Timeline Croatia
Return to home
CIA Factbook: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/hr.html#gov
History: http://www.dalmatia.net/croatia/history/index.htm
ICL: http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/law/hr__indx.html
WWW-VL: http://kufacts.cc.ukans.edu/history/#croatia
Yahoo: http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/Croatia/
Zubrinic: http://www.hr/hrvatska/Croatia-HCS.html
Bordered by Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia-Montenegro
and Bosnia, Croatia is slightly smaller than Ireland and West Virginia.
It has a varied landscape, ranging from lush valleys and fields in the
east to forests in its interior and a long Adriatic Sea coastline
dotted
with hundreds of islands.
The capital is Zagreb with a population of 1 million.
Main ethnic minorities are Serbs, Italians and Hungarians.
Average
monthly wage is $625.
(AP, 6/23/03)
In 2004 Earth’s deepest know hole, 1,693 feet, was found in the Velebit
Mountains of Croatia.
(SFC, 8/17/04, p.A6)
26000BC-27000BC Neanderthals lived
in Croatia. Their remains were later found at the Vindija cave and
dated to this time in 1999 with accelerator radiocarbon dating.
(SFC, 10/26/99, p.B3)
295 Diocletian (245-316), Roman
Emperor (284-305), began construction of a fortified palace near the
village of his birth. It later became the historic downtown of Split,
Croatia. Construction took 10 years.
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D10)
316 Diocletian (b.245) died at his
retirement palace near his birthplace in Dalmatia (Croatia).
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D10)
614 Croats settled in the area
between the Adriatic Sea and the rivers Sava and Drava.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
791 Croats about this time
established the principalities of Primortska Hrvatska on the Adriatic
coast and Posavska Hrvatska in inland Croatia.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
925 The Croatian kingdom was
established. King Tomislav was crowned first king of Croatia by decree
of the Holy Catholic Church in Rome, and was its founder. He
disappeared in 928 A.D. at the time of ominous discord between the
Croatian Catholic Church and the Latin Catholic Church. The discord was
over which Catholic Church should be the only, and legal Church in
Croatia. It is not known to this day, where King Tomislav was buried or
how he died.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
http://www.croatian-king-tomislav.com/
1102 Croats were forced to enter
into a union with Hungary and to recognize the Hungarian king as their
own.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
1186 Zara (present-day Zadar,
Croatia), previously part of the Venetian republic, rebelled against
Venice and allied itself with Hungary, posing competition to Venice’s
maritime trade.
(HNQ, 1/23/01)
1202 Nov, The Fourth Crusade
sacked Zara. The leaders of the Fourth Crusade agreed to sack Zara
(present-day Zadar, Croatia), a rival of Venice, as payment for
transportation the Venetians supplied the crusaders. Zara, previously
part of the Venetian republic, posed competition to Venice’s maritime
trade. Unable to raise enough funds to pay to their Venetian
contractors, the crusaders agreed to lay siege to the city despite
letters from Pope Innocent III forbidding such an action and
threatening excommunication. The fleet set sail in October of 1202,
reaching Zara in Nov. Zara, the first Christian city to be assaulted by
crusaders, surrendered after just two weeks. The army then wintered in
the city and planned an attack on the Byzantine capital of
Constantinople the following year.
(HNQ, 1/23/01)
1389 Serbs, defeated by the
Ottoman Turks, moved from Kosovo to the Krajina region of Croatia.
(WSJ, 4/22/99, A12)
1490 Apr 6, Matthias Corvinus
(b.1443), king of Hungary and Croatia (1458-1590), died. He has
assembled one of Europe’s finest libraries, 2nd in size only to that in
the Vatican. When Hungary later fell to the Turks the library was lost.
In 2008 Marcus Tanner authored “The Raven King: Matthias Corvinus and
the Fate of His Lost Library.”
(Econ, 7/19/08,
p.93)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Corvinus_of_Hungary)
1527 Croatia formed a state union
with Austria.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
1671 Apr 30, Peter Zrinyi (49),
Hungarian banished to Croatia, was beheaded.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1699 Jan 26, The Treaty of
Karlowitz, Croatia, ended the war between Austria and the Turks.
(HN,
1/26/99)(www.san.beck.org/1-10-Ottoman1300-1730.html)
1809 Jul 5-1809 Jul 6, Napoleon
beat Austria’s archduke Charles at the Battle of Wagram. He annexed the
Illyrian Provinces (now part of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro), and abolished the Papal States.
(http://tinyurl.com/vx8dk)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wagram)
1819 Apr 18, Franz von Suppa,
composer (Light Cavalry Overture), was born in Spalato, Dalmatia
(Croatia).
(MC, 4/18/02)
1853 The Croatian lighthouse Sveti
Ivan Na Pucini was built on the northern Adriatic Sea.
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D9)
1856 Jul 9, Nikola Tesla,
electrical engineer, inventor (Tesla Coil), was born in Croatia.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1857 The San Francisco Slavonic
Mutual and Benevolent Society, the oldest Croatian society in the US,
was founded.
(SFC, 2/17/05, p.E3)
1869 The Benedictine monastery on
the Croatian island of Sveta Marija was abandoned.
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D8)
1900 Mar 9, Aimone, duke of
Spoleta-Aosta, Italian king of Croatia (1941-43), was born.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1902 Sep 1, The Austro-Hungarian
army was called into the city of Agram to restore the peace as Serbs
and Croats clashed.
(HN, 9/1/99)
1915 May 12, Croatians plundered
Armenia and killed 250.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1906 May 17, Opera singer Zinka
Milanov was born in Zagreb, Croatia.
(AP, 5/17/06)
1917 Jul 20, The Pact of
Corfu was signed between the Serbs, Croats & Slovenes to form
Yugoslavia. [see Dec 1, 1918]
(www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1917yugoslavia1.html)
1918 Oct 29-1918 Oct 31, The
Kingdom of Greater Serbia was proclaimed at Sarajevo in Bosnia bringing
that state into what was later called Yugoslavia. [see Dec 1]
(BWH, 1988)
1918 Nov 7, The Yugoslav
National Conference at Geneva decided on the union of Croatia and
Slovenia with Serbia and Montenegro. [see Dec 1]
(BWH, 1988)
1918 Nov 24, Another proclamation
took place of the United Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
[see Dec 1]
(BWH, 1988)
1918 Nov 26, Montenegro deposed
its king who opposed union and voted to join the new Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes. [see Dec 1]
(BWH, 1988)
1918 Dec 1, The Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes [later in 1929 to be called Yugoslavia] was
proclaimed by Alexander Karadjordjevic, the son of King Peter of
Serbia. It included the previously independent kingdoms of Serbia and
Macedonia, the Hungarian-controlled regions of Croatia and Slovenia,
the Austrian province of Dalmatia, Carniola and parts of Styria,
Carinthia and Istria. King Alexander I renamed the Balkan state called
the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes to Yugoslavia in 1929.
(AP, 10/3/97)(HNQ,
3/26/99)(http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/map/yugoslavia/1900/)
1919 Oct 3, The Serbian, Croatian
& Slavic (Yugoslavia) parliament agreed on an 8 hr work day.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1920 Jun 4, The Treaty of
Trianon, signed at Versailles, was forced upon Hungary by the
victorious Allies after WWII and resulted in Hungary giving up nearly
three-fourths of its territory to Romania, Czechoslovakia and the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croat and Slovenes. Hungary lost more than half its
population, including some 3 million Hungarians. Hungary ceded the
hills of Transylvania to Romania.
