Yugoslavia’s Gulag (The Sacramento Bee)

I read with interest your article on the arrested Yugoslav citizens (“28 Yugoslav Citizens Arrested,” The Bee, April 22). I would like to point out that these are not isolated cases of the police crackdown on dissidents. Far worse are the constant persecutions against Croats and ethnic Albanians at home and abroad (including the U.S.A.). During the last 20 years, more than 50 Yugoslav citizens, mostly Croats, were killed or abducted by the Yugoslav secret police, in the West and the U.S. (Libyan-style diplomacy). Yugoslavia is very often praised by the U.S. media as a “model country with the most liberal Communists.” It would be useful that your readers know that Yugoslavia’s political prison population far exceeds that of all other East European Communist countries. The Reagan administration may wrongly have reason to “contain communism” in Central America with the taxpayers’ money. The billions of dollars which Reagan has been pumping into Yugoslavia serve only to strengthen communism. Yugoslavia challenges the domination of the Soviet Union. It certainly never challenges the principles of scientific gulag communism.

by Tomislav Sunic (signing as “Croatian Dissident”)