Dalmatian Serb pogrom of May 1991

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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 Šibenik. It took place on 2 May 1991 and was one of a number of large-scale attacks on Serbs living in Croatian government-held territory, of which the October 1991 Gospić massacre is perhaps the most notorious. While some have considered the Dalmatian pogrom to have been a response to ethnic violence in Eastern Slavonia, others have put it in the context of wider anti-Serb manifestations across Croatia; it has been claimed that it was a deliberate attempt to "ethnically cleanse" the region.

1 Background
2 The pogrom
3 The aftermath
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Background

Tensions between Croats and Serbs increased steadily through 1990 and 1991 following the electoral victory of Croatia's nationalist Croatian Democratic Union union party, led by Franjo Tuđman. Many Serbs were deeply unhappy about the prospect of living in an independent Croatia, fearing a re-run of the anti-Serb persecutions of the Second World War-era Independent State of Croatia. These sentiments were fueled by local Serb nationalists like Jovan Rašković, Mile Martić, Milan Babić and by propaganda coming from Milošević's Belgrade regime.

In the summer of 1990, they took up arms in the heavily Serb-populated Krajina region of Croatia, just inland from Dalmatia. The insurrection spread to the eastern region of Slavonia in early 1991, when paramilitary groups from Serbia itself took up positions in the region. On 1 May 1991, paramilitaries associated with the Serbian Radical Party killed a number of Croatian policemen in the Borovo Selo massacre and mutilated their bodies. This was, at the time, the bloodiest single incident in the Croatian conflict, and it caused widespread shock and outrage in Croatia. The killings produced an immediate upsurge in ethnic tensions. ^[1]

[edit] The pogrom

On 2 May 1991, a large demonstration against the Serb insurrection took place in the Dalmatian cities of Zadar and Šibenik, involving several thousand Croats. The protests turned violent, with Serb-owned businesses and vehicles being attacked and destroyed. The number of properties destroyed was reported to have been at least 168 ^[2]. A number of individual Serbs were also assaulted. The violence was reported to have lasted for several hours, without the police attempting to intervene. ^[3], ^[4]

[edit] The aftermath

The Yugoslav government later accused local HDZ officials of having instigated the violence. It claimed that

[The] action was organized by a number of the HDZ activists and the highest-ranking officials in Zadar, in the presence of Vladimir Šeks, deputy Speaker of the Croatian Parliament and Petar Šale - both of them among the highest-ranking HDZ officials at the time.^[5]

The events in Zadar were not widely reported at the time in the Western media, though the Serbian media cited the pogrom as an example of anti-Serb feeling in Croatia. It was cited in a similar context by the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević during his war crimes trial. ^[6]