(HNQ, 7/5/98)(WSJ, 1/2/97,
p.1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon)
1920 Oct 10, The Carinthian
Plebiscite determined the border between Austria and the newly
formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carinthian_Plebiscite)
1922 May 14, Franjo Tudjman
(d.1999), later president, was born in Veliko Trgovisce.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1927 Oct 28, Josip Broz (Tito)
began a 7 months jail sentence in Croatia.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1928 Ivan Merz (32), Bosnian-Croat
intellectual and theologian, died of meningitis. He was beatified in
2003 by Pope John Paul II.
(AP, 6/22/03)
1929 Oct 3, The Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes formally changed its name to the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia. King Alexander I renamed the Balkan state called the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Yugoslavia. The Kingdom had
been formed on December 1, 1918 and was ruled by the Serbian
Karageorgevic dynasty. It included the previously independent kingdoms
of Serbia and Macedonia, the Hungarian-controlled regions of Croatia
and Slovenia, the Austrian province of Dalmatia, Carniola and parts of
Styria, Carinthia and Istria.
(AP, 10/3/97)(HN, 10/3/98)(HNQ, 3/26/99)
1941 Jun 4, Republic of Croatia
ordered all Jews to wear a star with the letter Z.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1941 Germany invaded Yugoslavia
and Ante Pavelic led a pro-Nazi dictatorship that controlled
newly-independent Croatia. Alojzije Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb,
initially embraced the Pavelic government.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A22)
1941-1945 Croatia was occupied by Nazi forces and
with its Moslem allies some 700,000 Serbs and 75,000 Jews and Gypsies
were killed. [This was a letter with reference to the Encyclopedia
Britannica as source material] The Independent State of Croatia was set
up after the German and Italian invasions and run by the fascist
Ustashe regime as a puppet state. The central Ustashe aim was to
cleanse Croatia of “foreign” elements and to turn Croatia into a "100%
Roman Catholic state." Jasenovac was the site of the largest Ustashe
death camp, and some estimates claim as many as several hundred
thousand dead. Ante Pavelic was the leader of the Ustashe regime.
(WSJ, 10/11/95, p. A-1)(WSJ, 4/3/96, p.A-22)(WSJ,
5/20/99, p.A21)
1941-1945 The Herzegovina region of Bosnia became a
stronghold of the Croatian Ustashe movement allied to the Nazis. Local
clergy was seen condoning and supporting Ustashe mass slayings of
ethnic Serbs. One in six of Croatia's prewar population died.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A18)
1942-1944 The Jasenovac concentration camp southeast
of Zagreb was commanded by Capt. Dinko Sakic for 8 months. Croatia
extradited him from Argentina in 1998. Sakic commanded the Stara
Gradiska concentration camp and was deputy commander of the Jasenovac
camp. Sakic was found guilty in 1999 of carrying out or condoning the
torture and slaying of inmates.
(SFEC, 4/12/98, p.A20)(SFC, 6/17/98, p.C2)(SFC,
11/3/98, p.C12)(SFC, 3/16/99, p.A9)(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A12)
1943 May 18, Archbishop Stepinac
urged Pius XII to take a firm position to hold on "to its 240,000
converts." Eastern Orthodox practitioners had converted to Catholicism
to escape death camps.
(WSJ, 5/20/99, p.A21)
1944 Apr-1944 Nov, Dinko Sakic
(22) ran the Jasenovac concentration camp. In 1998 he was indicted for
crimes against humanity in the deaths of over 2,000 people 6 months
after being extradited from Argentina.
(SFC, 12/15/98, p.A17)
1944 Oct, At the Jasenovac camp
the "autumn liquidation" began under Dinko Sakic. For 20 days the old
and sick were killed and thrown into the Sava River.
(SFC, 3/23/99, p.A10)
1945 Apr 22, In Croatia as Ustashe
were killing fast before closing down the Jasenovac camp, 87 inmates
escaped. 1000 others were recaptured or shot and killed while fleeing.
Brother Satan, who took part in a World War II massacre of 2,000 Serbs
by Ustashe troops and whose real name was Tomislav Filipovic
Majstorovic, was defrocked in 1943 but stayed on in the camp, known as
"Auschwitz of the Balkans," where he was said to have killed freely.
Independent historians put the number of victims executed there at
between 80,000 and 100,000.
(SFC, 3/23/99, p.A10)(AP, 4/24/05)
1945 Some 13,000 pro-Nazi soldiers
and civilians were executed as the WWIII ended. In 2009 Croatia asked
that charges be brought against Simo Dubajic (86), a former major in
the Yugoslav army, on suspicion of ordering the executions.
(SFC, 4/1/09, p.A2)
1945 A secret internal US Treasury
Dept. document, hidden for 50 years, revealed in 1997 that the Vatican
held some 200 million Swiss francs plundered from Serbs and Jews by the
Nazi puppet government of Croatia after WW II.
(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A8)
1946 Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac
(d.1960) was imprisoned by the Communists and sentenced to 16 years of
hard labor for his support of the Ustasha fascists. He was declared a
martyr in 1998 by Pope John Paul II.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A8)
1951 Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac
was released under house arrest.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A22)
1972 Jan 26, A DC-9 exploded over
Serbska Kamenice, Czechoslovakia, and attendant Vesna Vulovic dropped
33,300 feet and survived following a 27-day coma and a 16-month
recovery. The cause of the explosion has never been established, but
was attributed by the Yugoslav and Czechoslovakian authorities to a
bomb placed on the plane by a Croatian Terrorist group, known as the
Ustasa.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, Z1
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovic)
1974 Aug 30, In Yugoslavia an
express train, traveling from Belgrade to Germany, ran full speed into
a Zagreb, Croatia, rail yard killing 152.
(www.cmj.hr/2001/42/6/12.htm)(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)
1976 Sep 10, 5 Croatian terrorists
captured a TWA-plane at La Guardia Airport, NY.
(http://nycslav.blogspot.com/2005/11/croatian-terroristsin-new-york.html)
1980 May 4,
Marshal Josip Broz Tito (b.1892), Communist dictator of Yugoslavia
(1943-1980), died three days before his 88th birthday. He was a Croat
and tried to spread the Serbs out over the six Yugoslav republics so
that they would not dominate the country. His policy was considered a
major cause of the Bosnian war in the '90s.
(AP,
5/4/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito)(WSJ, 8/8/95, p.
A-10)(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14).
1981 Young locals in Medjugorje,
Croatia, believed that the Virgin Mary was making regular monthly
appearances.
(WSJ, 3/1/02, p.W11)
1984 Radio 101, an 800 watt
station in Zagreb, became Croatia’s first commercial station.
(WSJ, 7/25/96, p.A1)
1989 Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman
began airing his views on Radio 101.
(WSJ, 7/25/96, p.A1)
1989 Croatia’s Vis Island, an
off-limit army base for the former Yugoslavia, re-opened to the public.
