Minority Serbs in Croatia Fear New Genocide : Yugoslavia: Re-emergence of checkerboard shield associated with fascists of World War II adds to anxiety in troubled republic.

Bosiljka Juzbasic’s voice quivers as she recalls when the trouble began, when she and other Serbs scratching an existence from this ragged edge of Croatia began to fear the republic’s new government was plotting to kill them.

“It was when they put up those flags and shields at the police station,” says the bent-backed peasant, who looks 70 but is only 52. “I don’t remember much of the war. I was too young. But I remember my mother carrying me, running with me away from that same shield.”

Croatia’s red-and-white checkerboard shield was created more than a century ago as a heraldic emblem of the province that was then under Austro-Hungarian rule.

But, until recently, its display as a national symbol was confined to one dark chapter in Croatian history: the World War II fascist puppet regime of the Ustashas who systematically executed Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

The shield now flutters on new Croatian flags outside police stations and government offices throughout the republic. During four decades of Communist rule, such nationalist symbols were strictly outlawed.

Since a non-Communist government came to power last May and embarked on a quest to form an independent Croatia, enameled checkerboard pins have replaced the red star that previously adorned the caps and badges of police and the territorial militia.

Authorities in the Croatian capital of Zagreb dismiss the Serbian minority’s reaction to the revived symbols as an irrational association of the new democratic leadership with the Ustasha fanatics.

According to Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, the fear and mistrust electrifying Serbian communities is the result of a “psychological war” waged by the Communists in control of the neighboring Yugoslavian republic of Serbia and the federal army, who would like to force Croatia back into their subjugated fold.

Serbian newspapers remain firmly in the hands of nationalist President Slobodan Milosevic and other hard-line Communists, who have whipped up an anti-Croatian hysteria with frequent claims that Zagreb leaders are planning to round up and slaughter all Serbs.

While the unsubstantiated reports of an impending genocide might be disregarded by those who are educated and worldly, they have struck genuine terror in the hearts of Serbs in remote outposts like Josevica.

Flying of the checkerboard colors is seen here as proof that a civil war is about to begin.

Hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of Serbs and Croats are in possession of guns, threatening an uncontrollable bloodletting if fratricidal fighting ever gets started.

“Why have they come here with their flags and machine guns, if not to kill us?” asks Milja, a saleswoman at the sole store in this village of 350 Serbs and two Croatian women who married into the community. “All you have to do is turn on the television to see that Tudjman hates Serbs so much that he can’t even say their names.”

The gap-toothed vendor who declined to give her full name for fear of retaliation says the repression of the Serbian minority has already begun.

Milja and others clustered around a wood-and-wire fence for their afternoon gossip uniformly contend that Serbian workers risk losing their jobs to unemployed Croats.

“The police station in Petrinja used to be nearly all Serbian. Now they are all Croatian special forces with machine guns, sent down by Zagreb to take over,” insists another Josevica woman. “Those of us who still have jobs are afraid every day of losing them.”

As in most areas of Yugoslavia, Croatia is struggling through an economic crisis and will soon have to lay off tens of thousands of workers from failing factories and overstaffed offices. Zagreb officials say there will be no ethnic distinction in deciding who goes and who stays, but the Serbs who number nearly 600,000 in the republic of 5 million don’t believe it.

One reason they distrust the official assurances is Zagreb’s deliberate erosion of Serbian influence on local police forces.

“The Serbs are upset because they are losing power,” observes a Croat policeman in Petrinja, the administrative center of the ethnically mixed region incorporating Josevica. Outside precinct headquarters, a new Croatian flag whips in the late winter wind and two policeman bearing checkerboard shields stand guard with automatic rifles at the ready.

“Up until now there were always more Serbs in the police force,” says the stocky 26-year-old, who, on condition of anonymity, broke with his station’s policy of referring all comment to authorities in Zagreb. “Now our numbers are approximately equal. We feel that this is what a democracy is all about--that the peoples have all the same rights and that our numbers are balanced.”

Inter-ethnic struggles for control of local police have turned the law enforcement offices into combat grounds. The Petrinja station was seized by angry Serbs last September after rumors--apparently spread by Milosevic envoys--that Croatian militia troops were planning a takeover. After the Serbs disarmed Croatian officers, Zagreb dispatched a crack special police unit, turning Serbian fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A similar Serb-Croat conflict in Pakrac, another ethnically mixed community about 45 miles to the east, erupted in gunfire on March 2 and prompted the intervention of Communist-commanded federal troops.

