Want to know how the Y2K hysteria started? Pure disinformation. Now, I just got home. Spent a few minutes reading stuff on the Dennis site. I read that Croatia is an Islamic nation [had to do with the bus problem in TN]. It has been repeated over and over. God knows every site has its morons. Many of the folks over there don’t fit the moron category, but evidently some do. Doesn’t sound like the country that I know. From the Croatian site.

Religion Croats are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, while virtually all Serbs are Eastern Orthodox. In addition to various doctrinal differences, Orthodox Christians venerate icons, let priests marry, and couldn't care less about the Pope. Thoroughly suppressed during Yugoslavia's communist period, Roman Catholicism is now making a comeback, with most churches strongly attended every Sunday. Muslims make up 1.2% of the population and Protestants 0.4%. There's a tiny Jewish population in Zagreb.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), October 04, 2001

Answers

Here are some REAL facts. The Muslims were used by Hitler to ‘cleanse’ the population and the recent ‘troubles’ are just a payback. Very complicated.

The largest group of the Bosnian population, however, are the Muslim Slavs (44% in the 1991 census), descendants of Christian Bosnians who accepted Islam some 500 years ago.

The Second World War (1941-1945)

Hitler invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, the king fled abroad, and the country was parceled out between Nazi Germany's allies and local clients. The northernmost strip (Slovenia) was annexed to the Greater German Reich; most of the Adriatic coastline of Croatia was assigned to Fascist Italy; Macedonia in the south was given to Germany's ally Bulgaria. What remained was divided up between the Nazi puppet-state of Croatia (compensated for the losses on the coast by being granted all of Bosnia) and a German-appointed regime in Serbia, headed by a former royal Yugoslav general named Milan Nedich.

The fascist regime in occupied Croatia, under Ustasha leader Ante Pavelich, undertook to ethnically "cleanse" the areas it controlled by the murder of large numbers of Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, as well as Croat political opponents, sent to their deaths in camps such as Jasenovac, southeast of Zagreb. Many thousands of Serbs were forced to "become" Croats by signing loyalty oaths and converting to Roman Catholicism. Bosnian Muslims were considered as "Muslim Croats" in the Ustasha ideology, and for the time being they were largely spared in this round of killing. Although Bosnian Muslim religious and political leaders spoke out publicly against the regime's program of ethnic and religious persecution, some Muslims also joined in the slaughter as part of a short-lived all-Muslim SS division established in 1943 under German command.

Meanwhile in occupied Serbia a similar campaign was carried on under General Nedich, who operated concentration camps for Jews, non-Serbs, and his Serb political opponents on behalf of his German overlords. The first experiments in mass executions of camp inmates by poison gas were carried out in Serbia, which became the first Nazi satellite in occupied Europe to declare itself "Judenrein" ("cleansed" of Jews). Gen. Nedich's Serbian militia forces, which played a key role in this task, outnumbered both German security forces and resistance fighters within the wartime borders of Serbia.

Many Serbs who despised Gen. Nedich for his readyness to serve the Germans joined a Serbian nationalist resistance movement, popularly called the "Chetniks" and headed by another royal Yugoslav army officer, Col. Drazha Mihailovich. Though initially supplied by British airdrops, Mihailovich soon stopped fighting the Germans as it became clear that every resistance attack on a German soldier or unit would be followed by savage reprisals against the Serbian civilian population. Thereafter there was little anti-German guerrilla activity within Serbia proper, as the Chetniks turned their attention to "safer" targets more in line with their nationalist ideology, which envisioned an ethnically pure Greater Serbia.

"Cleansed" of all non-Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, and traitors to the cause, this pure Serbia of the future was to extend beyond Serbia's current borders to embrace all of Bosnia-Herzegovina and much of Croatia. In pursuit of this vision, Mihailovich's Chetniks launched their own "ethnic cleansing" campaign in Bosnia, aimed at "undoing" the work of the Ustasha by killing off Croats and Muslim Slavs in order to tilt the ethnic balance in favor of the Serbs. Bosnia became a killing ground, as bands of Serbian Chetniks, the Croatian Ustasha, local militias, German and Italian occupation troops and the Communist Partisans vied with each other in terrorizing various segments of the civilian population. (Half a century later, the Chetnik vision of a purified Greater Serbia has been resurrected by Serb nationalists; the main street in the sector of Sarajevo under the control of nationalist forces was recently renamed Drazha Mihailovich Street, in tribute to the memory of the Chetnik leader and his ideology.)

Meanwhile the Yugoslav Communists, led by Josip Broz Tito, had organized their own multi-ethnic resistance group, which took up the fight against the Nazis as well as against the Chetniks, General Nedich, the Ustasha, and against anyone else who did not support their call for total armed struggle. Tito's Partisans, who fought their bloodiest battles in the mountainous terrain of central Bosnia and coastal Croatia, did not care that their attacks would provoke the Germans into killing off whole villages in reprisal. They knew that an embittered populace would then have no choice but to join the Partisans if they wanted to revenge themselves on the hated occupiers. Any who hesitated to join would soon be convinced by other means, including equally brutal Partisan reprisals against collaborators and other "enemies of the people." In battling the Communist Partisans, the Chetniks were drawn into compromising alliances with local Italian and the German occupation forces, while Tito's guerrillas gained a reputation for effectiveness in tying down Axis troops. As a result, in early 1944 the Allies withdrew their support from the Chetniks and began to airdrop supplies to the Partisans.

-- Fact (finders@inc.com), October 04, 2001.

"Religion Croats are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic"

Are you trying to say that is impossible that a Croatian could be a terrorist?

-- bwah ha ha (get@clue.), October 04, 2001.

None of the above:

I am just responding to the fact that a lot of folks on the Dennis board feel that Croatia is an Islamic nation. Nothing more.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), October 04, 2001.

Z--

Why do you go to the Dennis site?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), October 05, 2001.

Lars, I don't want to speak for Z, but it pays to use a variety of different sources in the quest for knowledge.

Interacting with others who do not necessarally follow your ideas and and beliefs is not a negitive thing, you can always find something interesting or learn something new from almost everyone. Besides, perhaps Z enjoys interacting with the people over there.

When you restrict yourself to interacting with or reading things that always agree with you, you stunt yourself.

it is an intellegent person who uses his open mind to gather information in order to analyze and learn. only with people who restrict yourself with those who

-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), October 05, 2001.