(SFC, 9/29/05, p.E4)
1989 Iraq sent 19 Soviet-built
MiG-21s and MiG-23s for maintenance to a plant in Zagreb, Croatia,
which was part Yugoslavia. They were moved to Serbia in 1991 and got
stuck there because of an embargo. Over the following years most were
cannibalized, abandoned and rendered useless.
(AP, 8/31/09)
1990 May, In Croatia Franjo
Tudjman was elected president in the first multiparty elections. He led
a party that advocated a Yugoslav confederation of sovereign states.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1990 Sep 30, Serbs in Croatia
proclaimed autonomy.
(http://tinyurl.com/q8lrk)
1991 Jun 24, Croatia and Slovenia
voted to declare independence unless some new agreement was reached
among the Yugoslav republics.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1991 Jun 25, The civil war in
Yugoslavia began when Croatia and Slovenia proclaimed independence from
Yugoslavia. Croatia voted to declare independence with Franjo Tudjman
as president. Following months of unsuccessful talks among Yugoslavia’s
six republics about the future of the federation, the western republics
of Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence. Entities of
Yugoslavia began to split off leaving Serbia and Montenegro.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(AP,
6/25/01)(www.factmonster.com/ce6/world/A0857636.html)
1991 Jun 27, Fighting broke out
between Serbian and Croatian militias. The Serbs were angered by
Tudjman's revival of Ustasha symbols to promote Croatian nationalism.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(SFC,
12/11/99, p.A16)
1991 Jul 27, Fighting escalated in
the breakaway republic of Croatia, as a Yugoslav air force jet fired on
Croatian forces and ground fighting erupted into clashes with federal
tanks and troops.
(AP, 7/27/01)
1991 Aug 2, Blaine Harden of the
Washington Post wrote that the Serbian aim “is obviously ethnic
cleansing of the critical areas that are to be annexed to Serbia.”
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1991 Aug, Serbian tanks and
aircraft drove refugees from 3 Croatian towns.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1991 Sep 21, Yugoslav army tanks
and artillery began an invasion of eastern Croatia. The Croats said
that some 600 soldiers and 1200 civilians perished in the 3-month
bombardment of Vukovar by rebel Serbs.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A10)
1991 Sep 25, The UN Security
Council unanimously passed Resolution 713 that imposed a worldwide arms
embargo against Yugoslavia and all its warring factions.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 6/19/96, p.A10)(AP,
9/20/01)
1991 Sep, The Croat militia unit
Autumn Rains arrived in Gospic. When front-line fighting ended early
this month, the unit turned its attention to the 9,000 Serbs who lived
in the area. Miro Bajramovic in 1997 admitted that the unit tortured
prisoners and he killed 72 people. He said that he acted on the orders
of interior minister Ivan Vekic.
(SFC, 9/9/97, p.A10,12)
1991 Oct 8, Slovenia and Croatia
began operating independently from Yugoslavia. Slovenia took over its
own borders and began printing its own money.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_modern_Croatia)(http://tinyurl.com/p5rhu)(SFC,
5/26/96, T-5)
1991 Oct, Early this month Serbs
opened bombardment of the Croatian port of Dubrovnik. At least 43
civilians were killed in the attack.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)
1991 Oct, At least 120 Serb
civilians were killed at Gospic, Croatia. In 2001 Maj. Gen. Mirko Norac
and 4 soldiers were indicted for the killing of at least 24 civilians
at Gospic.
(SFC, 9/14/00, p.C4)(SFC, 3/6/01,
p.A12)
1991 Oct, During the siege of
Vukovar the Yugoslavian army and Serbian paramilitary troops killed and
buried as many as 1000 Croatian soldiers and civilians. The bodies
began to be uncovered in Apr 1998.
(SFC, 4/29/98, p.A12)
1991 Nov 18, Vukovar, capital of
eastern Slavonia, fell to the Serbs. They removed some 260 wounded
Croat patients, hospital staff and political activists sheltered in the
Vukovar hospital and took them to the village of Ovcara where most were
shot and buried. On Mar 26, 1996 Slavko Dokmanovic, the Serb mayor of
Vukovar, was indicted for his role in the incident. Investigators began
uncovering bodies from the mass grave in Sep, 1996. In Oct, 1996, a
mass grave of about 100 bodies was uncovered. When Serbs captured
eastern Slavonia most of its 68,000 Croat residents were displaced to
other parts of Croatia. In 1998 Dokmanovic hanged himself in jail at
the Hague. In 1998 the book "The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar" was
published with photographs by Gilles Peress and text by Eric Stover. In
1999 Vukovar returned to Croatian control.
(SFC, 9/12/96, p.A13)(SFC, 10/3/96, p.A14)(SFC,
4/11/97, p.A12)(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A10)(SFC, 6/30/98, p.A8)(SFEC,
12/20/98, BR p.6)(Econ, 11/29/03, p.47)
1991 Nov 20, Mile Mrksic, Miroslav
Radic, and Veselin Sljivan-Canin, officers in the Yugoslav National
Army, ordered the Serb army and military police to withdraw from the
hospital at Vukovar. The paramilitary forces then took 194 Croat men in
small groups to an area nearby and shot them. Radic surrendered to
Serbian authorities in 2003. Mrksic and Sljivancanin were convicted by
a UN tribunal in 2007. Radic was acquitted.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A15)(SFC, 4/22/03, A7)(AP,
9/27/07)(WSJ, 9/28/07, p.A1)
1991 Dec 6, Gen. Pavle Strugar led
the Yugoslav attack on Dubrovnik. At least 43 civilians were killed in
the attack. Serbs had opened bombardment of the Croatian port of
Dubrovnik in early October. In 2001 Strugar (68) turned himself into
the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. In 2005 Strugar was convicted of
two counts of willful destruction of Dubrovnik and attacking civilians.
In 2008 appeals judges added two more convictions for unjustified
devastation of the town and attacking civilian sites. They also cut his
original sentence from eight years to seven and a half years because of
his deteriorating health.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)(AP,
7/17/08)
1991 Dec 19, Rebel Serbs declared
independence in the Krajina region, which was almost a third of
Croatia. The Republic of Serbian Krajina lasted 4 years with the
hilltop fortress of Knin as the capital.
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A15) (SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(WSJ,
4/22/99, A12)
1991 Dec, Germany gave diplomatic
recognition to Slovenia and Croatia. The EU said it would recognize
Croatia and Slovenia as independent states.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/6/00, p.A19)
1991 Dec, Hungarian officials
discovered 11 tons of rocket launchers and automatic weapons being
loaded on trucks headed for Croatia in violation of a UN arms embargo.
They had been labeled as Chilean humanitarian aid for Sri Lanka. In
Chile Col. Gerardo Huber, who directed purchases at the army's weapons
manufacturer, turned up dead shortly after testifying in a military
investigation. His head had been blown apart by a blast from a machine
gun. In 2009 former Chilean Army Gen. Guillermo Letelier and Air Force
Gen. Vicente Rodriguez were sentenced to prison for shipping arms to
Croatia at the time of its battle for independence from Yugoslavia. 11
people were sentenced by a military court in June, 2009, for their
roles in the deal. In October, 2009, retired Gen. Victor Lizarraga and
retired Col. Manuel Provis got 10 and eight years, respectively, for
conspiracy and homicide. Gen. Carlos Krum and Col. Julio Munoz, also
both retired, got nearly 2 years for conspiracy and murder,
respectively. The identity of the gunman in Huber's murder remained
unknown.
