Operation Storm:Stories from the Hague Courtrooms

The exhibition "Operation Storm — Stories from the Hague Courtrooms" was launched on this website exactly thirty years after the Croatian Army and the Special Police of the Republic of Croatia undertook Operation Storm in August 1995, seized territory that had until then been held by the forces of the "Republic of Serbian Krajina" with support from Serbia, and returned it within the borders of what was by then an internationally recognised Croatian state.

The exhibition presents independent stories about events that took place during and after Operation Storm through the lens of evidence presented before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. The stories are not arranged chronologically or thematically — the choice of sequence is left to the users. However, once you go through these stories, they come together into a whole that inevitably challenges the dominant narratives prevalent throughout the region of the former Yugoslavia, narratives that view Operation Storm either solely as a criminal act or describe it as an operation "as clean as a whistle."

The exhibition also aims to show the context in which Operation Storm took place, as opposed to the narrative that presents it as the beginning of the conflict and the wave of crimes in the Krajina area.

Only one trial for war crimes committed during and after Operation Storm was conducted before the tribunal in The Hague: that against Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak, and Mladen Markač. Although Gotovina and Markač were sentenced to 24 and 18 years of imprisonment respectively in the first-instance judgement, they were acquitted of all responsibility in the appeal proceedings by a decision that was — for certain parts of the public — controversial.

The exhibition does not discuss the reasons or motivations behind that decision, but it clearly shows the significance of the Hague trials for war crimes, even when the verdicts are acquittals. Although the Appeals Chamber acquitted the accused, it did not overturn, nor could it have overturned, the factual findings of the first-instance judgement concerning numerous crimes committed against the Serbian population of "Krajina".

That is the factual foundation on which the entire exhibition before you is based.