash between security forces of the Republic of Croatia and armed Serb separatists. ... Combatants Yugoslav Peoples Army, Serbian paramilitaries Croatian National Guard, Croatian police and militias Commanders Mladen Bratić Života Panić Blago Zadro Mile Dedaković Branko Borković Strength Between 36,000 and 65,000 troops (depending on the phase of the battle) Some 6,000 (of them 1,800 in Vukovar) Casualties... The Gospić massacre was an incident that took place between 16 October-18 October 1991 in the town of Gospić, a mixed Serb/Croat community in the district of Lika in Croatia. ... After the attacking forces of the 5th Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) corps (Banja Luka corps) had successfully crossed Sava river into Croatia captured Okučani in western Slavonia it was their primary objective to advance along Pakrac - Grubišno Polje route and link up with th 28th partisan division... On June 21 1992, the Croatian army attacked the Serbian Territorial Defense on the Miljevci Plateau near Drnis in front of the eyes of UN protection force UNPROFOR. There were 40 members of the Serbian Territorial Defense killed, several wounded and imprisoned and the only Serbian village in this area... Operation Maslenica is an offensive Croatian Army conducted in Northwestern Dalmatia against Krajina forces in early 1993. ... Combatants Croatia rebel Republic of Serbian Krajina UN Canadian troops Commanders general Janko Bobetko Lieutenant-Colonel James Calvin Strength N/A 875 Canadian troops Casualties 27 soldiers killed 11 UN deaths 29-38 Serbs killed {{{notes}}} Operation Medak Pocket [Croatian version] (Croatian: Medački džep) was a military operation... Combatants Croatia Republic of Serbian Krajina Commanders Croatian Military Command Strength 7,200 soldiers 5000 soldiers Casualties 55 killed, 162 wounded 250 killed, 1,500 POW Operation Flash (Croatian: ) was a brief and successful offensive conducted in the beginning of May 1995 by the the Croatian Army, which removed Serb... Combatants Croatia Republic of Serbian Krajina Commanders general Zvonimir Červenko general Mile Mrkšić Strength 150,000 soldiers, 350 tanks, 800 artillery pieces, 50 rocket launchers, 30 aircraft and helicopters 40,000 soldiers, 200 tanks, 350 artillery pieces, 25 rocket launchers, 20 aircraft and helicopters Casualties 174 soldiers killed, 1...

Background

Borovo Selo

Borovo Selo on the map of Croatia

During the first half of 1991, two of Yugoslavia's six constituent republics – Croatia and Slovenia – sought to break away from the Yugoslav federation. Following the two republics' declarations of independence, wars broke out between the republics' security forces, the Yugoslav army and (in Croatia) Serb militias who opposed the Croatian government. (See Ten Day War (Slovenia) and Croatian War of Independence for more on the wider conflicts.) Image File history File links Download high resolution version (2631x2170, 462 KB) Summary Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Osijek Slavonski Brod Slatina, Croatia Virovitica Split Rijeka ÄŒakovec Solin Gospić Bjelovar Bilje User:Elephantus/Test... Image File history File links Red_pog. ... The Ten-Day War was a brief military conflict between Slovenia and Yugoslavia in 1991 following Slovenias declaration of independence. ... Croatian War of Independence (Croatian: Domovinski rat (Homeland war)), was a war in Croatia from 1991 to 1995, between the Croatian government and Croatian Serbs, backed up by Serbia-controlled Yugoslav Peoples Army. ...

Much of Croatia's large Serb minority was opposed to the independence move. The Serb population was concentrated in three regions within Croatia; the Croatian Krajina, to the west and south of the border with Bosnia and Hercegovina; Western Slavonia, to the north of Bosnia; and Eastern Slavonia, along the border with Serbia. In all three regions, local Serbs opposed Croatian independence and sought to remain within Yugoslavia. The Croatian Krajina is a territory formed in the 16th century on the border of the Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire, part of the Military Frontier. ... Bosnia and Herzegovina (also variously written Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Bosnia-Hercegovina) is a mountainous country in the western Balkans. ... Eastern Slavonia is the eastern area of Slavonia, northern Croatia. ...

In 1990, the Croatian Serbs established political and military structures which eventually became the basis of the Republic of Serbian Krajina. The Krajina Serbs declared independence from Croatia on 1 April 1991^[1], six weeks before Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, and were soon joined by the Serb communities of Slavonia. Milošević's government provided the Croatian Serbs with substantial financial and logistical assistance. ^[2] His purpose in doing this, according to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecutors, was to support a "joint criminal enterprise" to create a new Serb-dominated state from which the non-Serb population had been forcibly removed.^[3] The Croatian Serb rebellion was also supported by nationalist groups and political parties in Serbia. This article is about the year. ... The borders of the RSK c. ... April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 274 days remaining. ... The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), is a body of the United Nations (UN) established to...