(AP, 6/10/09)(AP, 10/5/09)
1991 Stipe Mesic of Croatia was
the last leader of the collective Yugoslav presidency before the
country splintered.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A14)
1991 The Adriatic port of Zadar,
Croatia, was bombed by Yugoslav army troops under Gen’l. Momcilo
Perisic. Some 30 civilians were killed and 120 buildings damaged. He
and 18 fellow officers went on trial in absentia in Zagreb for war
crimes in 1996.
(SFC, 10/18/96, A16)
1991 Eastern Slavonia was in part
occupied by Serbs who had fled or were driven from other parts of
Croatia.
(SFC, 1/22/96, p.C1)
1991 A Serb rebellion set off a
6-month war in which at least 10,000 people were killed. Serb rebels
backed by Yugoslavia seized a third of Croatia, but the territory was
regained in 1995.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1991-1995 Argentina shipped weapons to Ecuador and
Croatia. The guns were initially shipped to Panama and Bolivia and the
Argentine government later blamed arms dealers for their diversion.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.A24)
1992 Jan 2, Military commanders in
Croatia agreed to a cease-fire accord, the 15th attempt at a truce.
(AP, 1/2/02)
1992 Jan 3, The UN, led by US Sec.
of State Cyrus Vance, brokered a cease-fire between the Croatian
government and rebel Serbs. Following subsequent breaches the UN
Protection Force (UNPROFOR) put 14,000 peacekeeping troops into
Croatia. The European Community (EC) recognized the independence of
Croatia.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1992 Jan 7, Serb forces shot down
a European Community helicopter in Croatia, killing five truce
observers.
(AP, 1/7/02)
1992 Jan 15, The Yugoslav
federation, founded in 1918, effectively collapsed as the European
Community recognized the republics of Croatia and Slovenia.
(AP, 1/15/98)
1992 Mar 3, Bosnia’s Muslims and
Croats voted for independence in a referendum boycotted by Serbs.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1992 May, Bosnia, Croatia and
Slovenia joined the UN.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1992 May, The UN security council
approved new commercial sanctions against Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbia, for
backing rebel Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1992 Aug 21, Serbian soldiers
separated over 200 men, mostly Croats and Muslims, from a convoy of
civilians from the Trnopolje detention camp in Bosnia. The captives
were taken to a wooded ravine at Mount Vlasic and shot dead. In
2003 Darko Mrdja, commander of a special police unit, admitted to a
court in the Hague of playing a role in the slaughter. In 2009 Bosnian
forensic experts found the remains of at least 60 Muslims and Croats in
the ravine.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A8)(AP, 8/26/09)
1992 Dr. Matko Marusic,
immunologist, began his Croatian medical Journal.
(WSJ, 11/24/98, p.A1)
1992-1994 Major Gen'l. Stanislav Galic led the
Bosnian Serb Sarayevo Romanija Corps. In 1999 Ganic was captured by
NATO SFOR troops for war crimes. In 2003 Gen. Galic was sentenced to 20
years in prison.
(SFC, 12/21/99, p.A16)(SFC, 12/6/03, p.A11)
1993 Jan, Heavy fighting and the
bitter Serb siege of Serajevo continued. The UN and European Union
peace efforts failed and war broke out between Muslims and Croats in
Bosnia.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1993 Apr 16, Bosnian Croats took
part in a killing spree in the village of Ahmici and 116 Muslims were
massacred and the village set fire. 6 Bosnian Croats went on trial in
1998 in the Hague on charges of war crimes. In 2000 Vladimir Santic,
head of the Croat Jokers police unit, was sentenced to 25 years in
prison; Drago Josipovic was sentenced to 15 years; Zoran and Mirjan
Kupreskic were sentenced to 10 and 8 years, and Vlatko Kupreskic
received 6 years.
(SFC, 8/19/98, p.C2)(SFC, 1/15/00, p.A11)
1993 Dec 14, In Algeria a large
group of armed terrorists attacked a work camp of a hydro-electric
project in Tamezguida. Fourteen Croatian citizens were taken out of the
camp. Twelve were murdered by having their throats slit, but two others
escaped with injuries.
{Algeria, Croatia}
(www.milnet.com/state/chrono93.htm)
1993 A Bosnian Croat, Zlatko
Aleksovski, was one of six men charged in 1996 with killing Muslims in
the central Lasva Valley in this year.
(SFC, 6/10/96, C16)
1993 Croat Gen. Ivan Andabaka was
a member of the Convicts Battalion, a group believed to have been
involved with atrocities against Muslims. Andabaka was arrested in 2000.
(SFC, 9/14/00, p.C7)
1993 Ignac Kostroman, believed to
be involved in the massacre of Ahmici in Bosnia, was arrested in
Croatia in 2000.
(SFC, 9/14/00,
p.C7)(www.applicom.com/twibih/twib0009.html)
1993-1994 Mladen Naletilic commanded a gang of
convicts who terrorized Muslims in southwestern Bosnia. In 2000 Croatia
handed over Naletilic, a Bosnian Croat indicted in 1998 on 17 counts of
war crimes, to the UN tribunal.
(SFC, 3/22/00, p.A12)
1994 Mar 30, Serbs and Croats
signed a cease-fire to end their war in Croatia while Bosnian Muslims
and Serbs continued to battle each other.
(AP, 3/30/99)
1994 Mar 18, Bosnian Muslims and
Croats agreed to a federation between them and confederation with
Croatia in an agreement brokered by the US. Pres. Tudjman of Croatia
approached US diplomats about possible arms shipments from Iran.
(AP, 3/18/04)(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC,10/16/97,
p.A12)
1994 Apr, Anthony Lake, national
security advisor, approved a State Dept. proposal that Peter Galbraith,
US ambassador to Croatia, tell the Croatian government he had “no
instructions” on whether the US approved or disapproved the shipment of
arms to Bosnia through Croatia.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.A7)
1994 Nov 19, The U.N. Security
Council, anxious to stop Serb attacks on the "safe area" of Bihac in
northwest Bosnia, authorized NATO to bomb rebel Serb forces striking
from neighboring Croatia.
(AP, 11/19/99)
1994 Nov 21, NATO retaliated for
repeated Serb attacks on a U.N. safe haven by bombing an airfield in a
Serb-controlled section of Croatia.
(AP, 11/21/02)
1994 Istria was the first region
of the former Yugoslavia to be officially designated as a "Region of
Europe". The Istria of 2005, alternatively called Istra and Istrija, is
politically divided into three separate countries: Croatia, Slovenia
and Italy.
(www.istrians.com/istria/maps/)
1995 May 1, The Croatian army
captured the Serb enclave of Western Slavonia in its first major bid to
retake territories occupied in 1991. In reply the Krajina Serbs
launched a rocket attack on Zagreb, the Croatian capital. Milan Martic,
Croatian Serb leader of rebel Serb forces, ordered the shelling of
Zagreb. Martic surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal in 2002.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A15)(SFC,
5/8/02, p.A17)
1995 May 2, Serb missiles exploded
in the heart of Zagreb, killing six.
