CROATIA/FILE-PRISON ISLAND Former inmates fear communist prison will be turned into resort

Record ID: 705563

  • Title: CROATIA/FILE-PRISON ISLAND Former inmates fear communist prison will be turned into resort
  • Date: 8th September 2014
  • Summary: GOLI OTOK, CROATIA (SEPTEMBER 5, 2014) (REUTERS) WIDE OF TOURIST BOATS MOORED AT DOCK TOURISTS ON DECK MAP OF GOLI OTOK ISLAND ON WALL, READING "WELCOME" DETAIL OF MAP READING "1948-1988" ABANDONED FACTORY BUILDING WITH TOURISTS WALKING AROUND VARIOUS OF TOURISTS WALKING AROUND ABANDONED PRISON BUILDINGS ABANDONED FACTORY BUILDING LARGE GROUP OF TOURISTS WALKING ON PATHWAY
  • Embargoed: 23rd September 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Croatia
  • Country: Croatia
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA5P4APV9KTLXTCL1TA765WMGMO
  • Story Text: Happy voices mix with music as young Czech and Hungarian tourists disembark from a small boat, looking forward to an afternoon of seafood, wine and splashing in the clear blue waters of Goli Otok.
    Other than a small seafront restaurant named "Prison", there are few signs that the uninhabited Adriatic island had once been home to one of communist Yugoslavia's darkest secrets: a hard labour detention camp for political prisoners.
    Between 1949 and 1956, the secret police found more than 13,000 people from all walks of life guilty of supporting Stalin's Soviet brand of communism and sentenced them to undergo political 're-education'.
    At the time, Yugoslavia had severed ties with Stalin's Soviet Union. Its leader Tito wanted to pursue a softer version of communism and veer away from Moscow's grip.
    But the fight to contain his opponents soon turned into a witch hunt overseen by the UDBA secret service.
    Those found at fault for whatever reason were sent to Goli Otok (Barren Island), a rocky outcrop in the central Adriatic, to be reformed along Communist Party lines through hard labour and political brainwash. Around 400 died there.
    Every prisoner who arrived at the island first had to run uphill through a gauntlet of older prisoners who beat them and spat at them, shouting insults like "traitors" and "scum".
    "Here was the 'welcome committee'. All the prisoners who were at the time at Goli Otok had to line up along both sides (of this walkway) and greet the newly arrived inmates by spitting at them, and beating them," Zvonko Hill, an 86-year old geology expert and one of the few surviving prisoners from the 1950s, told Reuters during a tour of the island.
    According to Hill, there were very few police guards and they only watched the outer perimeter.
    Guarding, spying, denouncing, beating, was all done by the inmates.
    Every two weeks inmates had to meet with their assigned investigators and had to report other prisoners for not working hard, for whispering to each other, or for not taking an active part in obligatory political discussions.
    Everyday life consisted of hard labour in the local quarry and workshops and a political education in the afternoon, where they had to discuss articles published in the communist party's official newspaper.
    "Inmates had to read (communist party newspaper) Borba, the only available newspaper, and they were required to comment on the articles - however, it was not allowed to show even the slightest difference in opinion. So, of course, you had to re-tell the same articles in a somewhat different order and with copious amounts of slogans and mottos, and appropriate comments, like, whenever Stalin is mentioned (we would have to say) 'that bandit Stalin', or 'that scum Stalin', and if some Yugoslav politicians were mentioned we described them as heroes. These (re-education) classes were one of the places where inmates settled scores with each other. Everyone would get a positive or negative mark depending on their involvement in that so-called 'politics class'," Hill explained.
    Hill ended up on the island after someone reported him for supporting Stalin, a charge he fiercely denies to this day. He spent 47 months there with no contacts with his family.
    The camp had been converted into an ordinary prison in the late 1950s and eventually closed in 1989, just before the end of the Cold War.
    When Croatia gained independence in 1991, the island was left to abandon.
    Since then, anything of value has been pillaged by local islanders.
    The buildings, once housing workshops for processing rocks and wood and producing high quality ceramic tiles that were exported to Italy, fell into disrepair.
    The island sank into oblivion until this July, when the government launched a project to revive disused state property and announced that around 100 assets, including Goli Otok, could be offered for sale.
    But the Goli Otok Association, which has for years lobbied successive governments in vain to turn the island into a memorial centre, went up in arms, fearing the island might be bought by someone who wants to build luxury hotels and discos.
    "The (Goli Otok) Association has people who could offer a sort of self-sustained solution for the future of Goli Otok, which would be based on history research, promotion of human rights and the culture of memory. This would involve cleaning up the island, and converting buildings - which were built using inmates' slave labour - into a memorial centre, part of which would consist of hotel and hostel types of accommodation where people could learn about democracy and human rights, along with art studios, where we could create a specific type of tourism which would not only be based on vacationing, but also learning," President of Goli Otok Association, Darko Bavoljak, said.
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