Linda Keres Carter, I am a genocided, extinct person who assimilated to the ppl here most like us
[Is this not a glimpse of our future?]
Just twenty years ago, via Operation Storm, the minority Serbs of Croatia were driven into extinction. In the 19th century we were 40% of the population, living in the Krajina mainly where we had lived for hundreds of years. We were largely refugees from Turkish occupied Serbia, whom the Austrian crown had allowed to live in the war zone between Europe and the Middle East, the Krajina or frontier in exchange for holding that border. We did so for 350 years. When the Ottoman Empire fell, we were left destitute. An aggressive effort was made to ‘baptize’ us, (cultural genocide) thereby making us Croats. A barrel of flour would be given to anyone who brought their family in for conversion. People were starving, so about half the Serb population vanished in that manner. A curious phenomenon would occur with subsequent generations of the converts. Like the ‘first word in English’ (the N word) that European immigrants to America would learn, those convert’s children would often become the loudest and most vitriolic of Serb haters, including Ante Starčević, the “Father” of the Croatian nation. He was the first to call for the extermination of Serbs. His mother was a Serb. In part, so was his father.
So, by the beginning of WWII we were 20% of the population, afterwards we dropped to 15% After the Civil Wars of the Nineties, we dropped to 4% of the population, mostly elderly and still declining. During WWII, one in four people were slaughtered in extermination measures so sadistic they appalled Hitler and various other Nazis who commented on them. A number of witnesses reported practices like cremating people alive. Again, often, it would be those former Serbs who would be the most sadistic persecutors.
Some of those Ustasha perpetrators were destroyed in a crazed backlash at the end of the war that innocents were caught up in as well. Other Ustasha escaped, many by way of the Vatican. Since the country became Communist, the west did not prosecute any of those criminals, instead they were harbored. At the end of the Cold War their children found their way back into Croatia. This far right wing was supported by the US and NATO, a common practice when politically expedient.
“Persecution of Serbs and Ethnic Cleansing in Croatia 1991–1998” documents the process which began as a flag controversy, when some of those right wing extremists hoisted a Ustasha flag over a courthouse. A bitter debate ensued. The response was to hoist that flag over all the courthouses and make it the national flag.
It is not a matter of conspiracy theories that the US involved itself in the dismemberment of this sovereign nation:
That U.S. leaders have consciously sought to dismember Yugoslavia is not a matter of speculation but of public record. In November 1990, the Bush administration pressured Congress into passing the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, which provided that any part of Yugoslavia failing to declare independence within six months would lose U.S. financial support. The law demanded separate elections in each of the six Yugoslav republics, and mandated U.S. State Department approval of both election procedures and results as a condition for any future aid. Aid would go only to the separate republics, not to the Yugoslav government, and only to those forces whom Washington defined as “democratic,” meaning right-wing, free-market, separatist parties. — Michael Parenti
After the disasterous flag debate, Serbs were fired from all government sector jobs, and being a socialist economy, that meant most jobs. The majority population’s perception was that Serbs held those jobs because of quotas and were not qualified to hold them. Terrorist acts against random individuals became common, as when the police stopped an elderly inebriated Serb in the street, tied a noose around his neck, the other end to their bumper, and then dragged his body throughout the Serb part of town.
Police interrogations of a broad sampling of the Serb population ensued. Some never returned, some were found mutilated. The bombing of homes and businesses became commonplace. The commandeering of apartments and personal property ensued. It was in this climate that the US media was filled with stories about Serb sectors arming themselves, the impression given that it was aggressive, rather than defensive in nature.
In short, a climate of panic with a sense of doom was promoted. After several years of escalating violence, Serbs were commanded to evacuate, leaving all of their possessions behind. They were to obtain a permit to leave after paying their electric bills in full.
We are now 4% of the population. Most of those who remain are elderly, too old to relocate. There are still reprisals on them. Those remaining families still raising children are often converting to Catholicism, the equivalent of assimilation, or cultural genocide in this case.
Of all the genocides reported in the war that destroyed Yugoslavia, the only successful one was that of the minority Serbs of Croatia. Simply reviewing census records for the various republics available online reveals this. The numbers of all other groups have remained relatively stable. But we exist only in Diaspora now, too small and too scattered for our subculture to persist. This is the same culture that produced Tesla and Mrs. Einstein — the first one who used to help her husband with his math.
Copied from: Have any human races or ethnic groups ever become extinct? – Quora
https://www.quora.com/Have-any-human-races-or-ethnic-groups-ever-become-extinct