(www.hri.org/news/usa/std/1995/95-05-02.std.html)
1995 Aug 4, Croatia launched an
offensive against Krajina, Operation Storm, and captured in days a
region that Serb rebels had held for 4 years. Most of its province of
Krajina, including the Serb stronghold Knin, was taken in a 3-day
offensive. Some 3,000 shells were fired into Knin and less than 250 hit
military targets. Some 100,000 Croatian Serbs were driven from the
area. Up to 600 Serb civilians were killed. A report on the events was
published in 1999: "Report on the Military Operation Storm and its
Aftermath" by the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(SFEC,
3/21/99, p.A17)(SFC, 4/27/99, p.A10)
1995 Aug, Some 200,000 Serbs were
moved from the Krajina region. More than 4,500 were killed and some
3,000 are still listed as missing in an operation that was directed by
retired American generals through MPRI of Alexandria, Va. About 14,000
Krajina Serbs ended up in Kosovo until 1998, when they left as violence
spread.
(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A15)(SFC, 7/6/99, p.B1)
1995 Sep 15, A Muslim-Croat
offensive won 1,500 square miles of land. More than 150,000 Serbs fled,
many to Eastern Slovenia.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Oct 5, Pres. Clinton
announced that a cease-fire was agreed on in Bosnia to start on Oct 10,
and that combatants would attend talks in the US.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Oct 12, After a 2-day delay,
a cease-fire in Bosnia went into effect a minute after midnight.
Fighting continued over contested towns in northwest Bosnia.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Oct 16-1995 Oct 18, Richard
Holbrooke and other international mediators met in Moscow and traveled
to the main capitals of the former Yugoslavia. The US named the
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, as the site for the
peace talks.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Nov 1, Peace talks for the
countries of the former Yugoslavia were launched in Dayton, Ohio.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Nov 21, The Dayton Peace
Accord, was initialed by the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. US
Sec. of State, Warren Christopher and chief mediator Richard Holbrooke
manage to keep the parties talking for over 3 weeks to reach this
agreement to end three and a-half years of ethnic fighting in
Bosnia-Herzegovina. One year deployment of 20,000 US troops as
one-third of a NATO peace keeping force was estimated to cost about
$1.5 bil. The US also planned to contribute $600 mil over three years
to help rebuild Bosnia.
(WSJ, 11/22/95, p.A1,3)(SFC, 10/6/00, p.A19)(AP,
11/21/00)
1995 Nov, Croatian leader Franco
Tudjman said he will hold forces back from a Serb held area of Croatia
during peace talks.
(WSJ, 10/20/95, p. A-1)
1995 Dec 14, An agreement for
peace in Bosnia, reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton,
Ohio, was formally signed. Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia,
Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia signed the
Bosnian peace treaty in Paris. The agreement divided Bosnia into 2
autonomous territories and granted 51% of Bosnia to the Muslim-Croat
federation and 49% to the Serbs. Elections were scheduled and a force
of 60,000 Western troops was planned for deployment. A 3-member
presidency and a national parliament was also part of the plan. The
office of High Representative was created to oversee the implementation
of the civilian aspects of the Peace Agreement.
(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A8)(SFC, 9/22/98, p.A8)(AP,
12/14/00)(www.ohr.int/)
1996 Apr 3, A US Air Force
jetliner crashed near Dubrovnik, Croatia, and 35 people on board were
killed including Ron Brown, Sec. of Commerce. Brown had been leading a
delegation of business executives to the former Yugoslavia to explore
business opportunities that might help rebuild the war-torn region.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-1)(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.A-1)(AP,
4/3/97)(MC, 4/3/02)
1996 May 18, In Zagreb two
prominent journalists face trial for mocking Pres. Franjo Tudjman over
his proposal to rebury pro-Nazi dead beside their Jewish and Serbian
victims. Court papers were given to Feral editor Viktor Ivancic and
lead writer Marinko Culic.
(SFC, 5/18/96, p.A-10)
1996 Jun 9, Police announced the
arrest of a Bosnian Croat, Zlatko Aleksovski, charged with murder and
mistreatment of Muslim prisoners. He is one of six men charged with
killing Muslims in the central Lasva Valley 3 years ago.
(SFC, 6/10/96, C16)
1996 Jun 16, Croats in Mostar
named Pero Markovic as the new president of Herzeg-Bosnia.
(SFC, 6/15/96, p.A10)
1996 Jun 16, Members of a Muslim
party beat former Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic during a northern
Bosnia political rally. Leaders of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia signed an
agreement to reduce arsenals of heavy weapons.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A1)
1996 Aug 7, The presidents of
Serbia and Croatia agreed to establish diplomatic relations.
(SFC, 8/8/96, p.A11)
1996 Sep 6, In Croatia a 6.0
earthquake hit the town of Ston.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A9)
1996 Oct 7, A spokesman for the UN
transitional authority in Eastern Slavonia said 200 bodies were
unearthed near Vukovar from the 1991 Serb occupation.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A10)
1996 Oct 16, The Council of
Europe, a promoter of democracy and human rights, admitted Croatia as
its 40th member.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A11)
1996 Nov 12, A building in Mostar,
renovated under contract with the European Union, was taken over and
adopted as the High Court of the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosnia. It
was supposed to have been Mostar’s City Hall under joint administration
by Croats and Muslims.
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.C3)
1996 Nov 20, In Zagreb, Croatia,
thousands protested the government’s attempt to close the independent
Radio 101.
(SFC, 11/21/96, p.C6)
1996 Dec 25, Croatian Serbs
attacked Croats who had been bused in to their former hometown in
Eastern Slavonia for Christmas services.
(WSJ, 12/26/96, p.A1)
1997 Jan 24, Radio station 101 was
awarded a broadcast license after a long battle with the Croat
nationalist government.
(SFC, 1/25/97, p.C1)
1997 May 16, Southwest of Zagreb
mobs of Croat refugees rampaged through at least 4 Serbian villages
during the week and forced dozens of Serbs to flee. A campaign was
growing to drive out of the country some 100,000 Serbs who have
remained since the end of the Balkan war and to block returning Serbs
from re-settling.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A13)
1997 Jul 15, Eastern Slavonia was
scheduled to be handed over to Croatian authorities. It had been seized
by the Serbs in 1991. [see Jan 15, 1998]
(SFC, 1/22/96, p.C1)
1997 Jun 15, In Croatia voting
irregularities occurred as Franjo Tudjman led low-turnout elections
with 59%.
(SFC, 6/16/97, p.A8)
1997 Jun 10, The US endorsed a $13
million loan to Croatia.
(SFC, 6/11/97, p.C2)
1997 Aug 5, In Croatia Pres.
Tudjman took an oath of office for his 2nd 5-year term.
(WSJ, 8/6/97, p.A1)
1997 Oct, The documentary film
"Tudjman," about the leader of Croatia, was directed by Jakov Sedlar
and Joe Tripican. It was first shown in Los Angeles with a travelogue
on Croatia.