The events in Borovo Selo followed the Plitvice Lakes incident, an earlier clash between Croatian security forces and local Serb rebels in the region of Plitvice. The Plitvice Lakes incident of March 1991(known in Croatian as Plitvice Bloody Easter, Krvavi Uskrs na Plitvicama / Plitvički Krvavi Uskrs) was a clash between security forces of the Republic of Croatia and armed Serb separatists. ... Categories: Croatian geography stubs | National parks of Croatia | UN World Heritage Sites ...

The situation at Borovo Selo

Borovo Selo is part of the Vukovar municipality, bordering Serbia on the west side of the Danube river. In the municipality, which includes the town of Vukovar and surrounding villages, the 1991 census recorded 84,189 inhabitants of which 36,910 were Croats ( 43.8%), 31,445 Serbs (37.4%), 1,375 Hungarians (1.6%), 6,124 "Yugoslavs" (7.3%), and 8,335 (9.9%) others or undeclared. ^[4] Vukovar itself had a small majority of Croats, with most of the Serb population living in outlying suburbs and villages. Borovo Selo is a mainly Serb-inhabited community just north of Vukovar, dominated by a large industrial plant in which much of the village's population was employed before 1991. The Danube bend at Visegrád is a popular destination of tourists The Danube (ancient Danuvius) is Europes second-longest river (after the Volga). ...

The growth of political and ethnic tensions produced an increasingly difficult security situation in the area. Local militias were established on both sides and paramilitary groups established a high-profile presence in the region. At the end of April 1991, armed local Serbs assisted by volunteers from the Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Šešelj and other Serbian nationalist groups erected barricades in the village of Borovo Selo, according to the later ICTY indictment against Šešelj.^[1] They had the self-declared intention of keeping Croatian militias out of the village, though in reality this also meant the exclusion of Croatian police and civil administrators – in effect, setting up enclaves in which the writ of the Zagreb government no longer ran. According to Šešelj, his intervention had come at the request of Vukašin Šoškočanin, the president of the Borovo commune and commander of the local Territorial Defence militia. In 1994 Šešelj claimed that his volunteers had been equipped by the Serbian police, presumably at the behest of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior, ^{[5] [6]} though he later retracted this statement with the claim that it had been a propaganda ploy to damage the reputation of Milošević during a period when Šešelj's party was in opposition. ^[7] This article is about contemporary political party. ... A poster for the 2004 presidential elections, for which Å eÅ¡elj himself was not running, due to the fact that he was awiting trial for crimes against humanity in the Hague. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ...

Similar events happened elsewhere in eastern Slavonia. In an effort to defuse the situation, the area's moderate police chief, Josip Reihl-Kir, agreed that the Croatian police would not try to enter Serb villages without the explicit permission of the local Serb authorities; in return, the Serbs agreed to dismantle barricades.^{[8] [9]} However, as he later complained, his efforts were seriously undermined by the actions of Croatian nationalists who stoked the tension. One particularly notorious incident occurred at Borovo Selo in April 1991. Several members of Croatia's ruling HDZ party, including Gojko Šušak, who later became Croatia's defence minister, fired three Armbrust anti-tank guided missiles into the village. The attack caused no casualties but because a cause celebre in relations between the two republics. One missile failed to detonate and was shown on Serbian television to support claims of unprovoked Croatian aggression.^[10] This incident further worsened tensions in the Vukovar area and elsewhere in eastern Slavonia. The Croatian Democratic Union (Croatian: Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica, HDZ), is a Croatian political party. ... Gojko Å uÅ¡ak (April 16, 1945 – May 3, 1998) was Croatian Minister of Defence from 1991 to 1998 and President Franjo TuÄ‘mans closest associate and confidant. ... Armbrust (German for a crossbow) is a lightweight unguided anti-tank weapon developed by Germany, who later sold its manufacturing rights to Singapore, and equips two men in every seven-man Singapore infantry section with an anti-tank capability. ... An Anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) or weapon (ATGW) is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles. ...

The Borovo Selo killings

During the early hours of 1 May 1991, four Croatian policemen entered Borovo Selo and attempted to change the Yugoslav flag flying in the village for a Croatian flag. The incident appears to have been a spontaneous decision made in the wake of festivities (and presumably the consumption of alcohol) to celebrate a national holiday. They were intercepted by local Serbs and in the subsequent gunfight, two of the policemen were wounded and taken prisoner.^{[9] [11]} Flag of the SFRY, ratio 1:2 Flag of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia consisted of three equal horizontal bands coloured in pan-Slavic colors - blue (top), white and red - with yellow bordered red star, symbol of communism, at the flags centre. ... National flag. ...

