Background
In May 1990 the HDZ party led by Franjo Tuđman won Croatia's first post-communist multi-party elections. Tuđman pursued a strongly Croatian nationalist course, advocating independence from Yugoslavia. Much of Croatia's large Serb minority was opposed to their policies, regarding them as anti-Serb, and sought to remain within Yugoslavia. Following Tuđman's election, ethnic Serb nationalists in the Krajina region (bordering western Bosnia and Herzegovina) launched an armed uprising in which Croatian government officials were forcibly expelled or excluded from a wide area of the Krajina. Croatian government property was seized throughout the region and handed over to the control of local Krajina Serb municipalities or the newly established "Serbian National Council" led by Milan Babić (later to become the government of the breakaway SAO Krajina). The process did not happen overnight but took a considerable amount of time – well over a year – to complete.
The Plitvice Lakes are a scenic area and national park of Croatia, located in the Krajina near the Bosnian border, about 150 km south of the Croatian capital Zagreb. Prior to 1995, the surrounding area was primarily Serb-populated and the lakes were on the edge of the area controlled by the Krajina Serbs. The national park was, however, principally under the control of Croats loyal to the Zagreb government.
Read more about this topic: Plitvice Lakes Incident
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)