(SFC,12/31/97, p.A8)
1997 Nov 6, In Belgrade former
Serb soldier and convict, Slobodan Misic, was arrested after he told
reporters that he had killed up to 80 Croats and Muslims near Vukovar
in eastern Croatia and in the Bratunac-Srebrenica area of eastern
Bosnia in 1991.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.D3)
1998 Jan 15, Eastern Slavonia
reintegrated into Croatia. Some 75,000 Croat refugees promised friction
with the Serbs occupying their homes. The 2-year UN peace mission ended
but 180 int’l. observers were to remain as monitors.
(SFEC, 8/17/97, Par p.2)(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A1)(SFC,
1/16/98, p.B2)
1998 Jan, The Croat government
passed a decree that permitted the eviction of thousands of Serbs from
state-owned apartments in Eastern Slavonia. The decree was rescinded in
Feb.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.D3)
1998 Feb 20, Tens of thousands of
Croats protested in Zagreb against high unemployment and falling living
standards.
(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A10)
1998 May, In Croatia Gojko Susak,
the Croatian Defense Minister, died of cancer. He had directed the
wartime revolt by Bosnian Croats against the Muslim-led Bosnian
government.
(SFC, 5/14/98, p.C18)
1998 Jul 25, It was reported
that authorities in Split, Croatia, declared a natural disaster
following an invasion of mice that devoured the region’s crops.
(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct 3, In Croatia Pope John
Paul II beatified Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, the World War II
archbishop of Zagreb and a controversial figure because many Serbs and
Jews accused him of sympathizing with the Nazis.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A22)(AP, 10/3/99)
1998 Oct 22, In Croatia a 2nd
clerk revealed that Pres. Franco Tudjman’s wife, Ankica Tudjman, had
deposited nearly $300,000 into her bank account over the last 2 years.
Robert Horvat and Ankica Lepej were to be indicted for violating bank
secrecy laws. Mrs. Tudjman was a pensioner who ran a children’s charity.
(SFC, 10/23/98, p.D3)
1998 Oct 26, In Croatia a jury
reversed itself after 2 weeks and crowned a new Miss Croatia, a member
of the Catholic majority. Lejla Sehovic, the original winner, was a
Muslim.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.B5)
1999 Mar 20, A war crimes tribunal
at the Hague recommended that 3 Croatian generals be indicted for war
crimes for "Operation Storm" in Aug, 1995.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, p.A17)
1999 Jul 1, Croatia planned to
file charges against Yugoslavia in The Hague for genocide following its
declaration of independence in 1991.
(SFC, 7/2/99, p.A18)
1999 Nov 24, In Croatia the
parliament passed a constitutional amendment that declared Pres.
Tudjman (77) to be temporarily disabled and acted to pass power to
Vlatko Pavletic, speaker of parliament.
(SFC, 11/25/99, p.A14)(WSJ, 11/26/99, p.A1)
1999 Dec 10, In Croatia Pres.
Franjo Tudjman died at age 77. Vlatko Pavletic (1930-2007), speaker of
Croatia's parliament, began serving as acting president for two months.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)(AP, 9/19/07)
2000 Jan 3, In Croatia a
center-left coalition won the elections over the nationalist Democratic
Union (HDZ). Leading the coalition were Ivica Racan (55) of the Social
Democratic Party and Drazen Budisa (52) of the Social-Liberals.
(SFC, 1/4/00, p.A10)
2000 Jan 24, In Croatia 42% of
voters chose Stipe Mesic for president and 28% chose Drazen Budisa. A
runoff was set for Feb 7.
(SFC, 1/25/00, p.A11)
2000 Feb 7, In Croatia Stipe Mesic
(65) was elected president over Drazen Budisa (51) by a 56.2 to 43.8%
margin.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A14)
2000 Mar 9, In Bosnia US Sec. of
state Madeleine Albright won a pledge from Croatian and Bosnian Serb
leaders to allow thousands of refugees to go home.
(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A13)
2000 Mar 21, Croatia handed over
Mladen Naletilic, a Bosnian Croat indicted in 1998 on 17 counts of war
crimes, to the UN tribunal. Naletilic commanded a gang of convicts who
terrorized Muslims in southwestern Bosnia between 1993-1994.
(SFC, 3/22/00, p.A12)
2000 May 11, NATO nations approved
Croatia’s bid to join the Partnership for Peace following talks with
Prime Minister Ivica Racan on progress toward democratic reforms.
(SFC, 5/12/00, p.D2)
2000 Aug 28, Milan Levar (45) was
killed in a bomb blast. He had testified on the killing of Serb
civilians in Gospic, Croatia, in 1991. A dozen suspects were later
arrested.
(SFC, 9/14/00, p.C4)
2001 Feb 11, In Croatia some
100,000 protested the investigation of former general Mirko Norac for
war crimes in 1991.
(SFC, 2/12/01, p.B2)
2001 May 9, In Split, Croatia, a
soccer brawl left 130 people injured including 30 police.
(SFC, 5/11/01, p.D4)
2001 May 19, In Croatia
nationalists in local elections won 14 of 21 counties.
(WSJ, 5/22/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 7, In Croatia PM Ivica
Racan announced that citizens indicted by the UN War Crimes tribunal
could be extradited to the Hague.
(SSFC, 7/8/01, p.A16)
2001 Jul 13, The Croat government
identified Gen. Rahim Ademi as one of the 1st 2 Croats to be indicted
by the UN war crimes tribunal for atrocities against the Serbs in 1995.
The other was identified as Ante Godovina.
(SFC, 7/14/01, p.A12)
2001 Jul 26, The UN War Crimes
tribunal indicted Gen. Ante Gotovina on 8 counts of war crimes linked
to alleged atrocities in 1995. In 2005 Croatia’s failure to arrest him
hindered the country’s entry to the EU.
(SFC, 7/27/01, p.D6)(Econ, 3/12/05, p.52)
2001 Oct 15, It was reported that
Croatian officials had suspended the use of Baxter Int’l. filters for
kidney dialysis machines after 23 patients died in a week. A similar
incident in Spain killed 10 people but tests seemed to rule out the
filters.
(WSJ, 10/15/01, p.A1)
2001 A grape genetically identical
to California’s zinfandel was discovered growing wild in Croatia.
(SFC, 9/7/05, p.F8)
2002 Jul 5, Croatian Prime
Minister Ivica Racan resigned in a political maneuver apparently aimed
at forcing a rival party out of his coalition government.
(AP, 7/5/02)
2002 Oct 3, NATO and European
Union called on Croatia to cooperate with the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal,
urging the government to hand over indicted war crimes suspect Gen.
Janko Bobetko.
(AP, 10/3/02)
2002 Nov 1, Jakov Sirotkovic (80),
a prominent economist and high-ranking member of the Communist party in
the former Yugoslavia (head of the Cabinet in Croatia), died.
(AP, 11/1/02)
2002 Cardinal Franjo Kuharic (83),
former primate of Croatia (1970-1997), died.
(SFC, 3/12/02, p.A21)
2003 Apr 5, Croatian police have
arrested Ivica Rajic (45), a Bosnian Croat long sought by the UN war
crimes tribunal, for allegedly carrying out atrocities against Muslim
civilians during the Bosnian war.
(AP, 4/6/03)
2003 Apr 29, Croatian wartime army
chief Janko Bobetko (84), hailed at home as a hero of Croatia's 1991
struggle for independence but charged with war crimes by a UN court,
died.