On 2 May the Croatian authorities in nearby Osijek sent around 150 policemen to Borovo Selo to free the captives. The police, travelling in a convoy of buses and police vehicles, reached the village but became embroiled in a firefight with armed Serb militiamen. In the ensuing chaos, twelve Croatian policemen were killed and another twenty injured. ^[1] A number of Serbs were also killed, though it was unclear how many; figures from three to twenty were reported. ^{[12] [13]} It was widely reported that Serbian paramilitaries subsequently mutilated the bodies of the dead Croatian policemen.^[11] This was interpreted by Croats and outside observers as "a symbolic re-enactment of [Serbian] Chetnik reprisals against Croats during WWII, calculated to inflame ethnic hatred by rekindling the passions of wartime genocide." ^[14] Osijek [] (Hungarian: Eszék; German: Esseg) is the fourth largest city in Croatia with a population of 114,616 in 2001. ... Chetniks (Serbian Četnici, Четници) were an organization of Yugoslavs (mostly Serbs) who supported the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and formed a notable resistance force during World War II. The name is derived from the Serbian word četa which means company (of about 100... Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Nazi Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

At least three different – and conflicting – explanations were given of the events at Borovo Selo. The Croatian authorities claimed that the policemen sent to the village had been invited to a meeting agreed to by both sides and had travelled under white truce flags, but had been ambushed by local militants and "terrorists" from Serbia (meaning Šešelj's paramilitaries). Journalists pieced together a different version from accounts given by local residents, who claimed that the police had entered the village and began shooting at anything that moved. According to this version, the police took Serb women and children as hostages but were expelled by local residents, who freed the hostages without any outside help. Finally, Šešelj himself gave an account to Belgrade TV accompanied by video footage recorded by his men. He claimed that fourteen of his men, plus six local men and two other Serbian volunteers, had been responsible for fighting the "Ustashe". They had supposedly killed one hundred Croatian policemen, with one civilian also being killed,^[8] although in his later war crimes trial he reduced his claim to thirty fatalities on the Croatian side and claimed that these included Kurdish mercenaries. ^{[15] [16]} Belgrade (Serbian: Београд or Beograd ) is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Serbia. ... UstaÅ¡e volunteers for the Waffen SS (Domobran Regiment) marching during a parade in the Independent State of Croatia. ... Kurds are one of the Iranian peoples and speak Kurdish, a north-Western Iranian language related to Persian. ...

Aftermath of the killings

Following a meeting of the Yugoslav presidency on 4 May, which condemned the Borovo Selo killings, the Yugoslav defence ministry ordered the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) to take up positions in the area to act as a buffer between the two sides. The federal prime minister Ante Marković travelled to Borovo Selo to negotiate the release of the captured Croatian policemen. May 4 is the 124th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (125th in leap years). ... The Yugoslav Peoples Army (YPA) (Serbian: Југословенска народна армија / Jugoslovenska narodna armija (JHA / JNA); Croatian: Jugoslavenska narodna armija (JNA); Slovene: Jugoslovanska ljudska armada (JLA); Macedonian: Jугословенската народна армија (JНA); Albanian: Armata Popullore e Jugosllavisë) was the military force of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. ... Ante Marković (born November 25, 1924 in Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina) was the last prime minister of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. ...

Croatia's government, in turn, agreed to the increased presence of the JNA in the area, which would have important consequences during the subsequent civil war. The government faced political difficulties in the aftermath of the incident, which had plainly exposed a serious tactical miscalculation on the part of the Croatian authorities. It was reported that news of the killings and mutiliations had caused "panic" among senior Croatian government figures, who were concerned at the likely political consequences for Zagreb.^[17] Osijek's mayor, Zlatko Kramarić, was strongly critical of a lack of Croatian preparedness in his later memoirs. Osijek's police chief Josip Reihl-Kir also complained openly that Croatian extremists had hijacked the local situation and were obstructing efforts to broker peace; two months later he was assassinated by a Croatian police reserve officer with links to the ruling HDZ.^[10] Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

