Poll: Facing the Past in Croatia

01 November 2006

Last Monday, October 30, a round-table discussion was held at the Journalists� Club in Zagreb, to discuss the topic of facing the past in Croatia and the interpretation of results of a recent public opinion survey.

The Documenta Centre started the survey of Croatian public opinion views on the issue of facing the past and the perceptions of victims of war. A multidimensional survey of views held by the citizens and opinion-makers was conducted, in cooperation with Puls Agency.

The survey was conducted on representative sample of all citizens of Croatia, with two additional sub-samples to secure sufficient number of participants from the two specific target-groups: citizens of Serb, i.e. Croatian nationality from the war-stricken areas.

The round-table discussion provided interpretation of the main findings of the public opinion survey. The methodology and the results were presented by Dragan Bagic from Puls Agency, Kruno Kardov from Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and Vesna Terselic from Documenta Centre for Facing the Past.

According to the survey, more than two thirds of the polled citizens said that �it is important to face the past�, although 30% believe that for them it carries negative meanings, 41% were neutral, while only 23% of the polled citizens said that facing the past is a positive notion.

Three in four citizens (76%) believe that proper identification of victims on both sides, as well as the circumstances of their suffering is mostly important or very important. Also, over a half of the citizens don�t know how many people died in the war.

A huge majority (well over 95 percent) have heard about the destruction of Vukovar, killing of prisoners in Ovcara Farm, or the bombardment of Dubrovnik. Fewer people have heard about the killing of civilians during and after Oluja Offensive (68%), or the confiscation of Serb property in Croatia (58%). However, 85% have heard and know about the torture of prisoners at Lora military prison. More than 80% of the general population believe that all of the above should be considered war crimes.

One half of the polled citizens (49%) believe that the Hague Tribunal contributed to start investigation of crimes committed by the Croatian side. 56% of the citizens followed the trial of Milosevic, while 43% followed the trial of Mirko Norac for crimes committed in Gospic. Almost the same number of citizens (29 to 32 percent) followed the trials for war crimes in Ovcara and the trials for crimes committed in Lora.

Three in five citizens (63%) believe that the main purpose of prosecution of war crimes is to find out the truth about the war and wartime events; 39% believe that it serves to prevent future crimes, while 30% believe that satisfaction and justice for the victims is its main purpose. a �rtve.

Documenta believes there is necessity for periodic measurement, i.e. longitudinal polls of views and opinions about the war, victims, crimes and their processing, that should be conducted every four to five years.

The full text of the survey is available, as PDF file, on Documenta web-site.