Croatian Genocide

The Serbs in Croatia were subjected to genocide by the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War, during which hundreds of thousands of Serbs were killed (See: World War II persecution of Serbs).[2] In 1995 an estimated 200,000 Serbs fled Croatia as a result of the Croatian military's Operation Storm.[3] As a result of these and other events, the Serb population within the present-day borders of Croatia has fallen from about 550,000 (17.3% of the population) in 1900 to about 185,000 (4.4% of the population) in 2011.[4][5] In February 2015, during the Croatia–Serbia genocide case, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) dismissed the Serbian lawsuit claim that Operation Storm constituted genocide,[56] ruling that Croatia did not have the specific intent to exterminate the country's Serb minority, though it reaffirmed that serious crimes against Serb civilians had taken place.[56][57] The judgment stated that it is not disputed that a substantial part of the Serb population fled that region as a direct consequence of the military actions. The Croatian authorities were aware that the operation would provoke a mass exodus; they even to some extent predicated their military planning on such an exodus, which they considered not only probable, but desirable.[58] Fleeing civilians and people remaining in United Nations protected areas were subject to various forms of harassment, including military assaults and acts by Croatian civilians. On 8 August, a refugee column was shelled.[59] Although it was very difficult to determine the number of properties destroyed during and after Operation Storm since a large number of houses sustained some degree of damage since the beginning of the war, Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated that more than 5,000 houses were destroyed in the area during and after the battle.[60] Out of the 122 Serbian Orthodox churches in the area, one was destroyed and 17 were damaged. HRW also reported that the vast majority of the abuses were committed by Croatian forces. These abuses, which continued on a large scale even months after Operation Storm, included summary executions of elderly and infirm Serbs who remained behind and the wholesale burning and destruction of Serbian villages and property. In the months following the August offensive, at least 150 Serb civilians were summarily executed and another 110 persons forcibly disappeared.[61] One example of such crimes was the Varivode massacre, where nine elderly Serb villagers were killed by the Croatian Army.[62] At the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, Milan Babić was indicted, pleaded guilty and was convicted for "persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, a crime against humanity".[63][64] Babić stated during his trial that "during the events, and in particular at the beginning of his political career, he was strongly influenced and misled by Serbian propaganda".[65]