(AP, 4/29/03)
2003 Jun 5, Pope John Paul II
began his landmark 100th foreign pilgrimage with a five-day, five-city
tour of Croatia.
(AP, 6/5/03)
2003 Nov 18, The UN war crimes
tribunal issued an indictment against former Croatian Serb leader Milan
Babic on five counts of war crimes for a campaign of ethnic cleansing
in the Krajina region of Croatia early in the Balkan wars.
(AP, 11/18/03)(WSJ, 11/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Nov 23, The Croatian
Nationalist Democratic Union (HDZ), led by Ivo Sanader, won
parliamentary elections.
(AP, 11/24/03)(Econ, 11/29/03, p.47)
2003 Nov 24, The Croatian
Nationalist Democratic Union (HDZ), which led the drive to independence
and later into isolation, began negotiating with potential partners to
form a new government after winning parliamentary elections.
(AP, 11/24/03)
2003 Dec 23, In Croatia Ivo
Sanader (b.1953) began serving as prime minister. He resigned office in
2009.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Sanader)
2003 Dec 31, The UN refugee agency
closed its last three field offices in Croatia.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2003 The population of Croatia was
about 4.5 million.
(AP, 6/23/03)
2004 Jan 27, Wartime Croatian Serb
leader Milan Babic (1991-1992) pleaded guilty to persecution in a plan
to ethnically cleanse parts of Croatia of non-Serbs at the outset of
the Balkan wars, and expressed "a deep sense of shame" for his crimes.
Babic was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
(AP, 1/27/04)(WSJ, 6/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 8, US Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Croatia and thanked Pres. Stipe Mesic for
Croatia's small military police contingent (50) in Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Apr 5, Six ethnic Croats
surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal to face allegations they
participated in the torture and massacre of Muslims in Bosnia in 1993.
(AP, 4/5/04)
2004 Aug, A team of Croatian
cavers descended 1,693 feet to Earth’s deepest know hole in the Velebit
Mountains of Croatia.
(SFC, 8/17/04, p.A6)
2004 Slavenca Drakulic, Croatian
novelist and journalist, authored “They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War
Criminals on Trial in the Hague.”
(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.M1)
2005 Jan 2, In Croatia Pres. Stipe
Mesic won about 49 percent of the votes, compared with 20 percent for
his closest rival, conservative government minister Jadranka Kosor, the
popular incumbent narrowly failed to win the absolute majority required
for a first-round victory. Voters will return to the polls later this
month for a presidential runoff.
(AP, 1/3/05)
2005 Jan 16, Croatians returned to
the polls for presidential runoff. Pres. Stipe Mesic won a 2nd term in
the runoff election with 66% of the vote.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jun 19, Top Croatian
financial officials left for Washington to present a package of fiscal
proposals that should shore up this year's budget and save the stand-by
arrangement with the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 6/19/05)
2005 Jul 19, Miroslav Bralo (37),
former Bosnian Croat special forces soldier, pleaded guilty to war
crimes at the Yugoslav tribunal in the Hague. Bralo was a member of an
infamous unit, known as "the Jokers," responsible for attacks on
Bosnian Muslim villages in the Lasva Valley of central Bosnia and
Herzegovina in 1993.
(AP, 7/19/05)
2005 Jul, Montenegro agreed to pay
Croatia $460,000 in war compensation for cattle taken by its soldiers
in June, 1991.
(Econ, 7/30/05, p.46)
2005 Sep 9, Croatia's government
said that army officers can give lessons about the 1991 Serbo-Croat war
in elementary schools, despite critics' claims the move marks a return
to communist-style links between schools and the military.
(AP, 9/9/05)
2005 Sep 20, Croatia issued an
international arrest warrant for Milivoj Aschner (92), a former police
chief in eastern Croatia and requested that Austria extradite him.
Aschner allegedly enforced racist laws in 1941-1942 under Croatia's
World War II Nazi puppet regime, which persecuted tens of thousands of
Jews, Gypsies and Serbs.
(AP, 9/22/05)
2005 Sep 20, Carla Del Ponte,
chief prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY), told the Daily Telegraph that she believed
General Ante Gotovina was being sheltered in a Franciscan monastery in
Croatia. The Vatican denied any knowledge.
(AP, 9/20/05)
2005 Oct 4, Croatia began delayed
EU membership talks, after UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del
Ponte endorsed Zagreb's cooperation with her court.
(AFP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 21, Britain and Croatia
confirmed cases of bird flu as countries around the world scrambled to
put in place measures to prevent the spread of the virus. British
officials said a parrot that had been imported from South America died
of bird flu in quarantine.
(AP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 26, The EU said the
dangerous H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in Croatia.
Authorities said a 2nd parrot that died in quarantine in Britain was
also infected with the virus.
(AP, 10/26/05)
2005 Dec 4, Croatia won its first
Davis Cup title.
(AP, 12/4/06)
2005 Dec 7, Spanish authorities
arrested former Gen. Ante Gotovina, the top Croatian war crimes
suspect, after four years on the run. He was captured in the Canary
Islands when special police agents surprised him as he dined in a
luxury beach hotel.
(AP, 12/08/05)
2005 Dec 15, A Croatian court
sentenced six ethnic Serbs to between six and 14 years in prison in a
retrial over the brutal harassment of Croat prisoners at the outset of
Zagreb's 1991-95 war of independence.
(Reuters, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 29, In Croatia Slobodan
Davidovic (52), an ethnic Serb seen killing Muslims in a nationally
televised video, was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 15 years
in prison, with the judge saying he had shown "no mercy or compassion"
for his victims.
(AP, 12/29/05)
2006 Mar 2, In Croatia 8 former
soldiers were convicted of torturing ethnic Serbs in a wartime prison,
four years after they were cleared of the same charges in a trial later
annulled as being flawed.
(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Apr 9, Croatia’s Pres.
Stjepan Mesic visited the SF Bay Area, home to some 50,000 Croatians,
for economic support. Croatia’s population stood at about 4.5 million
people.
(SFC, 4/10/06, p.A2)
2006 Apr 19, In Croatia workers
who have been occupying a tobacco factory in Zagreb for nearly two
weeks asked the chief state prosecutor to investigate their claims that
the facility was illegally sold to a local tobacco giant.
(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 May 6, Vice President Dick
Cheney met with President Stipe Mesic of Croatia, the final stop of a
three-nation tour dominated by the issue of political reform in
countries making the post-Cold War transition toward democracy.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 7, Vice President Dick
Cheney endorsed the NATO membership aspirations of Croatia, Albania and
Macedonia.
(AP, 5/7/06)
2006 May 8, In the Hague the UN
war crimes court sentenced Ivica Rajic, a Bosnian Croat former militia
leader, to 12 years in prison. Rajic admitted that forces under his
command operating in the Muslim village of Stupni Do in central Bosnia
in October 1993 "forced Bosnian Muslim civilians out of their homes and
hiding places, robbed them of their valuables, willfully killed Muslim
men, women and children and sexually assaulted Muslim women".
(AFP, 5/8/06)
2006 Oct 26, Croatian lawmaker
Branimir Glavas, suspected of ordering the torture and killing of Serb
civilians in 1991 during the Serbo-Croat war, was detained on war
crimes charges after a parliament commission lifted his parliamentary
immunity.