The incident served to radicalise both sides. Croatian nationalists portrayed the killings as part of Milošević's supposedly "Bolshevik" strategy to import Serbian ultranationalism and paramilitarism into Croatia. One Croatian newspaper described the Serbian paramilitaries as "beasts in human form", "bearded animals on two legs" and "bloodsuckers" and presenters on state-run TV began to refer to the Serb rebels generically as "Chetniks", bringing the Second World War term back into everyday use.^[18] The day after the Borovo Selo incident, President Tuđman appeared on Croatian television to warn that "open war" had begun and that "if the need arises" the Croatian people should take up arms to "defend the freedom and sovereignty of the Republic of Croatia." ^[10] On the same day an anti-Serb pogrom took place in the Dalmatian cities of Zadar and Sibenik, on the other side of Croatia, in which Tuđman's HDZ was accused of complicity. The incident thus produced what some have described as a "sea change" in Croatian views, with the Serbian minority throughout Croatia – not just in the separatist areas – being denounced and in some cases physically attacked for supposedly being "the enemy within." ^[17] The Dalmatian Serb pogrom, sometimes called the Dalmatian Kristallnacht or Dalmatian Crystal night (Serbo-Croat: Dalmatinska kristalna noć), was a violent anti-Serb riot in the Croatian cities of Zadar and Sibenik. ... Map of Croatia with Dalmatia highlighted Dalmatia (Croatian: Dalmacija Serbian: Далмација) is a region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, in modern Croatia, spreading between the island of Rab in the northwest and the Gulf of Kotor (Boka Kotorska) in the southeast. ... For other uses, see Zadar (disambiguation). ... Šibenik Šibenik (Italian: Sebenico) is a historic town in Croatia, population 52,654 (2001), located in central Dalmatia where the Krka river flows into the Adriatic Sea. ...

For their part, the Serbian media claimed that the incident had been prompted by a "genocidal" Croatian attempt to repress its Serb minority, drawing explicit parallels with the Croatian genocide of Serbs during World War II. Each side interpreted the incident as a sign that its continued existence was threatened by the other side, and that secession – from Yugoslavia or from Croatia – was therefore the only course if national survival was to be ensured. ^[8] As one commentator puts it, in the aftermath of the incident "the chances for initiatives to reach some kind of non-violent compromise were enormously diminished."^[19] Only a few months later, Borovo Selo found itself on the front lines of the Battle of Vukovar, the biggest single battle of the Croatian war. Combatants Yugoslav Peoples Army, Serbian paramilitaries Croatian National Guard, Croatian police and militias Commanders Mladen Bratić Života Panić Blago Zadro Mile Dedaković Branko Borković Strength Between 36,000 and 65,000 troops (depending on the phase of the battle) Some 6,000 (of them 1,800 in Vukovar) Casualties...

References

1. ^ ^a b c ICTY, Prosecutor against Vojislav Šešelj, 15 January 2003
2. ^ "History of Yugoslavia 1948-1998", Jane's Sentinel, 1 March 1999
3. ^ ICTY, Prosecutor against Slobodan Milošević: Second Amended Indictment, 23 October 2002
4. ^ ICTY, Prosecutor against Mile Mrkšić et al, 2 December 1997
5. ^ Brendan O'Shea, Perception And Reality In The Modern Yugoslav Conflict: Myth, Falsehood and Deceit 1991-1995, p. 10. (Routledge, 2005)
6. ^ Robert Thomas, Serbia Under Milosevic: Politics in the 1990s, p. 97. (C. Hurst & Co., 1999)
7. ^ Šešelj, Testimony to the ICTY, 14 September 2005
8. ^ ^a b c Ejub Štitkovac, "Croatia: The First War", pp. 157-159, in Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia", ed. Jasminka Udovicki & James Ridgeway. (Duke University Press, 2000)
9. ^ ^a b Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia, ed. John B. Allcock, p. 20. (ABC-Clio Inc, 1998)
10. ^ ^a b c Paul Hockenos, Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars, p. 58-59. (Cornell University Press, 2003)
11. ^ ^a b R. Craig Nation, "War in the Balkans, 1991-2002". (Strategic Studies Institute, August 2003)
12. ^ Robert J. Donia, Bosnia-Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed, p. 224. (C. Hurst & Co., 1994)
13. ^ Mihailo Crnobrnja, The Yugoslav Drama, p. 157. (McGill-Queens University Press, 1996)
14. ^ Robert J. Donia, John V.A. Fine, Jr., Bosnia and Hercegovina: a tradition betrayed, p. 223. (Columbia University Press, 1994)
15. ^ Šešelj, Testimony to the ICTY, 24 August 2005
16. ^ Šešelj, Testimony to the ICTY, 24 August 2005
17. ^ ^a b Allan Little, Laura Silber, The Death of Yugoslavia, p.155 (Penguin Books, 1996)
18. ^ Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, p. 130. (Yale University Press, 2001)
19. ^ Hannes Grandits and Carolin Leutloff, "Discourses, actors, violence: the organisations of war-escalation in the Krajina region of Croatia 1990-91", p. 37, in Potentials of Disorder: Explaining Conflict and Stability in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslavia, ed. Jan Koehler, Christoph Zurcher. (Manchester University Press, 2003)