Original scientific paper
The chronicles of Grubišno Polje 1990-1991 (Part II)
Petar Bašić
Ivica Miškulin
Abstract
Based on available archive and newspaper materials and relevant literature, the authors analyze the events that had taken place in the territory of the Municipality of Grubišno Polje in 1991. After the process of ethnic homogenization of the two largest ethnic communities gained ground, an attempt was made in 1991 to separate a part of the Municipality’s territory from the constitutional and territorial order of the Republic of Croatia by using violence. Faced with armed attacks and other terrorist activities of the rebelling Serbs, the local Croatian authorities were forced to react. The occupied territory was freed in a military campaign at the end of October and the beginning of November 1991. The process of ethnic homogenization of the Municipality’s Serbian population, which got ahead in 1990 on exclusivist, nationalist grounds, logically developed into an armed attempt to separate a part of the Municipality’s territory in 1991 and unite it with the self-proclaimed autonomous Serbian unit in Croatia, which was considered the first step toward the unification of all territories perceived as constituent parts of the imagined Great-Serbian state. The Municipality’s organization of the Serbian Democratic Party, which enjoyed strong support of the local Serbian population, acted as the political backbone of the process. Other political and social organizations enjoying the favor and support of the Serbs followed the same agenda. Local Serbs proved highly susceptible to the propaganda telling them that the new Croatian state, the Republic of Croatia, was an entirely unacceptable framework to live in, since it was in essence, as it was persistently claimed, nothing but a resurrected Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Those were the origins of the events that are going to lead to an armed rebellion of local Serbs in the territory of the Municipality of Grubišno Polje, and soon to an open armed clash. In such circumstances, the organization of Croatian defensive forces was a necessity in the face of brutal attempts of the Serbs to establish an ethnically cleansed territory. At the end of October and the beginning of November 1991 Croatian forces launched a swift attack and managed to defeat the rebel forces completely and free the Municipality’s occupied territories, dealing the first major blow to Serbian expansion in Western Slavonija.
Keywords
Grubišno Polje (municipality and town); Bilogora; rebel Serbs; Homeland War; Operation Otkos-10; terrorism
Hrčak ID:
77914
URI
Publication date:
29.9.2010.
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