(AP, 10/26/06)
2006 Nov 4, Swathes of Austria,
Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands
and went dark for up to an hour in the late evening as cold Germans
rushing to switch on heaters sucked up electricity from Europe's
interconnected networks.
(AP, 11/5/06)
2007 Feb 18, In Nigeria gunmen
seized three Croatian workers. The men were abducted in the region's
main city of Port Harcourt.
(AFP, 2/19/07)
2007 Mar 12, In Nigeria’s oil
region hostage takers released 3 European captives. 2 Croatians and one
Montenegrin seized Feb. 18 in Port Harcourt were in good health after
their release to state officials.
(AP, 3/12/07)
2007 Jun 12, In the Netherlands
the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted Milan Martic (52), a wartime
leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs, of murder, torture and persecution and
sentenced him to 35 years in prison for the 1991-1995 brutal ethnic
cleansing campaign of non-Serbs in Croatia.
(AP, 6/12/07)(WSJ, 6/13/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 15, Antun Gudelj (59), a
Croatian man charged with killing three police officials in the early
days of the 1991 Serb-Croat war, was extradited from Australia to
Croatia to face a new trial after an earlier pardon.
(AP, 7/15/07)
2007 Aug 30, In Croatia six men
were killed and seven badly injured when they were trapped battling a
fierce forest blaze on Kornat Island. 8 men were soon detained on
suspicion of arson. PM Ivo Sanader promised an investigation saying it
was the biggest tragedy in Croatian firefighting.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2007 Sep 19, Vlatko Pavletic (77),
a former speaker of Croatia's parliament who served as acting president
for two months beginning in Dec, 1999, died.
(AP, 9/19/07)
2007 Sep 27, A UN tribunal
convicted Mile Mrksic (60), a Serb army officer, of clearing the way
for the torture and killing of 194 Croats seized from a hospital in a
1991 massacre. Veselin Sljivancanin (54), the area's chief security
officer, was sentenced to five years for failing to protect the Croats
from beatings and torture by the local Serb paramilitary forces and
Territorial Defense units. Officer Miroslav Radic (45) was acquitted of
any wrongdoing.
(AP, 9/27/07)(WSJ, 9/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Nov 25, Croatia held
parliamentary elections. Exit polls and preliminary results showed that
the ruling conservatives and opposition center-left Social Democrats
were virtually tied.
(AP, 11/26/07)
2007 Nov 26, Croatia's ruling
conservative HDZ party looked on course to win another four years in
power and take the nation into the EU after a close-fought
parliamentary election. The ruling conservatives and center-left
opposition sought allies after the vote left no clear winner.
(AP, 11/26/07)(WSJ, 11/27/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 10, American blues
guitarist "Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks (67), who mastered the sound of
the 1930s' Delta Blues, died in a clinic in Croatia.
(AP, 12/10/07)
2008 Jan 12, Croatia’s Parliament
approved a new coalition government headed by PM Ivo Sanader, who vowed
to pursue Croatia's quest to join the EU and NATO.
(AP, 1/12/08)
2008 Mar 11, Three generals
regarded as national heroes in Croatia went on trial at the Hague,
accused of orchestrating the killing of at least 150 Serbs in a 1995
military campaign that unleashed widespread murder and pillage.
(AP, 3/11/08)
2008 Apr 3, Ivan Korade (44), a
retired Croatian army general suspected in a grisly quadruple murder,
died during a shootout with police that also killed one officer. On
April 1 Korade was charged with the March 27 killing of four people in
his village of Velika Veternicka: a 16-year-old boy, his 62-year-old
grandmother and two men, including a former Korade aide.
(AP, 4/3/08)
2008 Apr 4, US President George W.
Bush arrived in Croatia after a NATO summit at which leaders invited
the former Yugoslav republic to join the 26-nation western alliance.
(AP, 4/4/08)
2008 Apr 5, In Croatia President
Bush celebrated NATO's expansion into former communist territory and
urged further enlargement, highlighting differences with Moscow hours
before final talks with outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(AP, 4/5/08)
2008 Jul 15, Croatia adopted a law
that allows Sunday shopping only over the summer and Christmas
holidays. It goes into effect January 1. The law also allows stores in
gas, bus and train stations to open on Sundays year-round, along with
those in hospitals. Bakeries, newsstands and flower shops are also
exempt from the ban.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Oct 2, General Vladimir
Zagorec was extradited from Austria to Croatia on charges of stealing
gems used a collateral in an arms deal during the Balkan wars of the
1990s. 4 days later his lawyer’s daughter Ivana Hodak (26) was murdered.
(Econ, 11/1/08, p.61)
2008 Oct 23, In Croatia Ivo
Pukanic (47), who owned and edited Nacional, an influential publication
known for its investigative journalism and Nacional's marketing
director, Niko Franjic, died when an explosive device was placed near
their car in the capital, Zagreb. On Oct 31 Croatian police filed
murder charges against five people over the bombing deaths.
(AP, 10/24/08)(AP, 10/31/08)
2008 Dec 3, NATO foreign ministers
affirmed their support for US plans to install anti-missile defenses in
Europe despite Russia's strong opposition. NATO foreign ministers said
they expected Albania and Croatia to become the alliance's newest
members by April.
(AP, 12/3/08)
2008 Carla Del Ponte, a Swiss
prosecutor, authored (with Chuck Sudetic) “Madame Prosecutor:
Confrontations with Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of
Impunity.” It covered her 8 years chasing Balkan war criminals. In 2009
this Italian edition was made available in English.
(Econ, 1/24/09, p.88)
2009 Jan 6, A natural gas crisis
loomed over Europe, as a contract dispute between Russia and Ukraine
shut off Russian gas supplies to six countries and reduced gas
deliveries to several others. Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania,
Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments.
(AP, 1/6/09)
2009 Apr 1, Albania and Croatia
became NATO’s newest members.
(SFC, 4/2/09, p.A2)
2009 May 8, A Croatian court
convicted an opposition lawmaker of war crimes, making him the
country's first senior politician to be held responsible for wartime
atrocities against Serbs. Branimir Glavas was sentenced to 10 years in
prison for war crimes against civilians, but he remained free because
he enjoys parliamentary immunity from detention. During the 1991
Serbo-Croat war, he was a member of the ruling Croatian Democratic
Union and formed a paramilitary unit in eastern Croatian town of
Osijek, where he was seen as a warlord.
(AP, 5/8/09)
2009 Jun 23, Serbia's war crimes
court convicted Damir Sireta, a Croatian Serb man, for the
execution-style killings in Vukovar of some 200 Croatian prisoners of
war in 1991 during the Balkan conflict. Sireta was sentenced to 20
years in prison.
(AP, 6/23/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Croatia PM Ivo
Sanader (b.1953) unexpectedly announced his resignation.
(Econ, 7/4/09,
p.50)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Sanader)
2009 Jul 6, In Croatia
deputy Jadranka Kosor (b.1953), a former journalist, was confirmed as
the new prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadranka_Kosor)
2009 Jul 24, In southern Croatia a
passenger train derailed, killing at least six people and injuring
about 20.
(AP, 7/24/09)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Croatia
End of file