Enter Tito's policeman
Sir: I wish to congratulate you and your contributor Mr Tibor Szamuely on his ex- cellent akticle 'Enter Tito's policeman' (14 February), and for your follow-up in your letter columns on 28 February. I wish to add a small contribution to the terrible truth about the massacre of the Yugoslays at Kocevje and the murderous nature of the Titoist communist regime.
My uncle, Dr Slavko Jerimenov, a lawyer, was bound with wire on the upper arms to Mr Dusan Dojcinovic and their hands were tied behind their backs with wire, after all their possessions were taken from them, including their boots; then they were led from the school at Kocevje on 30 May 1945 to a 'black maria' under heavy Partisan guard to the caves near Kocevje, where the mass murders went on for several days.
My father, a farmer, Branko Kupusarevic, although gravely ill, incapacitated after a severe stroke, was dragged from the house in November 1947 and was thrown into prison at Nis, and was kept in a cell, intended for four people, but into which were crammed over forty men, which meant that they could only sit down in turn. He died in prison on 8 January 1948, Boxing Day of the Orthodox calendar. My family was never informed of his death—a survivor from the prison told my mother about this. She was never allowed to visit his grave or to move his re- mains to our family vault. As late as 1956, the right-hand man, the chief executioner of Tito, Mr R. Rankovic, refused permission to remove his remains on the grounds that it would be politically inopportune.
I wish to stress that I came from the pro- vince of Banat, where the local Germans were in full control and all Yugoslays were maltreated by them. . Pendennis, in the Observer, 22 February, and subsequently Mr Richard West on I March, tried to whitewash the Yugoslav communist regime, denying that the massacres took place: we shall welcome an international commission of the Red Cross, or similar body, to examine the caves around Kocevje and Maribor and, in fact, any town or village, not only in that region, but all over Yugoslavia, and, without doubt, they will find ample evidence of these murders.
I wonder why these so-called experts do
not read the Yugoslav press, from which Mr Tibor Szamuely quoted a small fragment of the communist boasting that their security police are operating beyond the borders of Yugoslavia?
Mr Victor Zorza, in the Guardian of 19
December 1969 challenged the state security police of Yugoslavia to produce for in- terrogation in Sweden the suspected assassin of Savo Cubrilovic, who was the latest victim amongst the Yugoslav emigrants. Mr Zorza was mistaken in thinking that this was the first case which provided a direct link to the state security police, as, nearly two years earlier, there was a savage attack on Mr M. Petrovic in Munich, with a butcher's cleaver. The attacker's name and address are known, he now lives in Yugoslavia, but the Yugoslav authorities are unwilling to produce either of the attackers for investigation. Will Mr Richard West be kind enough to ask the state security police to cooperate and pro- duce these men so that the position can be clarified?
I hope that you will continue to bring to the public notice the tyrannical nature of Tito's communist regime in Yugoslavia.
Dusan Kupusarevic 15 Griffins Brook Lane, Birmingham, 30
Sir: May I thank you very much for having published, in your issue of 21 February. Mr Szamuely's article on the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Mr Ribicic. I am not thanking you because I want to take revenge on Mr Ribicic who, in 1947, completely ruined my family and myself. Were Mr Ribicic tried in court for his activities, I would much prefer to be his counsel for defence to being his judge, let alone his hangman. For him it must be punishment enough that he has to live with his black past.
But I do want the most elementary decen- cy in public affairs to prevail everywhere. Therefore it shocks me that the Swiss Neue Zurcher Zeitung could report on 25 February 1970 that the British public had taken little notice of the accusations against Mr Ribicic. Have we all really become so accustomed to mass murders and suchlike that another case no longer causes at least moderate in- dignation? What is the use of printing reports on what was going on in - Czechoslovakia in 1952, if somebody who was more than a match for Czech and Soviet interrogators in Prague at about the same time can come to London as an honoured guest?
Maybe the British do not' believe what I am saying about Mr Ribicic. That is why I would welcome it very much if Mr Ribicic decided to sue me for libel. As a great 'liberal', he would no doubt allow witnesses to come also from Yugoslavia.
Ljubo Sirc The University, Glasgow w2
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