LETTERS Nazi slur
Sir: Kenneth Roberts purports to be an enemy of Nazism. Yet in his article accus- ing Croatia of subscribing to this ideology, he displays a mastery of the techniques of propaganda of which Goebbels himself would have been proud (`Unreconstructed Nazism on display', 19 March).
To begin with, he does more than simply accuse. By squeezing the word 'Nazi' or 'fascist' into his piece over a dozen times, he tries to pass off his prejudice as a kind of necessary truth.
What is his charge based on? We hear that members of the local Helsinki Com- mittee for Human Rights are complaining. Show me a country in the world (we might start with North America, where prison conditions are a favourite source of con- cern) where this is not the case. Then we are told that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman made a big mistake by choosing as the flag of his newly independent repub- lic the same red and white chequer-board (sahovnica) as had symbolised the undoubtedly unpleasant wartime regime of the Ustashe, thereby giving the same cause for alarm as Helmut Kohl would have done had he selected the swastika as the badge of reunited Germany. The difference is that, unlike the swastika for Germany, the sahovnica has been the symbol of Croa- tian statehood since the eleventh century (when Croatia entered into a union with Hungary and its distinctive crest became part of the Hungarian coat of arms). Finally we gather that in today's Croatia the traffic- police are 'entitled to stop cars in the street'. Gosh.
What we don't hear from Mr Roberts is that weeks after it proclaimed its indepen- dence in 1991, Croatia was subjected to a devastating land and air attack from one of Europe's best equipped armies. Today, one third of the country lies annexed, while half of what remains is cut off. The capital, Zagreb, is in easy range of Serbian bombardment. Under these cir- cumstances, I don't find it reprehensible that the defence minister has been buying MiG-21s to replace crop-sprayers, nor that newsreaders are required to refer to 'self-declared' Serbian-held Krajina (just as 'Occupied France' was always exactly that).
Yes, there have been excesses, and yes, Tudjman has made political blunders. The most glaring of these — to which Mr Roberts rightly draws attention — was his decision to join in the carve-up of Bosnia- Hercegovina. But this policy has spectacu- larly backfired, obliging Tudjman to sign last week's agreement committing Croats and Muslims to stand firm against their common enemy, the Serbs. What Mr Roberts also omits to mention is that this policy was vehemently rejected by a majori- ty of Croats from the outset.
Johnathan Sun1g Budapest 1055, Vecsey utca 5 III 9, Hungary
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