THE GERMAN conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), on the occasion of celebrating the 25th anniversary of the military Operation Storm, published a text written by its journalist Michael Martens titled "Damages after the Operation Storm," the Deutsche Welle announces.

Martens has lately caught the Croatian public's attention, mostly with his contentious text based on an interview with the Croatian singer Marko Perkovic Thompson, which was reported by DW.

At the beginning of the text, Martens briefly explains to the German public what is celebrated in Knin and announces that "the Croatian president Zoran Milanovic, a social democrat who often has a very clear stand, and that's why he's not favored much among the far-right oriented Croatian war veterans, will hand out the medals there. Knin was the main place of 'the Republic of Serbian Krajina', a criminal creation which was established by the rebelled Croatian Serbs with considerable help from Belgrade, and from which more than a dozen of thousands of Croats were displaced from."

However, the author further points out that the Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day has its other side and that this time the question is raised again, and there's not a simple answer: what was exactly happening in the Dalmatia hinterland 25 years ago? "It's indisputable that, with the exception of the nationalistic circles in Serbia, Croatia, of course, had a right to set its territory free and territorially consolidate the state's independence, which was, after considerable blood spilled, declared in 1991."

They write that people in Croatia gladly negate the facts about the crimes committed after Operation Storm

But in Croatia, they write, people at the same time gladly deny the fact "that the liberation was accompanied by the crimes against Serbian civilians, which wasn't, as the Zagreb politics often like to claim, a matter of just a few individual cases," Martens writes. "The robbery cases were relatively easier," the author writes in the text. The author cites the UN's representatives' statements, who then claimed that there is "clear proof" about the numerous cases of robbing the abandoned Serbian houses by the members of the Croatian army. 

But the events such as the one in the village Grubora weren't easy at all, "where six elderly residents, who didn't want to leave their houses, were killed after the military operation ended long ago - a crime for which no one was ever held accountable for. And such cases were by no means limited only to Grubora. Because they were afraid of that, most Serbs ran away before the incoming Croatian troops. (...) About 200,000 Serbs ran away. Four years later, in Kosovo, more people left their homes - now they were Albanians running away from the Serbian soldiery."

The author says that Serbians were running away helter-skelter 

The author continues to remind of the testimonies about Serbians who were often leaving their homes helter-skelter; there were still unfinished beer glasses on the bar tables, leftovers on the plates at restaurants, the light was still on at apartments. 

"It's certainly correct that, among Serbians who were running away, there were those who had a good reason for running away because they had committed war crimes against their Croatian neighbors. But that doesn't leave crimes of some liberators undone. According to the general estimation, dozens of hundreds of Serbs were killed, thousands of houses were set on fire," FAZ writes. 

Martens continues to explain in the text that several years later, the Hague Tribunal hold general Ante Gotovina liable for those crimes, which caused disapproval "among the politically moderate Croats also" because Gotovina "was put on the same level as the Serbian mass murderers Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic." They took great satisfaction from the acquittal of Gotovina in the appeal proceedings, the author writes, but he points out that it led to "no one ever being held accountable to this day for crimes committed then, which the Hague Tribunal never questioned."

"The consequences are permanent and visible even today"

In conclusion, the author of the text emphasizes that "some damages after Operation Storm seem irreparable to this day. For many 'Krajina Serbs', the centuries-long history of settlement in that area ended in 1995." "Those who wanted to return encountered not only administrative barriers. In that way, in 1996, the International Red Cross published, only a year after the war ended, that the atmosphere of lawlessness rules the liberated areas, which caused great fear to the Serbs that stayed there. Back in 1996, almost 100 Serbian houses were destroyed; they were still intimidated, threatened, and harassed. The abandoned Serbian houses were mined to scare off the potential returnees."

In the meantime, Martens writes that it belongs to the past, but the consequences are permanent and still visible today. "Before the war, Serbs made 12 percent of the Croatian population, and today not even four percent," he concludes in the text published in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.