Pakrac, Petrinja and Josevica are links in a chain of Serbian communities within Croatia that once formed what is known as the vojnaja krajina , the military frontier. It stretches from near the Adriatic Sea in the southwest of Croatia to the north and then east along the border with Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Serbs who fled the brutal occupation of their homeland by Ottoman Turkey were encouraged by Austria-Hungary as early as the 16th Century to settle in this region to provide a defensive buffer between the two great empires. The Serbian exiles were given land and relative freedom in return for preventing an advance of the Turks.

By 1918, when Yugoslavia was formed from the Balkan states long dominated by Turkey and Austria, nearly 25% of the residents of Croatia were ethnic Serbs.

Relations among the nationalities degenerated between the two world wars, as economic hardship inspired ethnic resentment. When the Nazis invaded Croatia in 1941, fanatic Croatian nationalists--the Ustashas--eagerly joined in the fascist atrocities, adding Serbs to the Jews and Gypsies on Germany’s hit list. Some factions of the Serbian royalist Chetniks retaliated by killing Croats.

Of the 1.7 million Yugoslavs who died during World War II, at least half were killed in inter-ethnic fighting. The proportion of Serbs in Croatia fell to its current level of about 12%.

Belgrade’s strongly pro-Serbian media have reported in recent days that Serbs have been fleeing Croatia in fear of another genocide and that the exodus has reached 20,000.

“The tensions started in September, with the police station incident,” says Petrinja Mayor Stanislava Gregurincic-Zilic, a Croatian who is married to a Serb from Josevica. “Serbs here feel very threatened. I can’t cite examples of firings on ethnic grounds, or outward signs of repression, but they obviously feel they are in danger.”

The 55-year-old former Communist blames supporters of Tudjman’s Croatian Democratic Union for waving nationalist symbols and stirring up the current fever of hostility.

“The Serbs are irritated by these displays of flags and shields. They don’t accept them because they were the symbols of the Ustasha,” she says.

While Croats brush off such resistance to expressions of their national identity, republic residents of mixed nationality say the newfound chauvinism is at least insensitive.

Milena Radic, a Zagreb businesswoman born in the Serbian stronghold of Knin, has spent 30 years in the Croatian capital. Her predominantly Serbian ancestry was never heeded until recently.

“Even old friends treat me differently now. The politics of indoctrination are touching everyone, even little children,” says Radic, whose father was executed by the Ustashas. “I am a Serb, but one born in Croatia. My mentality is Croatian. My homeland is Croatia. The only difference is that Croats are mostly Catholics and I adhere to the Serbian religion, Orthodoxy. Yet I’m told now that if I don’t like it here I can go back to Serbia. I have the same rights in my homeland as a foreigner.”

Croatia’s new constitution decrees that the republic is “the homeland of the Croats” but that other nationalities are accorded equal rights.

A few Croats say privately that Serbs are soured by a taste of their own medicine. Serbs have monopolized the reins of power in Serbia, even in areas where they are outnumbered by other nationalities.

Milosevic rose to power in 1988 by stirring up rabid nationalist sentiment over the province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians account for 90% of the population. Milosevic convinced Serbian voters that the ethnic Albanians were plotting with the Albanian government in Tirana to annex Kosovo, scene of a vain but valiant effort by the Serbs in 1389 to halt the Turkish advance on Europe.

Having instigated sufficient Serbian outrage, Milosevic stripped Kosovo of its previous autonomy in early 1989 and invoked virtual martial law to keep a lid on ethnic Albanian unrest.

Croats contend that Milosevic is employing the same trick to disrupt the military frontier, hoping to stir up enough ethnic conflict to justify a toppling of the Zagreb leadership by the pro-Communist and predominantly Serbian federal army.

The issue of Serbian domination influenced last spring’s multi-party elections in Croatia, where Tudjman’s party encouraged its own brand of nationalism and won with promises of a free and independent Croatia.

Serbia reelected Milosevic in December, bucking Eastern Europe’s trend toward ousting communism when given a choice.

“We have Tudjman because they have Milosevic,” 29-year-old Velda Brdar, a Croat with a Serbian husband, explained with a disbelieving shake of her head. “This whole conflict can be traced to two politicians, but the entire country is getting ready for civil war.”